At a time when wild lands in the West are being lost at an all-time high rate, with more than 100,000 acres of open space lost each year in Colorado alone, comes former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt’s “Cities in the Wilderness: A New Vision of Land Use in America.”
Babbitt sets out to demonstrate how we can prevent further loss of our natural and cultural landscapes through stronger federal leadership. It is an attractive idea, even in the face of opposite trends. Most of us are familiar with the trends in land use toward more local control and lessening federal control over the past 20 years. The literature and landscape are full of examples of this – witness the Sagebrush Rebellion, the rise of community-based conservation, of devolution of power from the federal government to the states and the re-
emergence of the long dormant states’ rights movement. Babbitt’s thesis is that stronger federal leadership, coupled with stated implementation and private incentives, can lead to more rational land uses.
Babbitt, who served during the Clinton administration and drove some of the most dramatic conservation projects of the ’90s, including the restoration of the Florida Everglades, the return of the wolf to Yellowstone and the creation of the Grand Staircase-
Escalante National Monument, draws on examples from his controversial tenure.
While this book could easily slide into a gloomy projection of a sprawling future, Babbitt, a former Arizona governor, instead focuses on the flowers growing through the increasingly asphalted landscape. His victory vignettes provide powerful counterpoints to the long history of federal policies that have encouraged development and extraction of resources.
These examples lead Babbitt to another conclusion: We ought to have a national conversation about the appropriate role of the federal government in land use decisions. Laws haven’t changed with the realities of our resources. The agency structures that implement our natural resource laws have calcified into unworkable, meaningless or harmful processes. Bureaucracies, local governments, industry and private individuals are not incentivized to craft the great solutions that Babbitt details.
The encouraging trend in Colorado is certainly toward better land use planning and preserving the great natural places in this state. Starting in 1992, the Great Outdoors Colorado Trust Fund has been funding open-
space conservation projects to the tune of $10 million to $15 million per year.
Along the San Miguel River in Southwest Colorado, volunteers, landowners, local governments, agencies and others are working with the Nature Conservancy to restore more than 100 miles of a river corridor that was overrun with tamarisk, an invasive tree, to its native cottonwood and willow habitat.
Babbitt’s book contributes to the ongoing conversation about land use and conservation of our rich natural world by reminding us that hard work, respect for diverse points of view and nature, and creative leadership can drive great successes.
Charles E. Bedford is state director of The Nature Conservancy of Colorado and the former director of the Colorado State Land Board.
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Cities in the Wilderness
A New Vision of Land Use in America
By Bruce Babbitt
Island, 288 pages, $25.95
