THE RISE OF URBAN ARCHIPELAGOES IN THE AMERICAN WEST: A NEW RESERVATION POLICY?

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the public lands were managed primarily on behalf of those interested in using and extracting the timber, minerals, and grass. Native Americans were removed from the lands in favor of farmers, grazers, loggers, and miners. During the last halfcentury, the American West has been undergoing a dramatic transformation with significant consequences for our approach to the public lands. The West's population has been growing rapidly and forming a number of what demographers have called "urban archipelagoes." This population movement has been accompanied by an increasing preference that the public lands be devoted to preservation and recreation rather than extraction. The Article discusses how the law should respond to this new preference. It does so by examining some of the similarities between federal Indian and public lands policy in the nineteenth century and public lands policy today. The Article suggests that although those of us who have flocked to the West's urban archipelagoes have a different view of how the West's natural resources are best used, many of us seem to share with our nineteenth century counterparts the view that those who were here before we arrived are an obstacle to achieving our desired uses of the West's resources. The Article uses the analogy to the nineteenth century to suggest that we more thoughtfully consider the impact of public lands policy on the rural communities of the West and that we exhibit less certainty and more skepticism about the superiority of our public lands aspirations. The Article suggests that participation of rural communities in public lands decisionmaking is a critical component of a principled public lands policy. It concludes by discussing several ways of enhancing rural participation and offers a brief critique of the Clinton Administration's adherence to the participation norm.