This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption are Ruining the American West

by Christopher Ketcham

"A big, bold book about public lands . . . The Desert Solitaire of our time." --Outside

A hard-hitting look at the battle now raging over the fate of the public lands in the American West--and a plea for the protection of these last wild places

The public lands of the western United States comprise some 450 million acres of grassland, steppe land, canyons, forests, and mountains. It's an American commons, and it is under assault as never before.

Journalist Christopher Ketcham has been documenting the confluence of commercial exploitation and governmental misconduct in this region for over a decade. His revelatory book takes the reader on a journey across these last wild places, to see how capitalism is killing our great commons. Ketcham begins in Utah, revealing the environmental destruction caused by unregulated public lands livestock grazing, and exposing rampant malfeasance in the federal land management agencies, who have been compromised by the profit-driven livestock and energy interests they are supposed to regulate. He then turns to the broad effects of those corrupt politics on wildlife. He tracks the Department of Interior's failure to implement and enforce the Endangered Species Act--including its stark betrayal of protections for the grizzly bear and the sage grouse--and investigates the destructive behavior of U.S. Wildlife Services in their shocking mass slaughter of animals that threaten the livestock industry. Along the way, Ketcham talks with ecologists, biologists, botanists, former government employees, whistleblowers, grassroots environmentalists and other citizens who are fighting to protect the public domain for future generations.

This Land is a colorful muckraking journey--part Edward Abbey, part Upton Sinclair--exposing the rot in American politics that is rapidly leading to the sell-out of our national heritage. The book ends with Ketcham's vision of ecological restoration for the American West: freeing the trampled, denuded ecosystems from the effects of grazing, enforcing the laws already in place to defend biodiversity, allowing the native species of the West to recover under a fully implemented Endangered Species Act, and establishing vast stretches of public land where there will be no development at all, not even for recreation.

Genres: Nonfiction, Environment, Politics, Nature, History, Science, Westerns

432 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2019

Reviews

[Bookworm · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wasn't planning to read this but kept seeing it showing up in reviews and thought it would be a good read. With the news of the US Department of Agriculture and the Bureau Of Land Management being moved and its employees separated, it seemed like this quite timely (plus the climate change protests).

The book is part history, part travel memoir, part analysis and part reporting over public lands in the US and what's happening to them. Ketchum looks at everything from the Bundys to the various agencies that oversee the lands (Department of Interior, Fish And Wildlife Service among others besides the named ones). Ketcham looks at how they operate, the decisions they've made, the changes under various administrations, etc.

Honestly? This was an incredible disappointment. Obviously a lot of events are still ongoing and the Trump administration still has more than a year to go until the next election as of this review. But the book felt very disjointed and could never quite decide what it wanted to be: a book that takes the critical look at the agencies that oversee public lands? Personal memoir or log of his travels? A biography of the people who live, oversee, manage, own, etc. these lands?

Former Interior Secretary, Ryan Zinke, for example, seems to be a background character rather than, well...a Department Secretary. Ketcham was clearly not a fan of (pick the president) but there were parallels to be made: people from the Bush administrations (both of them), the Reagan administration, etc. have returned to the Trump. Drawing the lines of history could have been a great way to really draw for the reader how this has built over the years and why so many were so excited for a Trump administration.

Which brings me to the cover: I wonder if the author had really extensively talked with Native peoples about watching their lands have been taken and destroyed and what it's like to see that under Trump. Who is, honestly, happily selling off lands to the highest bidder for oil, gas, minerals, etc.

Normally wouldn't bring this up but: the author is a Sanders to Trump voters. The book read like some of his pieces where he wrote about why he was going to vote for Trump in 2016. Disjointed, and just blinded by anger.

The author has a lot of good things to say but some of his language about Mormons or commentary on the agencies made me uncomfortable. He's entitled to his feelings but it was a disservice to his book, the book's purpose and the people who are trying to protect the lands as much as possible when his emotions get in the way. A NYT called this a "screed" and wasn't a bad description for this.

If you have a big interest in this you might enjoy it. Otherwise, library borrow is best.

[Shawna · Rating 2 out of 5]

This should have been the book for me. I like Ketcham am an Atheist, and a tree hugger. I lived in Oregon when the Malheur occupation happened, and I am still angry about it.

But this book is just all righteous anger. There is no argument, it does not push the conversation forward. At one point he literally combats one of Bundy's arguments with a straight "that is just nonsense" but never talks about why. His hatred for Mormons gets in the way of his points.

Some people can write really well non-fiction books about topics they are close to (Think Michelle McNamara or Ronan Farrow) but Ketcham is not one of them. His points and his direction get lost and stay lost bouncing and raving from one unmade point to another. This is an incredibly important topic, and I just wish this book had been done better.

[Greg Golz · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you care even remotely about the environment or future generations, or how governmental policy is handled then you need to read this book. The author's passion, frustration, and anger are emotions that I felt throughout this book. At times, it felt like I was reading an opinion piece in a newspaper, which I often never read. However, the facts laced in with the author's opinions gave an emotional side to the issues in the book. Like the author, I don't know what to do with this new information about government agencies contributing to species destruction on our public land. I don't know what to do about Green washed NGOs. However, I know I can dig deeper and figure out how to be part of a solution.

[Hannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book really misses the mark. As a Latter-day Saint (Mormon) ecologist and environmentalist in Utah, I thought I would resonate with his points. Instead, I was bogged down and irritated by his self-righteous anger towards Mormons, rock climbers, farmers, ranchers, Obama, government employees, conservatives, and anyone living in the West. He says Utahns and other Westerners should be accepting of people with different ideas, yet he is the first to cast stones when they disagree with him. The book is also a gross misrepresentation of an entire religion by identifying it with its most fringe eccentrics. He relies on the sensational story of the conservative Bundy family to carry the book, and then extrapolates their specific beliefs to everyone in the state. The only sources on the Mormons he consults are those who have chosen to leave the religion and are known for their animosity toward it. He doesn't even attempt impartiality, and that decision casts a dark pall over the rest of his argument.

For a much more accurate account of the American West, after you have read Wallace Stegner, Edward Abbey, Terry Tempest Williams, and Wendell Berry, go check out the book All the Wild that Remains by David Gessner. That is a book worth reading. This book will excite you with controversy and extremism, but ultimately leave you frustrated with the author.

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

This topic is incredibly important and while I was in the middle of the book it seemed like an obvious 5-star read. However, I have some serious issues with the author’s voice within it:

On the very first page he describes his tent as “a tiny thing, enough room for me and one adult male wolf or two women” because it’s very important that we know from the start that he’s a red-blooded heterosexual manly man. Then in the last chapter he gets very into using rape metaphors to describe what’s happening to public land.

Also the level of pure vitriol toward Obama felt disproportionate - I know that many of his policies were terrible and not any better than Republican presidents’ (immigration too) but this went way beyond equal outrage.

Finally, his vision of appropriate/deserving users of public lands is exclusively the rugged male individualist. I totally understand the issues brought by capitalism, roads, etc. but I don’t think it’s truly a public solution for the public good if only fit manly men like him (or people who can assimilate to those identity values as much as possible) can actually witness & experience our natural areas.

[Ariel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Even from the introduction, you can feel the anger seething in this book. The audiobook was read by the author, so the emotion behind it was near to his heart. And there is a lot to be angry about. Ketcham paints a very unflattering picture of the BLM, Forest Service, and other government agencies tasked with being the stewards of our public lands. Had I talked to the people he did and had I seen the things he saw firsthand, I suspect I'd be equally outraged. It's extremely disturbing content. I'd want to make as many people as possible aware of the issues, too.

Unfortunately, that's where the book breaks down for me. An Easterner plopped down in the West, he doesn't try to make sense of both sides of the story in a fair-minded way. He paints an extremist viewpoint from an "outside" perspective. And I'm not saying that perspective is entirely wrong - it's just not persuasive. It comes across as a one-sided story told to him by the outliers on the fringe (of which there are people on both sides). That turns people off and makes them stop listening. Anger doesn't persuade them to your cause. He also presented representations of how he got his interviews/firsthand experience which painted a less-than-straightforward, often deceptive approach. That undermined a lot of his credibility for me - even if he felt that was the only way to get the information he wanted.

I really struggled to swallow the chapter on how wicked the "conservation collaboration" agencies are. He cast the ICL and the Wilderness Society in particular as especially egregious villains. Working with them first-hand here in Idaho, I find that a tough pill to take - especially from a New Yorker with limited exposure to what they're doing locally on an ongoing basis.

He was also extremely disparaging to the Mormon community out here in Utah and Idaho. Again, not without reason, given the story he was telling and the players involved, but in a way that undermined his points and used unnecessarily broad brushstrokes to tell the story. People aren't wholly good or bad, no need to castigate an entire religious group. This felt like another issue with an "outsider" telling this story to me.

Again, I'm not sure I disagree with his conclusions or the points he makes throughout (generally). As I'm writing this, I'm also writing rebuttals to my own points in my head. We NEED firebrands and agitators and people who are willing to say the hard things and throw stones at our glass houses. Upton Sinclair did important things. Ultimately, though, I don't think this adds to the conversation in a meaningful, productive way. I think it turns off those who it most needs to reach. It reads like an angry screed without actionable solutions. It did make me think a lot about journalism, though, especially the way that Americans serve as journalists in foreign countries (parachute journalism), and how askew our perspectives may be with only a limited exposure to the people, politics, and "systems" we drop into.

[Steve Mayberry · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you read it, skip the first sixty pages or so, where the author brags about climbing cream-colored cliffs dressed in only his boots and a hat, a detail exactly zero people wanted to hear about. It's a weird experience to agree with the author on almost every point and yet want to throw him off one of those cream-colored cliffs.

The best parts are the angry parts: "If all public lands grazing disappeared, it would have almost no effect on beef availability or beef prices." (p 68)

Or: "The largest public lands permittees ... are not hardscrabble rangeland clans but corporations and wealthy hobbyists. The twenty largest permit holders include the J. R. Simplot Company ...; the extended family of J. R. Simplot, who until his death in 2008 was one of Forbes four hundred richest Americans; media baron Ted Turner, who is also on the Forbes list; Barron Hilton, grandfather to Paris and chairman of the Hilton Hotels chain; Mary Hewlett Jaffe, heiress to the Hewlett-Packard fortune; various members of the Walton family (of Walmart fame); Anheuser-Busch, the world's largest producer of beer; the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, which has $900 billion in assets; Agri Beef Co, a $1 billion beef supplier; Barrick Gold Corporation, an $8.5 billion Canadian mining company which is now the second-largest public land 'rancher' in Nevada; and so on" (pp 71-2)

There is a whole lot more beyond that. The BLM, Wildlife Services. Orin Hatch, The Nature Conservancy, and a whole lot of especially-well-deserved vitriol for the The Mormon Church.

[Ted Haussman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A controlled current of rage and outrage permeates the narrative of this book about the Western public lands, held in trust for and by all Americans. In this reader's opinion, it is all justified. As someone who has camped and tramped through a tiny fraction of these public lands, this book permitted me to see what I otherwise couldn't on the ground and in the moment. The public land system is under attack and has been since of the laws that were designed to protect it were passed in the 1960's and 1970's. While it would be convenient to blame the steady erosion of the system on one political party, the author in clear prose shows that the policy of corporate and private exploitation has been a straight line regardless of who has held power. It's western legislators and the special interests to whom they curry that has driven this. Most illuminating is that some of the federal organizations and environmental organizations that we may have believed were acting in our interests to protect these lands are in fact facilitators and collaborators in its pillage. This book has forever changed my views about the lands, these organizations, and what I intend to do about it.

Excellent journalism.

[Maureen Caupp · Rating 4 out of 5]

An informative and eyeopening book. You definitely feel the authors rage, but the anger is understandable. Once the wilderness is gone it can't be replaced.

[Barbara Carder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this book for the Salmon Idaho wolf hunt if for nothing else. Reminds me of Jon Krakauer books. . . . can feel the influence of Outside magazine: adventuresome, slightly dangerous. I saw Christopher Ketcham on C-Span3. We need his voice.

[Cindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely the most informative and interesting book i've read as to why public lands in the west are now mostly desert, who is doing it, why... superb research and laying out of the story. No wonder he's a National Geographic writer. This is amazing!

[Edward · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s hard to disagree with most, of Ketchum’s angry denunciations of how 450 million acres of public land in the west is being used for purposes they were never intended for. These particles of land, scattered across the west, are managed by the Bureau of Land Management and the United States Forest Service. They’re made up of grassland, steppe, desert, and forest and are supposed to be managed for the public good. The concept of these vast public land holdings being owned by the federal government in the interests of all the people was established early in the 20th century.

The problem is that these lands have commercial value - mining, timber, grazing - and private individuals and companies have always wanted to use them for those purposes. What developed was a system of granting permits, with the stipulation that the essential character of the lands would not be degraded. Ketchum’s argument is that severe degradation is exactly what has happened. Government agencies in charge of the land are weak and underfunded, and far too subservient to the powrerful lobbying of private interest grops.

What evidence does Ketchum give of this degradation? First, it should be noted that he is an avid outdoorsman who has hiked and lived in the areas that he writes about, particularly in the remote high canyon lands of Utah, Their value lies in that they are “wild, clean, open spaces, where the rhythms of the natural world go on as they should, relatively undisturbed by industrial man” They are places of of natural beauty and unlike national parks do not have tourist amenities such as roads and lodges.

Modern society is geared toward consumption and that means the ever increasing use of natural resources, the chief reason for climate change which is threatening the sustainability of life on earth. These lands, for Ketchum, are among the last unspoiled places on earth and should be left that way.

But when portions of these lands are leased out to private interests, the damage begins. Range land is over grazed, cattle causing irreparable damage to native plants and animals. The eviction of cattle from public lands, Ketchum writes, is the single most important action we could take to save public lands. He thinks the public has little knowledge or interest in such matters, largely because of a media glorification of the cowboy culture.

Logging destroys habitat for animals and plants as well, and Kechum argues that the Forest Service’s management of forest fires has been misguided and has actually made them worse. Mining means roads, huge pits and upheavals in the earth, a pollution of streams, unwarranted human destruction of the environment.

Ketchum gets to the heart of why such concerns are ignored when he talks about lobbying. Members of Congress are heavily funded in their campaigns by these special interests, and one of their foals is to urge that control of federal oversight agencies, revert to the states. The argument is that a distant federal bureaucracy is out of touch and that local control is better. The reality is that local governments are easier to manipulate by private business interest.

The biggest problem that I see in bringing about Ketchum’s vision of unspoiled land is that we have a largely urban population in America that never sets foot on any of these lands, and still has the traditional attitude that land is to be used for productive purposes. It’s a hard sell to point out the ecological virtues of unspoiled, unused land, just as it has been to wake up the public to the dangers of climate change. Maybe Ketchum’s impassioned book will help, but I wouldn’t count on it.

[Elisabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This Land is the story of how we are indeed ruining the American West, and the world, with our belief that we “own” nature, that nature consists of “resources” to be exploited. It is a sordid, horrific, page-turner of a tale, a tale of the beauty and incomprehensible complexity of the natural world and our inability to control our worst impulses to use and abuse this world until there is nothing left but dust.

I have learned more about the amazing nature of the American West, and how we are failing to appreciate it from this book than I ever imagined I would. The stories of corruption and cruelty, I wish I didn’t have to know. And I am inspired by and so grateful for the heroic acts of the activists who are fighting to save this incredible land.

Everyone should read this book. Everyone.

[hikergirl · Rating 5 out of 5]

The depth of investigative work in This Land is extraordinary. Ketcham is uncompromising in his determination to get the story straight and is unwilling to give those credit that won't. Each chapter weaves you through opposition true environmentalists face as they urgently plea for safe guard of our last wild spaces. There's intimacy to Ketcham's writing as he closely follows many activist and scientists in the field . He's unafraid to speak openly about the sellouts who will use any method to get their disastrous projects rubber-stamped. It's a beautiful revealing necessary read.

[Cynthia Prevedel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating read in which Ketcham argues that the BLM and forest service do little to preserve our Western lands— fascinating section on Sublette County. A little long-winded at the end.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's always a relief to find another environmental writer with balls. Unlike most other environmental books, you won't find any cheerleading for the Democratic party or rosy predictions about a coming New Age paradigm shift in here. He makes it clear that new gadgets won't save us and that we can't compromise with corporate interests if we want the planet to survive. Very important messages. I'm not sure if I agree with his message about needing to keep cows totally out of the west though. There are a lot of examples of successful grazing in other dry regions, Allan Savory's work being a good example. I'm sure the approach of welfare ranchers is about as bad as he claims, especially on public lands, but I'm not sure if that really means that cows shouldn't be there at all. I also think there should have been more about responsible hunting. He sort of just makes all hunters look like stupid hicks instead, only giving Native American hunters a brief mention as a counter example. And he's also a little light on solutions, unfortunately. Still, even with those complaints, this is one of the better books I've found on the American west. I just recommend that people don't come to any conclusions before reading some counter-arguments.

[Pj · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book should be required reading for everyone. I've been trying to finish it for months. It's beautifully written but its a hard pill to swallow all at once. But I want you to read it. I want everyone to read it. No part of our political spectrum is let off easy. Democrats AND Republicans are not let off the hook. And parts of this book will make you mad. And I want you to look at that anger and ask yourself why is what he's saying making you mad. Explore and analyze that like a dentist drilling a cavity without novocaine. It's going to be really uncomfortable but you are going to learn a lot about your beliefs. And you may be forced to question them. And that is good. Anyone doing advocacy for our public lands, our wildlife, our environment, and our wild horses should read this. Anyone not doing any of those things should read this. For those particularly interested in wild horses the Onaqui are mentioned near the beginning and the the Triple B horses are mentioned near the end. Read all the way to the end. Please.

[TreasureState · Rating 1 out of 5]

Self-indulgent text, sloppy research, reeking of sophomoric outdoor-bro posturing, factual errors, sexism and white privilege. Plus the author urged people to vote for Donald Trump, which has been a lasting disaster for public lands in the American West.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

a little rant-y for my taste

[Lucy · Rating 5 out of 5]

400 pages of perfectly channeled, barely contained rage -- a relentless catalog of the incessant abuses of the West by our very own government.

More thoughts -- may write them out later.

[Jason Hackney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely one of my top 3 books of all time. That ain't an easy list to get on either.

If you care at all about the environment or being able to live in a few decades, this book is a punch in the face. I could not believe how much I fell for in a society that keeps you from knowing.

While this book focuses on public lands in the American West(BLM, National Parks, National Forest), as anyone aware of environmentalism could tell you, it still affects us. But Ketcham could have stopped here and made it a more singular focus. The book still would have been fantastic. But he didn't. He exposed how this issue is a glaring example of how we've been alienated from who we really are, human. Toxic political ideology have detached us from our peers in the forest and the forest itself. If that last sentence sounds like I took Peyote, they got you too.

Ketcham isn't your stereotypical tye-dye shirt tree hugger. Think Edward Abbey mixed with Karl Marx and John Muir. What he advocates sounds radical, but only so because we have become so isolated from our natural state. He doesn't call for a return to the Bronze Age, but a realization that nature is a living and complex system just like the human. Any living thing deserves dignity and respect enough to live freely in the places where they are left under federal control currently. A natural state you could say...

Here are a few of the quotations that blew me away. But there were many more on the lands of the West, what it means to be human, critiques of our toxic political/economic systems, solutions to the problems, and why protecting the wild could also benefit us physically, mentally, and spiritually.

"The industrial system...the system that with no end in sight warms the atmosphere, the system in which we are all implicated and which has made vile coddled dependents generation after generation born into it with no idea of an alternative."

"The matter at hand [is] how to live lovingly and equitably and with justice and kindness for all living things, with generosity, care, patience, humility, in a world that was absurd and ultimately meaningless because it ended in death."

"Terror management theory posits that human awareness of mortality leads to the manufacture of a large-scale world of symbolic meaning, a world built out of thin air to distinguish us in the cycle of life and death. Terror management, in other words, produces culture, in which symbolic identity outlasts biological identity, in which we stand separate from and higher than the death-bound animals. Language, art, law, and custom; mythology and religion; the concept of an afterlife; national and racial identity; the seeking after recognition, fame, financial success; the economists' ordering of the world into markets; the politicians' ordering of the world into parties; the claims to literary and intellectual posterity; the intellectualization of phenomena, the reduction of experience to a pile of words-- all salve for a puny trembling existentially fraught creature who wants desperately to be something more than meat. Stripped of illusion in human-nature relations, we are at last, after the many lies we tell ourselves, trapped in an untamed, uncontrollable, contingent swirl of universal forces that reveal for the self-aware person an appalling evanescence."

"The act of killing involved complex relationships at the core of which were respect and honor. A moral universe encompassed the hunt. Nothing like that can be said of Euro-American hunting practices. Theirs is better described as a killing tradition."

"Mattson thought there was something to it. Psychological researchers, he wrote, "have described a widespread and often strong impulse among humans to fear ambiguity, create hard boundaries, and delineate a small moral universe. All of which leads to a bounded capacity for empathy, and the dehumanization--even demonization-- of those who have a different worldview, a different religion, a different ethnicity, a different sexual orientation, ad nauseam. Or, eve, simply are of a different 'species.'"

"Among all the factors that contribute to habitat fragmentation--which is the leading threat to biodiversity in the West--roads are at the top of the list."

"To know the wilderness, said Zahniser, "is to know profound humility, to recognize one's littleness, to sense dependence and interdependence, indebtedness, and responsibility." In wilderness, "human enjoyment and the apprehension of the interrelations of the whole community of life are possible."

"There is no spot where the primeval forest is assured from the attack of that worst of all microbes, the dollar."

-Charles Erskine Scott Wood, 1908

"Massive carbon sequestration can occur when forests regenerate after fire, when they are healthier, wilder, more diverse...Forests don't exist on human timescales, and humans, failing to recognize this, often mistakenly assume that what they see at one-, two-, of five-year intervals post-fire in a forest is what they will see ten or fifty years later...carbon sink value grows only if the forest remains unlogged."

"If the goal is to protect private property, all you need to do is lightly prune the forest a hundred feet out from the doorstep, and subsidize fire-protective alterations to the home design. But that's not what we're doing. There's no money in it for the timber companies."

"In the case of wildfire, the transformation begins with the act of modest observation, informed by science, tempered by the wisdom to stop our pathological meddling with the landscape. Don't kill the trees to stop the fire. Don't log them after a fire...the unlogged fire-blessed forest will be a net reservoir of carbon. Replicate this process over hundreds of millions of acres, the national forests become a tool to deal with climate change on a massive scale. I don't expect this is the path we will follow."

"A liberal is someone who leaves the room when a fight breaks out."

-Bill Haywood

"In actuality, the leading 'electable' presidential candidates have all been well vetted by the hidden primary of the ruling class and are tied to corporate power in multiple ways. They will stay safely within the bounds set by those who rule America behind the scenes, making sure that members of the plutocracy continue to be the main beneficiaries of the system...U.S. 'democracy' is a guided one."

"Remember this, reader, it bears repeated emphasis: if you've been to a place on the public lands, and it has spoken to you, and if that place is under threat, you have standing in the courts."

"Wilderness had come to be seen as a growth engine, with smiling approval from the chamber of commerce...This thinking has for its basis the deranged principles of capitalist growth mania...Solitude is eroded with every new ploy to grow an economy based on the marketable thing for sale called 'wilderness.'"

The premise of all this collaboration shit [between extractive industries and "green" groups]--is a false one: that local stakeholders should determine the fate of huge areas of public lands, when in fact these are national land interests."

"In 2015, Joshua Galperin, who directs the Yale Environmental Protection Clinic and teaches at the Yale School of Foresty, published a troubling editorial in the Los Angeles Times about the state of environmentalism as reflected in the new generation of leadership. He described a move toward what he called, with undisguised contempt, 'desperate environmentalism.' Desperate environmentalism is "characterized not by awe, enthusiasm and enjoyment of nature, but by appeasement. It relies on utilitarian efficiencies, cost-benefit analyses, private sector indulgences and anthropocentric divvying of natural resources. It champions voluntary commitments, tweaks to corporate supply chains, protection not of the last great places on Earth but of those places that yield profit or services. From market-friendly cap-and-trade to profit-driven corporate social responsibility, desperate environmentalists angle for the least-bad of the worst options rather than the robust and enforceable safeguards that once defined the movement."

"Liberals pathologically allegiant to the Democratic Party want to blame it all on Donald Trump, as if history started from scratch in 2017. Don't be fooled. Fracking in the Upper Green River Valley began under Bill Clinton, accelerated under George W. Bush, continued under Barak Obama, and will accelerate again under Trump...For the political reality in a society based on economic growth is that the machine must never be dismantled."

"The real extremists among us destroy life for profit."

"We should use the Endangered Species Act, the Wilderness Act, the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Forest Management Act, and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act to terrorize industry, to allow the native species of the West to recover, to establish vast stretches of land where there will be no development at all, not even for recreation, where the Earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man. Ultimately this would be a land of human limits, where ambition is tempered with altruism, humility, self-restraint."

"The wild places of the public lands provide us a chance, maybe our last chance, in the lower 48, to implement Aldo Leopold's land ethic, to transform "the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it." To sit in awe of creation, to listen to, observe, appreciate things greater than yourself, to understand the volition of the natural world, is to be contented and nourished with things as they are, not as they should be, not as we want them to be. This is a happiness without need of more. Global capitalism is insatiable by design. The natural world is not."

"Many of our sick people are not in tune with life. They are on the earth, but they are not a part of it...If they could have a cosmic view, they might find strength merely at the thrill of wind blowing through them on high ridges."

-William O. Douglas

"How do we dare begin this transformation? Educate, inspire, empower, incite the public, for it is only with a populist movement, with the backing of people not money, that such a radical change of policy can occur. An informed public, I want to believe, will be an enraged public."

"What market can tell you the true value of a tree, a bear, a bee, or a wildflower, or the flow of water in a canyon?"

"What's needed is a campaign for the public lands that is vital, fierce, impassioned, sometimes dangerous, without hypocrisy, that stands against the tyranny of money, coupled with a campaign of public education that explains in the simplest of terms what the lands are, the glorious extent of them, the ecosystems they encompass, the wild things that live in them."

"...there are some places where we should not go, some places that have the right to be left alone."

[Virginia Arthur · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was eight, I became an “environmentalist”. This was before the word even existed. When I went to school that morning, our street was the only one in a vast wild countryside that included an old Ohio farm, a country side we roamed until dark, where some flowers looked like Cinderella slippers, where thousands of frogs congregated in their “councils”, where hawks soared over our heads, and strange little birds moved among the rushes. Where the hundreds of giant old oak trees made us feel secure, like grandparents watching over us. Where the ponds, lakes, and streams enticed us to swim, too amazed at that swimming garter snake to try and catch it. Where hide and go seek, kick-the-can, mother-may-I was played over vast areas, acres that spread before us, often the games forfeited because everybody 'spread out too far'. Where we tasted freedom, often getting back after dark. Where we got a real education. When we got off the bus at the end of that day, it was gone. In its place was a terrifying, impressive, endless array of heavy equipment rumbling over the landscape, to the horizon, as far as the eye could see. Earthmovers, bulldozers, backhoes, dump trucks, back and forth, back and forth, the oaks piled up like garbage and everything dead. Dead.

In that moment, my tiny heart broke, and I changed forever.

None of the adults in my life had bothered to tell me our street was the first one in what would essentially become a new city. Likely, they didn't want to.

This book cut to the bone of how I have spent my life, and I had a terrible time finishing it because it tore off nearly every scab I have developed just to keep going from day to day. Trying to protect land from your own species is terrible terrible work and most of the time, you lose. I just don't need this pointed out to me by anybody anymore, but I read on anyway. Most painful is Chris brings up battles I fought decades ago, either on my own or with an “environmental” group and it seems things have only gotten worse.

I remember when it happened and I remember it well, when ecological scientists went from standing up for native ecosystems to becoming what Chris calls “collaborators”.I call them “co-conspirators” or “I-might-pee-in-my-pants-if-I-actually-have-to-stand-up-for-something-and/or-lose-my-job/raise”, otherwise known as sell-outs. I was working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at the time. At the announcement that Bruce Babbitt would be the next Secretary of the Interior, we were jubilant (1993), esp after the Watt daze...The icing on the tundra was our director would be Mollie Beattie, a true conservationist, cut from our cloth, not to mention a woman. It is impossible for me to describe how Mollie's selection as head of the USFWS influenced me as a young female conservationist, how excited I was to meet her, if even for five minutes. There was celebration in the USFWS offices across the United States. Finally, we could do our jobs, jobs that 95% of the American public looked to us to do—stand up for ALL American citizens, that being the citizens that make up our extraordinary biodiversity.

But it got weird quick. Babbitt introduced something he called “consensus building” we referred to as collaborating with enemy, an enemy that saw in this effort a great opportunity to exploit. Could Babbitt really be this naive, we asked? (Yes). All you had to do was call whatever you wanted to do a “multi-agency partnership”, “collaboration”, “everybody at the table”, take a bunch of photos, grandstand. It made some of us sick. I remember the first time I was sent to one of these “consensus building workshops” and for the first time in my career, I had a rancher in my face telling me cows are great for vernal pools. I think I did the whole Exorcist thing where your head spins around 360o. WHAT? This is when the bullies were born. It wasn't about participating in any damn “public process”; it was about bullying (no pun intended), and it still is, now to the nth degree with guns (point in fact: The Bundy's). Give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile. We all knew it and we all watched it happen. The crest of our fallen was when our vanguard, Mollie, died of cancer only a few years later. To say it was a blow to our hopes and morale was an understatement. We were devastated and even as I write this, I am shedding tears. While Babbitt was riding his “consensus building” horse, at least we had Mollie on his heels...but then she was gone.
As the “consensus building” crap gained momentum, we in the old guard, who would speak up and out on behalf of our biodiversity citizens, left the agencies or were forced out. Chris demonstrates this shit is still going on today (of course it is), same old story, same old song and dance. The human primate is primitive and if not checked, will act on it's primitive innate impulses that are greed, short-shortsightedness (based on our short life spans), and often violence. Donald Trump.

These are old battles in this book. “Jesus Christ, still?” I kept saying to myself over and over while reaching for another beer. A lot of cussing reading this book and in few cases, tears. Like I said, I didn't want to read it but had to.

It is an abomination that Animal Damage Control program still exists, which is just out and out slaughter of America's native citizens, our wildlife. It is an abomination that our tax dollars pay for this slaughter, how ADC sneaks around killing, successfully I might add because absolutely nobody in the lamestream media covers it, or more apt, maybe they just don't want to. That we're STILL talking about 1080 after all this time, is again, an abomination, that it is killing dogs, kids...and the sick fact that for many white men in certain U.S. states (I'll let you guess which ones), it is somehow part of their political platform. A poison that kills living creatures, domestic and wild, part of a POLITICAL platform? How demented is this? I am a Republican and believe in using poisons on the American landscape and these POISONS make me a good Republican, a good American! Like the poisons KNOW they stand for something? They're POISONS. When fabricated context overrides evidence, people live in the stories they create for themselves over and above reality, something is seriously wrong. When these same people have access to millions and millions of public monies, it's criminal.

I myself have focused on fighting the so-called “fire safety clearing” that isn't saving anybody's home from burning down but who cares because they know it's all chimera to hand contracts to the forestry industry that after cutting down the trees for “fire safety”, makes the boards into lumber for HOUSES. No hypocrisy here, no, that our houses are made FROM TREES? That we put OIL ROOFS on top of them (asphalt composite), then we shove everybody and everything we own inside these WOOD homes? That the California Department of Forestry IS also the California Department of Fire Prevention? Our forestry department IS our fire department? Conflict of interest, anyone? That when citizens went to Sacramento to ask for incentive programs to put fire safe roofs on our homes (steel, cement shingle, tile), because our WOOD houses are burning other wood houses down via flying embers, there is no program? There never will be because the forestry/building industries have our state government (and Governor) by the balls. Never mind that more people will die, in homes they “fire cleared” around. I hear from these people after they lose their homes and they all same the same damn thing: “We fire cleared and still lost our home.” I bet you did. Even more sickening, the State of California has rebranded the “fire safety grants” (millions of taxpayer dollars) as “climate change remediation grants”, no shit. Here is the link:

https://www.fire.ca.gov/media/10803/c...

Anyway, this is what I have been working on. I was pleased Chris included this dangerous deception in his book. It's dangerous because it kills people; they think if they decimate their land, kill all the trees, everything on it, they will survive a fire, forgetting they LIVE in a "tree", a far more lethal one covered in and full of flammable products/stuff. The science clearly shows (oh no, not SCIENCE!), the houses set one another on fire--the house is the most lethal thing on the landscape.

Chris misses one very important point about cattle. Most people don't realize that cows are a hellava lot bigger and heavier than they used to be so they do a lot more damage. They have been bred to be 'meatier', better for profit to get 100 hamburgers out of one cow, than the ancestral breed which was smaller.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/w...

This is an EXTREMELY important point all land protection advocates MUST consider because the agencies still use AUM's except one cow now weighs almost one ton! So it's more about poundage/tonnage which translates into far more destruction of the land. Ask what the BREED of cow is. How much they weigh. I had to laugh when I took kids to a vernal pool preserve in Northern California and they got all itchy about us stepping in the vernal pools. They were one of these groups that said “cows are good for vernal pools”. They didn't know what to say when I pointed out the irony that WE can't get near the pools but it was somehow okay if a 1300+ pound cow stepped all over them, these delicate little pools with their delicate little vernal pool flowers and fairy shrimp? I urged them to explore this a little bit. (You can stop drinking the cool-aid anytime folks!). And by the way, the pools where the cattle had been were absolutely trashed to shit. Nothing to see, the FLAMMABLE nonnative invasive grasses (the cows won't even eat) happily waiting on the edges to take over. Teachable moment.

He speaks disparagingly of ecosystem services, one of the most valuable concepts I have ever come across when doing environmental education with the 'lay public' which now includes 'resource managers' who don't know squat about the environment with their degrees in GIS, or 'environmental science', even business management, but they wouldn't know an ecological concept if it bit them in the...Yes, I have to explain to a range person with the BLM what cryptobiotic crust is, as I watch the once stable soil blow up into a little tornado, on its way to Nevada, or try to explain that sheep clipping all the Indian paintbrush flowers off, like to the tune of thousands, isn't really in the taxpayer's best interest and won't do shit to stop a fire (they use the new b.s.; cattle destroying our public lands is keeping us "fire safe"). Ecosystem services is an EXTREMELY useful and accurate concept for protecting lands. I have no idea why Ketcham takes umbrage with it. Try explaining to a landowner who views the wetlands on his property as having no value, their value without invoking the concept of ecosystem services and functions, as we all learned in Hurricane Katrina....wetlands are essential for flood control, for one? There must be something about this Ketcham does not understand.

I do have to say a little sumthin' about Chris bringing in “cowboys”. I wonder if he knows any? He should have said “corporate cowboys” because I know some “real” cowboys and they have no power at all over the land they work. They are a sorry lot, many of them, alcoholics, broke (one of them is featured in my book Birdbrain, true story), but like me, an “environmentalist”, they just want to be left alone, allowed to wander, live an authentic life, as Abbey put it. A “cowboy” is the same thing as a “hired hand” or a “hired man” on a ranch. For the most part, they're harmless and they bitch about the damage (development especially) to the land as much as we do. Their anger and grief over the creation of Glidden's devil rope (barbed wire) is well known. His generalization is unfair. Corporate Cowboys would have been far more accurate. They're the ones with all the money and power and some of them couldn't ride a horse if their lives depended on it.

There are more open wounds from reading this book. It made me cry, made me angry and not just about all the land rape going on, much of it in our name, with our tax money. I ran into a lot of resistance to my eco-fiction tome, Birdbrain, like more than a few “book people” recommending I publish it as a man. J.K. Rowling knew this. So did Isak Dinesen. So many others. At the time, I was insulted, so I admit to some suspicion that publishers went with Ketcham because he is yet another handsome cantankerous white guy, speaking of cowboys, the “new” Edward Abbey (maybe steer clear of the multiple wives, Chris). But maybe this is what we need: conscious, mindful, intelligent white guys working on our violent white guys (meaning violence to the land), a kind of white on white intervention? Nobody knows a white guy like another white guy?

What if I had published as a man? V. Arthur. Something androgynous, gender-mysterious. There is no doubt if this book was authored by say, Christine Ketcham, it would not have been published, and "gosh Christine, you're so angry. Didn't you know women authors aren't allowed to be angry? Try yoga or something but really, you should try to deal with it". My assertion is backed up by sad, hard data: the trad pub world is dominated by, three guesses, white men (see https://www.vidaweb.org/), and books authored by men generally have higher sales (maybe because these two things are related). Speaking of which, there are bromances in this book. It relies heavily on like-minded men he hooks up with (figuratively speaking, at least as far as I know or care to know), white guys on rage about the environment (utterly justified), the old model that gave me that same 'girls outside the clubhouse' feeling. (Trad publishers, let us in. We care about the environment too. Ever heard of Rachel Carson? Just sayin'...).

OVERALL, it's a damn important book. The New Agers are all upset about "his rage" (love the comments that the book is “so angry”--why aren't you? If you not enraged, you're not paying attention). If the rage in this book bothers you, guess what, it's not ABOUT YOU. Maybe get out a map, find your nearest public lands, get on their website, find out what they are up to. Go look at the land, take a botanist (very dangerous people, botanists), birder, herpetologist, any 'oligist, document the damage, get back with them about it. DO SOMETHING. Maybe see he's enraged for a REASON, like a reason I have been fighting for over 50 years now and things are getting WORSE. Look into the HISTORY...

Five stars my friend. Five fing stars.

[Dan Connors · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a real eye-opener. It explores a world that's little known by mainstream America and tells a sad and maddening story of what's been happening in the American West. Ketcham uses both historical perspective and first-hand experience to tell his story, and it was riveting. He interviewed many of the players in the battle for Western resources, and used their words in a powerful way to explain what is happening.

The 100th meridian, which cuts through Texas to North Dakota, marks a dividing line of sorts between the land that was tamed and cultivated, and the land that was too dry for farming and left wild. Much of the land in the West was set aside as public lands if only because the land was too inaccessible, arid, rocky and unexplored.

The National Park system, which most known and most popular, consists of only a small portion of the lands under federal control. Much larger tracts of land are under control of the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Fish and Wildlife Service. These lands are also considered public lands, but in Ketchum's tale they are being grossly mismanaged by the agencies in charge.

The problem, he states, is the constant pressure put on government employees and politicians by private interests who want to make profits off of public lands. The big three industries that rely on public land access are cattle, timber, and energy production. These industries make large profits off of federal lands and give almost nothing back to the public while destroying the lands as they utilize them. This book details the awful affects of exploitation on wildlife in the west, in chapters that are almost too painful to read.

Ketchum saves his biggest anger for the cattle industry. Western cattlemen use public lands on which to graze their cows, which they then turn around and sell for slaughter. Once the lands of the West were emptied of Indians and buffalo, eager cowboys used those new open spaces for their herds. The impact on the land is substantial- water sources are polluted with feces, grasses are consumed to the point where nothing grows back, and predators like wolves and coyotes are hunted with impunity whether or not they pose a real danger to cattle. Entire ecosystems can be destroyed by frequent grazing.

Cattlemen use threats and gold old boy networks to dominate most of the regulatory safeguards that might exist. They rely on the romantic era of cowboys and what they symbolize to get their way. Never mind that they add almost nothing to the local economies and provide at most 2% of all beef products. Ketchum calls them protected welfare queens, making their livings off of government workers, lands and funds while they intimidate any scientist or government employee who even tries to rein them in. Mormons especially are to blame according to the author, as they control the political and religious atmosphere in Utah and surrounding areas.

The book tells the story of the Bundy's- Cliven and Ammand, Mormon cattlemen who refused to recognize the sovereignty of the United States government. They became famous for taking over a federal wildlife refuge and trashing it, and also for ignoring requests from the government to curtail their grazing practices. These thugs got away with crimes because they rallied armed militias to intimidate what little enforcement powers exist in the wild West. Gun culture still rules in the West- with the result that bullies can run the place and laws become meaningless.

Several chapters deal with the US Forest Service, which has the responsibility over the vast acres of trees in the West. According to the author, they are complicit in the removal of millions of trees for the benefit of the lumber industry. The excuse given is to protect from dangers of fires, but Ketchum gives convincing scientific evidence that more harm is done to the forests than from any fires. Not as much space is devoted to energy companies, but the discovery of fracking technologies to get at previously unattainable oil and gas has had adverse effects on public lands as well as private ones. The benzene released by fracking has been shown to cause cancer, and children in these areas are more likely to have breathing problems.

One of the more disturbing revelations of the book was the author's accusations against environmental groups. He goes after the Nature Conservancy and the Wilderness Society especially for having become complicit in working with the industries they once fought against. A new emphasis on collaboration by the government sucked some environmental groups into a system where they got financial rewards for playing along.

Laws passed during the environmental heydays of the 1970's like the Clean Air Act, Endangered Species Act and more gave huge new powers to society to rein in companies threatening the West. Many of these laws aren't being enforced anymore and are repeatedly weakened by congress. Environmental groups and their lawsuits were the last hope for threatened species, and the betrayal of politicians, government employees, and some environmentalists have stopped any progress that was made in the 70's and 80's. Ketchum lays into both Republican and Democratic lawmakers, as many of the policies in question continued under the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations.

Warning- this is a depressing book! Ketchum paints a sad, violent and infuriating portrait of a land and people we barely know. He describes the slaughters of wild horses, Yellowstone buffalo, grizzly bears and grey wolves, all in the name of protecting the business interests of cattlemen and the corporations that own them. The optimist in me want to think that just the mere publishing of this book shows that America is waking up to the damage we've been doing to nature. Ketchum does point out that attitudes in the rest of the country are changing- that more people are becoming environmentally aware and fewer people are out there hunting.

The fires burning the Amazon all are being blamed on cattle too. It almost makes me want to give up beef- which more and more Americans are headed towards anyway. Cows are now among the most destructive forces in nature, from the greenhouse gases they produce to the tons of excrement that wastes everywhere they roam.

I recommend this book highly, though it's a long and tough read. I had a hard time putting it down. It's a world I've never explored and little understood, and I feel better for knowing about it.

[Mark Stewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are not familiar with BLM policies and their impact on our public lands, this book would be an eye-opening introduction. I had to stop halfway through so I could sleep at night.

[Cindy Leighton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Southern Utah and Montana are two of the most beautiful places on Earth IMHO, so I was eager to read Ketcham's book which begins by focusing on the overgrazing of Utah. After driving through Utah last summer to visit my daughter in LA I was of course first struck by the amazing beauty that is southern Utah, but then shocked by the presence of cattle and feed lots in the middle of desert - there would be no signs of life for miles and miles and miles and yet there would be cattle; unrelenting heat and little vegetation, and cattle? So I couldn't wait to read Ketcham's long term journalistic investigation into how the government under both Democratic and Republican administrations has sold off large swaths of the US West, land ostensibly held in the public trust, to capitalists who are destroying the land long term so they can take short term profits of timber, cattle, oil or even "recreation." No one is safe from Ketcham's ire - even the Mormons.

And that is where Ketcham lost me a bit. His anger is understandable - when the world is on fire (Australia this week literally, largely due to the same kinds of mismanagement and resulting climate change) there is little room or time for polite, mannered discourse. However, Ketcham's anger gets in the way and makes it difficult at times to take everything he says with the same seriousness. I understand Obama's record on environmental issues was not impressive - but to say he did the same damage as Trump is doing? He loses credibility there - along with some simple mistakes like saying Evergreen State College is in Oregon (it's in Washington). This may seem like a small mistake, but it is an easily fact checked thing - and for a well respected journalist with editors, seems like something that should be accurate. Things like this make me question what else he got wrong that I don't know about. Also his hatred for Mormons is intense. Again some of this is understandable but he drags an awful lot of superfluous baggage in that has no place here. Which is making me feel more and more like I didn't love this book which also never really knows what it wants to be - one minute it feels like a memoir - lots of stories about when he's young and camping and breaking his leg in Utah; travelogues, diatribe, muckraking investigative journalism, Ugh it just flips back and forth so quickly and never really settles comfortably into one genre.

But I do think his message is really important. Critical. The US Forestry is not protecting the forests, it is selling off our forests to the timber industry. So many different government agencies with competing interests and mandates - none of which seem to be to actually protect the public land. If Australia teaches us nothing else it should be that time is up -we can no longer afford to destroy the environment, looking at our earth as a commodity to be chopped up and sold to the highest bidder. The US has done a terrific job of buying and marking large swaths of land for the public good; they have done a horrible job of protecting those lands. We may have to all eat less beef, use less paper, and demand that our government preserve our land not sell it off to the highest bidder to fight climate change.

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was born and raised in the heartland, and while I had opportunities to enjoy and love our rugged West, I really had no idea what was going on with our public lands. The author polled people in his home state New York, and mostly, they didn’t know either. That’s not surprising, life is busy, right? Chris Ketcham pours ten years of interviews, research and corporate-political evolution into an excerpt of the biography of our public lands, and it isn’t pretty. Some readers may be put off by some of the author’s personal comments, but that shouldn’t detract from the truth of the destruction of ecosystems in the West. Corporate-political forces are not exercising smart stewardship of our lands and resources. As usual, it’s about money. The stories are fascinating, the characters are many. Cliven Bundy broke multiple laws, and does not pay his land-use permits. Why has the National Guard not put him in jail? He's like a two-year old that wont accept that it's time to clean up his room. Less than 2% of livestock producers use public forage, because (surprise!) livestock is best raised where the grass is green and where it rains. Government subsidies for public cattle grazing alone cost US citizens at least $120 million annually (there are other costs involved), while the livestock itself trammels the lands. Is this how you want your money spent and your backyard kept? Grazing, drilling, logging…In government class, they still teach that legislators write the laws. This is simply not true. Corporate lawyers write the laws then fund the legislators that will push them through. Environmental groups are beginning to have the funds to put up opposition, but we need an educated public. I didn't love the conclusion, but I understand why the author wrote it that way. We can, and should do better.

[Reed · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ketcham is a very talented writer with an excellent ability to tell real-life stories in a very enchanting manner. He is a little superfluous on his use of adjectives. The topic, the use or misuse of public lands in the Western US is a very controversial subject and the author does a good job of laying out the problems in a very logical fashion. The reason for a low rating is the one-sided perspective of the controversy. If Ketchum could impose his will he would have a wall built on the West bank of the Mississippi River and only allow passage for people on foot and then in limited numbers. I don't doubt that there is abuse and corruption in how public lands are managed, primarily for profit rather than conservation, but this book presents only one side of the debate in a fashion that there is no other side to be discussed. Being familiar with one group that he castigates helps me to realize that he is so prejudice that he does not want the reader to know there could be an alternate point of view that could be considered. He is so bias towards this group with whom I have some familiarity, that it causes me to question how much bias distorts his discussion of other groups and individual leaving me to doubt the integrity of his entire presentation. If you want to drink his "Kool Aid" then read the book. Otherwise, I would not recommend you spend the time. Sorry Mr. Ketcham but you are too unbalanced.

[Zach Moll · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book began as a seemingly well researched history into the recent turmoil of public lands, and QUICKLY devolved into hateful spewing where it remains for the latter 2/3’s of the book. There is hardly a direction or narrative other than hate. His research quickly dives into self-righteous spewing, anecdotal evidence, and personal experience rather than thoroughly researched works. I understand it’s hard to write a non-fiction book without implementing bias, but this reads almost as a manifesto.

Allow me to summarize the book:
If you are a BLM employee, you’re bad.
If you are a rancher, you’re bad.
If you are a forest service employee, you’re bad.
If you are a Mormon, you’re bad.
If you are a hunter, you’re bad.
If you hike too deep into wilderness, thus disturbing its wild-ness, you’re bad.
If you enjoy hiking and buy too much gear, you’re bad.
If you support logging in any format, you’re bad.
If you support controlled burns, you’re bad.
If you support any road structure on non-wilderness areas public lands, you’re bad.
If you work for state wildlife agencies, you’re bad.
If you support any non-profit conservation or environmentalism group outside of the authors friend’s non-profits, you’re bad.

Basically if you are anyone other than the author and his “dirty hippie” close companions you are unworthy of public lands and doing greater damage than good.

The book had so much potential, and if you can get through the ramblings tirades, you can learn some things - which is the only reason this book will garner a 2 star review from me. Overall though, I’d much rather read similarly topic books such as “That Wild Country” by Mark Kenyon, “A Sand County Almanac” by Aldo Leopold, and “In Defense Of Public Lands” by Steven Davis that handle similar information in a far less manifesto-like way.

[Søren Warland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ketcham paints a starkly depressing but brilliantly detailed and researched picture of the decades-long pillaging of the American West. One sad truth the author discovered is that many Americans who don't live in the western states are completely unaware of these vast tracts of public land, and are ignorant of the areas whose fate should be decided by all Americans.

In this wonderful and incisive book Ketcham covers several harsh lessons that those who want to address ecological degradation need to learn:

1. The ravage of western lands has continued under both Democratic and Republican administrations. It doesn't matter which party holds the White House. Business interests control the government agencies responsible for our public lands and continue to degrade these areas.

2. The politics of compromise of many environmental organizations are unacceptable. Many environmental organizations such as The Wilderness Society have become so enmeshed in the political system that they start to believe that extractive economic activity is compatible with healthy ecosystems. These green organizations can no longer be trusted to fight for public lands.

3. Capitalism as an economic system is driving the devastation of the West. A system that depends on infinite growth and ever-increasing economic activity is not compatible with sustainability. We need to question this economic doctrine and also take back the public lands as they were meant to be: common land held by all Americans, not land to be despoiled by a few economic interests.

I cannot recommend this book enough. It will shock you, sadden you, anger you, but it puts into perspective what needs to be done, and the decisions we must face in the wake of severe ecological devastation and climate change.

[Keith Akers]

I read about third of this --- the first two chapters, and then tried to dip into various parts of the rest of the book. All uniformly depressing. I couldn't finish it. I was already familiar with much of the gist. I've already read "Sacred Cows At The Public Trough" then Waste of the West: Public Lands Ranching, and then Welfare Ranching: The Subsidized Destruction Of The American West. It just makes you angry. Here's a quote that, had I run into it sooner, would have prompted me to put the book down sooner: "I'm no policy wonk. Frankly I have no idea how to save the public lands from a system that marches on inexorably, not in a way that's politically doable in the near term." If that's the case, then why are you writing this book and (more to the point) why am I reading it?