A new tack in West's land battles

• In southwestern Idaho, ranchers, environmentalists, government officials, native Americans, and local residents are working together to protect the long- disputed Owyhee Canyonlands. The group is crafting a compromise similar to Custer County's, which will then be introduced as legislation by US Sen. Michael Crapo (R) of Idaho.

Some experts attribute the movement's increased momentum to the rise of the Republican Party. Indeed, collaboration has quietly become a priority for the Bush White House. In August, the administration sponsored the first White House Conference on Cooperative Conservation, dedicated to promoting the "appropriate inclusion of local participation in Federal decision making."

Collaboration has found another champion in Senator Crapo. In December, he proposed amending the Endangered Species Act to encourage broad-based local groups to find collaborative solutions to wildlife decline.

Other experts attribute the impetus to a rising dissatisfaction with the strict gospel of conservation and the resulting stalemates. In its place, a more temperate approach, the so-called "wise-use" ideology, is gaining ground, says Kirk Emerson, director of the US Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution in Tucson, Ariz. That ideology, in turn, has given birth to a number of well-funded organizations dedicated to advancing collaborative process. These include The Quivira Coalition in New Mexico, the Sonoran Institute in Arizona, and the Montana-based Red Lodge Clearinghouse.

Not everyone is thrilled by this expansion. The collaborative movement has mostly produced "a lot of talk and little follow-through," says environmentalist Michael McCloskey, who in 1995 wrote a now-famous memo. It warned environmentalists: "A new dogma is emerging as a challenge to us. It embodies the proposition that the best way for the public to determine how to manage its interest in the environment is through collaboration among stakeholders."

Ten years later, he remains unimpressed. He argues that the main reason conservationists increasingly turn to compromise is that the federal government is failing to do its job protecting the environment. Also, many collaborative groups set the bar so low that they declare success if they can get all the stakeholders to the table, he says.

Indeed, there remains little hard evidence that collaboration works in the long term, experts agree. This is partly because few researchers follow the trend, partly because the collaborations frequently span so many years that they're hard for researchers to track.

For proponents, however, anecdotes have long filled in for proof. "In almost every case you find people who have fought those old wars over and over again," says Daniel Kemmis, senior fellow at the Center for the Rocky Mountain West in Missoula, Mont. "These old warriors have agreed to lay down their arms and see if there is an alternative answer."

Page: 1 | 2