Contradictory land management policies dating to the mid-19th century resulted in today’s patchwork of public, private, and tribal land ownership and land use in the American West. Such boundaries create challenges for maintaining undeveloped, ecologically healthy working landscapes such as forests and ranchlands. Resource agencies, people who make their living off the land, environmentalists, developers, and recreationists frequently find themselves at odds over land-management decisions. However a movement toward collaborative conservation has resulted in communities working together to find ... More

Contradictory land management policies dating to the mid-19th century resulted in today’s patchwork of public, private, and tribal land ownership and land use in the American West. Such boundaries create challenges for maintaining undeveloped, ecologically healthy working landscapes such as forests and ranchlands. Resource agencies, people who make their living off the land, environmentalists, developers, and recreationists frequently find themselves at odds over land-management decisions. However a movement toward collaborative conservation has resulted in communities working together to find solutions that respect all the parties involved. Policies and programs such as conservation easements and estate taxes can help or hurt efforts to conserve and maintain working landscapes and their biodiversity, and developing concepts, such as payments for ecosystem services, show promise as the basis for new policies. Numerous case histories illustrate how individual communities have approached their particular challenges of protecting forest lands and ranches to sustain their ability to support the local economy while also protecting the environmental resources. Implementing a variety of approaches for land conservation and economic sustainability, with flexibility to modify them, improves the likelihood of success. As well, local involvement, inclusion of all parties in decision-making, long-term commitments by agency personnel, and willingness to innovate and adapt to changing circumstances contribute to the movement that is stitching the West back together.