Balancing Preservation and Logging: Public Lands Policy in British Columbia and the Western United States |
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| Authors: | Gary Bryner |
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| Institution: | Gary Bryner is professor of political science at Brigham Young University (BYU), where he directs the public policy program. He teaches courses in political economy, environmental and natural resource policy, international development policy, and social policy. He has degrees from the University of Utah in Economics, from Cornell University in Government, and from BYU in law. His books include Blue Skies, Green Politics: The Clean Air Act of 1990 and Its Implementation;Bureaucratic Discretion: Law and Policy in Federal Regulatory Agencies;and From Promises to Performance: Achieving Global Environmental Goals. |
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| Abstract: | Both the United States and Canada have made fundamental changes in their policies regarding natural resources. The province of British Columbia made major revisions to its forest policy in the earlyto-mid-1990s; in the western United States, policy efforts have been stymied by conflicts between state and federal officials and between conservationists and resource developers. The different structures of federalism in the two countries result in two different approaches to policymaking that are discussed here. However, the ultimate test of natural resource policy, I argue, should be their consistency with the goal of sustainable ecosystems and preservation of biodiversity. From the perspective of ecological science, neither country has been particularly successful in policymaking for public lands and for logging in particular. Both nations have failed to give priority to protecting old-growth forests and largely have rejected the idea that ancient forests are much more valuable than simply sources of timber |
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