Overview

News headlines would often have us believe that conservationists are inevitably locked in conflict with the people who live and work on the lands they seek to protect. Not so. Across the western expanses of the United States, conservationists, ranchers, and forest workers are bucking preconceptions to establish common ground. As they join together to protect the wide open spaces, diverse habitats, and working landscapes upon which people, plants, and animals depend, a new vision of management is emerging in which the conservation of biodiversity, ecosystem integrity, and sustainable resource use are seen not as antithetical, but as compatible, even symbiotic goals. Featuring contributions from an impressive array of scientists, conservationists, scholars, ranchers, and foresters, Stitching the West Back Together explores that expanded, inclusive vision of environmentalism as it delves into the history and evolution of Western land use policy and of the working landscapes themselves. Chapters include detailed case studies of efforts to promote both environmental and economic sustainability, with lessons learned; descriptions of emerging institutional frameworks for conserving Western working landscapes; and implications for best practices and policies crucial to the future of the West's working forests and rangelands. As economic and demographic forces threaten these lands with fragmentation and destruction, this book encourages a hopeful balance between production and conservation on the large, interconnected landscapes required for maintaining cultural and biological diversity over the longterm.

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9780226165684

Table of Contents

Reviews

Stitching the West Back Together is an excellent read and a highly important contribution. This book fills a glaring gap, helping us to understand the transformation of the West and the way we foster that transformation. Chapters from both non-academic practitioners as well as academics involved in on-the-ground conservation effectively connect theory and practice, and make this book exceptional. Stitching the West Back Together will be extremely useful for university faculty and students, rural communities and civic groups, public land managers, and private businesses in forestry, farming, and ranching. Not only does it chart the contours of a changing West, it provides the depth and detail needed to inspire real change and action. --Laurie Yung College of Forestry and Conservation, University of Montana

The book urges conservationists, government employees, tribal officials, and private landowners to meet at the 'Radical Center, ' where goals are ambitious and, most importantly, shared: building a West that is ecologically, aesthetically and culturally healthy. . . . Each chapter moves deftly from data to 'how-to, ' and offers a bullet-point list of lessons. Readers facing specific challenges can find stories that speak to their needs, but people with more general interests will also find the book as a whole accessible and even inspiring. Both will come away with new ideas for entrepreneurial approaches to conservation. With sections by an impressive range of scholars and practitioners, Stitching embodies its own lesson--that success is achieved by working with a diversity of approaches. --Caroline Tracey High Country News

This work reviews recent developments regarding attempts to conserve working landscapes in the western United States. Individual chapters (fourteen total) in the five parts . . . are written by authors ranging from graduate students and academics to practitioners and activists. . . .The argument for collaborative conservation, including working landscapes to prevent urbanization and sprawl, sounds like a win-win situation for everyone, except for developers. . . . An intriguing start for those wanting to explore issues related to options for collaborative conservation and land management in the checkerboard landscapes of the West in further detail. . . . Recommended. --B. Blossey, Cornell University Choice

In the magnificent, hard-pressed lands west of the Mississippi, the war to define good stewardship intensifies every year. Stitching the West Back Together offers, instead, a peace process: practical, community-based, and frequently inspiring. Can healthy terrain yield healthy profit? Almost certainly, according to these well-chosen case studies, which argue for a new public policy of interdependence and cooperation, fueled by redoubled respect for the history and ecology of this most difficult, subtle, and underappreciated of US regions. --Anne Matthews author of Where the Buffalo Roam: Restoring America's Great Plains

In the magnificent, hard-pressed lands west of the Mississippi, the war to define good stewardship intensifies every year. Stitching the West Back Together offers, instead, a peace process: practical, community-based, and frequently inspiring. Can healthy terrain yield healthy profit? Almost certainly, according to these well-chosen case studies, which argue for a new public policy of interdependence and cooperation, fueled by redoubled respect for the history and ecology of this most difficult, subtle, and underappreciated of US regions. --Anne Matthews author of Where the Buffalo Roam: Restoring America s Great Plains

Author Information

Susan Charnley is a research social scientist at the USDA Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station. Thomas E. Sheridan is professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona and a research anthropologist at the university's Southwest Center, where Gary P. Nabhan is a research scientist.

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