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Editor's note: In Part I of "Mugido: Rethinking the Federal Commons," Courtney White lays out how a "mugido" — an equitable public-private partnership — could provide a new model for managing some federal lands. In Part II, he continues that discussion.
The goal of a mugido is to get innovation on the ground by blending the best of both worlds -- the entrepreneurial spirit of the private community (which includes nonprofits) and the "big picture"ideals of the federal commons.
In other words, a mugido is all about "yes."
But what if the Request for Proposal "RFP" results
in an out-of-state entity taking away an opportunity from
the local community, especially if that community is historically,
socially or economically disadavantaged?
I don't have a simple answer to this problem. Currently, grazing permits (and the private land they are attached to) can be bought and sold without regard to the needs of local communities. Ideally, mugidos would be locally-based and would engage local communities. Perhaps this can be written into the RFP in some way -- that local partnerships are paramount or that the mugido must serve local interests to a significant degree.
Balancing local, regional, and national needs will be a central task of a mugido.
Obviously, this is a controversial idea, and undoubtedly there will be objections. But let me try to sort out what I see as the five key elements to any mugido:
1) The overarching goal is land health.
The basic idea behind land health is that by restoring
and maintaining land function -- what Aldo
Leopold called the "land mechanism"-- we can
create a solid foundation for the social values
we place on the land. In other words, if we jeopardize
or degrade function (soil stability, water and nutrient
cycling), then the land's ability to support our values
(food, water, wildlife, recreation, grazing) will eventually
degrade too.
Jared Diamond's book"Collapse: How Societies
Choose to Succeed or Fail" documents in sobering
detail what happens to communities and cultures when land
function fails.
Fortunately, advances in ecological knowledge, such as
the "state-and-transition" model, coupled with new
quantitative and qualitative monitoring protocols mean
we have a much clearer picture of what land health means
than we did 60 years ago when Aldo Leopold coined the
term.
This means that land health targets can be described, measured, and analyzed. They can be achieved too, as well as enforced if necessary.
On public and private land, the bottom line is land function--from
the soil up. If land exists in a degraded condition and
is in need of restoration, then that should be the primary
goal of its managers. If it is healthy, then it needs
to be maintained. Unfortunately, much of the West is degraded,
for a variety of reasons, including much of the federal
commons. Tackling this "land health"' crisis, principally
through restoration, will require a great deal of innovation,
education, and commercial activity.
2) The whole toolbox is available. Achieving
and maintaining land health requires having the entire
toolbox at one's disposal. It also requires having the
flexibility, and incentive, to quickly choose a particular
tool for a particular job. Nature is not static --it exists
in a constant state of flux, including sometimes violent
perturbations. Stewardship, especially restoration work,
needs to be equally active-- within the limits set by
collective goal-setting. Evaluation of the effectiveness
of any particular tool is necessary as well.
But the freedom to innovate is necessary too. The power
of creativity needs to be tapped, encouraged, and rewarded,
especially given the scale of the task of stewarding land
today. The initial response by the government to a new
idea should be "why not?" If implemented, it
should then be followed by monitoring, evaluation, and
adjustment. Regulation should follow innovation at a distance--not
stand in its way.
In a mugido, the principal role of the government is
that of an auditor. It should check progress one, two
times a year, maybe more, and suggest, or require, changes
if necessary. If a permittee has abused a tool, or failed
to perform to predetermined standards, then the government
reserves the right to terminate the relationship.
It can then issue another RFP.
3) Profit is a good thing. The key to
innovation is positive financial incentives for restoring
and maintaining land health. Additionally, delivering
values that society wants must result in a profit for
the steward. Negative incentives--the threat of regulation,
for instance, or paying a land manager not to damage land
(the traditional response of government)--won't work in
the long run.
But the answer doesn't lie wholly in the market either--not
as long as it remains more profitable to exploit natural
resources for short-term gain. Until we can create a "healing'
economy" one that pays landowners and managers to
restore and maintain land health on par with what they
can earn by damaging land function--the marketplace cannot
be allowed to have a completely free hand.
The answer, in the meantime, is to create a public-private partnership that is profitable to both, ecologically and economically. Private entities would be free to be entrepreneurial on public land, within limits enforced by monitoring, and public agencies would benefit from increased land health. Jobs will be available locally, which will help maintain community health. The best "yes' of all is a paycheck.
One nice thing about land--it will never be outsourced
to a foreign country!
Right now, the incentives on public land all point in
the wrong directions. Many grazing permittees feel little
or no incentive to improve their stewardship partly because
they are not rewarded financially for it (and are sometimes
punished) and partly because they consider stewardship
to be "the government's job." That's the problem
with regulation--good stewardship needs to be encouraged
and rewarded, not policed. And for federal employees there
is little or no incentive to "think out of the box."
Too often, individual initiative hits a brick wall of
bureaucratic indifference.
Or as a friend likes to say: "Low input gets you
low output."
4) Let government employees be free.
Most civil servants don't want to be regulators. They
didn't go to college to study how to be bureaucrats. They
studied natural resource management, or biology, or archaeology
or planning. They went to work for the government because
they wanted to be foresters, range managers, biologists,
archaeologists and planners. They wanted to be outdoors,
in the woods, on a horse, doing research or setting a
prescribed fire. They didn't go into government to enforce
compliance, sit in a cubicle, push paper, or appear in
court.
Government employees need to be professionals again.
Let them get to "yes" by being biologists and archaeologists;
let them monitor, and teach and learn. Let them help.
Since private entities often won't have the technical
or educational experience needed to understand all the
variables of stewardship, this expertise can be provided
by the government. The complex issues surrounding endangered
species, for instance, require the involvement of specialized
knowledge. This will be tricky since the intersection
of wildlife management and land health, not to mention
best-management practices, is not fully articulated yet.
But letting biologists be biologists is the first step.
This way they can become genuine partners in land stewardship.
5) Find a role for urban folks. The
widening urban-rural divide is having deleterious effects
across the West, politically, economically, culturally
and ecologically. As the West continues to urbanize at
a rapid rate, and as city dwellers move to the country
(or at least purchase big parts of it), the rift threatens
to grow. Fortunately, efforts to close this divide are
becoming more numerous, especially around organic farming,
agrotourism, water quantity and quality issues and the
protection of open space.
An effort needs to be made to bridge the urban-rural
divide on the federal commons as well. In particular,
urbanites who care about the condition and fate of public
lands need to be given an alternative to conflict. Right
now, the primary way a city-bound person can express their
concern for a national forest or park is to write a check
to a watchdog environmental organization. The typical
response of these watchdog groups is "no"--often
for good reason. There's always a bad dam, development
or oil-and-gas well to fight someplace. Fighting is as
necessary as it is unfortunate.
But fighting is still all about "no."
What is needed now is a way for urbanites to say "yes"
on public land. Restoration is one way--the physical process
of getting out on the land and helping to heal a creek
or a meadow with one's labor is a satisfying experience.
Another is to become active in the stewardship of rural
public land. Lend a hand, buy local food, invest in a
cow, do monitoring, take a tour.
At the same time, permittees on the federal commons need to find positive roles for urbanites. Pull them in, get them involved, make allies. Take their money, and give them a return on their investment.
Make them part of the solution.
Engaging the public constructively on a mugido should be one of the conditions of the RFP. It is their land, after all. The government should require that the private entity develop a plan for public involvement -- tours, food, restoration, monitoring, participation in a grazing association -- but it should then let the "mugidoleros' make the final call.
Ultimately, a mugido is all about healthy relationships.
Let's go back to the meeting in the BLM headquarters in Nevada for a moment. The ranchers are proposing to restore Teel's Marsh to health through the innovative use of livestock. Their goal is to restore function to the 100,000-acre watershed that surrounds the marsh by repairing the damaged water cycle, principally by breaking up capped soil so that water and seeds can do their thing.
They are proposing to carry the financial risk -- as well as reap any financial reward. They also propose to do all the work.
It's a radical and audacious idea, granted. But what if the BLM said "yes?'
What if BLM employees sat down with the ranchers and worked on a set of goals, including ecological benchmarks, for the watershed? What if they pledged to do the monitoring, as well as provide the archaeological clearances and other technical support the ranchers needed? What if they provided the oversight needed to satisfy various public values, such as recreation, in the watershed.
What if they then became partners in what happened next?
The ranchers and their collaborative team, which includes environmentalists, could then go to work. They would have the flexibility to improve the watershed with whatever tool they thought appropriate, under the goal-setting guidelines, whenever, and for however long, they thought necessary.
They could find creative ways to engage urbanites in their project. Horse owners could herd cows; school children could monitor land health; they could create a nonprofit organization called Friends of Teel's Marsh;' urban elbow grease could be applied to the land.
In the meantime, the ranchers would be evaluated by the quality of their product: the restoration of the marsh. Hopefully, the evaluation won't be too harsh or hasty -- restoration is slow business, especially in a desert. But periodic review by the government would serve as a reality check on the project. Are the ranchers moving toward their goals? Do the goals need to be revised? What worked? What failed?
Products would also include better communication, increased trust, stronger relationships, and true adaptive management. The marsh might even be restored!
Or maybe not. Ultimately, the skeptics could be right. Maybe the marsh can't be restored. Maybe cattle are the wrong tool. Maybe a mugido is a crazy idea.
But we will never know if we don't try. |
