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Every society expresses its fundamental values and hopes in the
ways it inhabits its landscapes. In this literate and wide-ranging
exploration, Eric T. Freyfogle raises difficult questions about
America's core values while illuminating the social origins of
urban sprawl, dwindling wildlife habitats, and over-engineered
rivers. These and other land-use crises, he contends, arise mostly
because of cultural attitudes that made sense on the American
frontier but now threaten the land's ecological fabric. To support
and sustain healthy communities, profound adjustments will be
required. Freyfogle's search leads him down unusual paths. He
probes Charles Frazier's novel Cold Mountain for insights on the
healing power of nature and tests the wisdom in Wendell Berry's
fiction. He challenges journalists writing about environmental
issues to get beyond well-worn rhetoric and explain the true
choices that Americans face. In an imaginary job advertisement, he
issues a call for a national environmental leader, identifying the
skills and knowledge required, taking note of cultural obstacles,
and looking critically at supposed allies. Examining recent federal
elections, he largely blames the conservation cause and its
inattention to cultural issues for the diminished status of the
environment as a decisive issue. Agrarianism and the Good Society
identifies the social, historical, political, and cultural
obstacles to humans' harmony with nature and advocates a new
orientation, one that begins with healthy land and that better
reflects our utter dependence on it. In all, Agrarianism and the
Good Society offers a critical yet hopeful guide for cultural
change, essential for anyone interested in the benefits and
creative possibilities of responsible land use.
Since the birth of the modern environmental movement in the 1970s,
the United States has witnessed dramatic shifts in social equality,
ecological viewpoints, and environmental policy. With these changes
has also come an increased popular resistance to environmental
reform, but, as Eric T. Freyfogle reveals in this book, that
resistance has far deeper roots. Calling upon key environmental
voices from the past and present--including Aldo Leopold, Wendell
Berry, David Orr, and even Pope Francis in his Encyclical--and
exploring core concepts like wilderness and the tragedy of the
commons, A Good That Transcends not only unearths the causes of our
embedded culture of resistance, but also offers a path forward to
true, lasting environmental initiatives. A lawyer by training, with
expertise in property rights, Freyfogle uses his legal knowledge to
demonstrate that bad land use practices are rooted in the way in
which we see the natural world, value it, and understand our place
within it. While social and economic factors are important
components of our current predicament, it is our culture, he shows,
that is driving the reform crisis--and in the face of accelerating
environmental change, a change in culture is vital. Drawing upon a
diverse array of disciplines from history and philosophy to the
life sciences, economics, and literature, Freyfogle seeks better
ways for humans to live in nature, helping us to rethink our
relationship with the land and craft a new conservation ethic. By
confronting our ongoing resistance to reform as well as pointing
the way toward a common good, A Good That Transcends enables us to
see how we might rise above institutional and cultural challenges,
look at environmental problems, appreciate their severity, and both
support and participate in reform.
This is a book about nature and culture, Eric T. Freyfogle writes,
"about our place and plight on earth, and the nagging challenges we
face in living on it in ways that might endure." Challenges, he
says, we are clearly failing to meet. Harking back to a key phrase
from the essays of eminent American conservationist Aldo Leopold,
Our Oldest Task spins together lessons from history and philosophy,
the life sciences and politics, economics and cultural studies in a
personal, erudite quest to understand how we might live on and in
accord with the land. Passionate and pragmatic, extraordinarily
well-read and eloquent, Freyfogle details a host of forces that
have produced our self-defeating ethos of human exceptionalism. It
is this outlook, he argues, not a lack of scientific knowledge or
inadequate technology, that is the primary cause of our ecological
predicament. Seeking to comprehend both the multifaceted complexity
of contemporary environmental problems and the zeitgeist as it
unfolds, Freyfogle explores such diverse topics as morality, the
nature of reality (and the reality of nature), animal welfare,
social justice movements, and market politics. The result is a
learned and inspiring rallying cry to achieve balance, a call to
use our knowledge to more accurately identify the dividing line
between living in and on the world and destruction. "To use
nature," Freyfogle writes, "but not to abuse it."
Wildlife is an important and cherished element of our natural
heritage in the United States. But state and federal laws governing
the ways we interact with wildlife can be complex to interpret and
apply. Ten years ago, Wildlife Law: A Primer was the first book to
lucidly explain wildlife law for readers with little or no legal
training who needed to understand its intricacies. Today,
navigating this legal terrain is trickier than ever as habitat for
wildlife shrinks, technology gives us new ways to seek out
wildlife, and unwanted human-wildlife interactions occur more
frequently, sometimes with alarming and tragic outcomes. This
revised and expanded second edition retains key sections from the
first edition, describing basic legal concepts while offering
important updates that address recent legal topics. New chapters
cover timely issues such as private wildlife reserves and game
ranches, and the increased prominence of nuisance species as well
as an expanded discussion of the Endangered Species Act, now more
than 40 years old. Chapter sidebars showcase pertinent legal cases
illustrating real-world application of the legal concepts covered
in the main text. Accessibly written, this is an essential,
ground-breaking reference for professors and students in natural
resource and wildlife programs, land owners, and wildlife
professionals.
The engaging writings gathered in this new book explore an
important but little-publicized movement in American culture -- the
marked resurgence of agrarian practices and values in rural areas,
suburbs, and even cities. It is a movement that in widely varied
ways is attempting to strengthen society's roots in the land while
bringing greater health to families, neighborhoods, and
communities. "The New Agrarianism" vividly displays the movement's
breadth and vigor, with selections by such award-winning writers as
Wendell Berry, William Kittredge, Stephanie Mills, David Orr, Scott
Russell Sanders, and Donald Worster.As editor Eric Freyfogle
observes in his stimulating and original introduction, agrarianism
is properly conceived in broad terms, as reaching beyond food
production to include a wide constellation of ideals, loyalties,
sentiments, and hopes. It is a temperament and a moral orientation,
he explains, as well as a suite of diverse economic practices --
all based on the insistent truth that people everywhere are part of
the land community, as dependent as other life on its fertility and
just as shaped by its mysteries and possibilities.The writings
included here have been chosen for their engaging narratives as
well as their depiction of the New Agrarianism's broad scope. Many
of the selections illustrate agrarian practitioners in action --
restoring prairies, promoting community forests and farms, reducing
resource consumption, reshaping the built environment. Other
selections offer pointed critiques of contemporary American culture
and its market-driven, resource-depleting competitiveness.
Together, they reveal what Freyfogle identifies as the heart and
soul of the NewAgrarianism: its yearning to regain society's
connections to the land and its quest to help craft a more
land-based and enduring set of shared values."The New Agrarianism"
offers a compelling vision of this hopeful new way of living. It is
an essential book for social critics, community activists, organic
gardeners, conservationists, and all those seeking to forge
sustaining ties with the entire community of life.
This casebook offers a view of natural resources law rich in
history, yet exposing students to the complexities of practicing
natural resources law in the 21st century. Given that the focus of
most Natural Resources Law casebooks is public lands and public law
(often at the federal level), this casebook is unique in its
primary focus on natural resource conflicts on private lands and
its significant focus on private law (though public law is also a
focus). While the authors include chapters on federal public lands
and areas of federal primacy like wetlands regulation and
endangered species protection, their focus is largely on natural
resources law in states that are not dominated by federal public
lands, since sixty percent of the land in the United States is
privately owned. The book is especially appropriate for students in
states east of the 100th meridian. Although the authors address
particular resources separately - including private and public
rights in waterways (including the public trust doctrine),
wetlands, wildlife, water, minerals, forests, grazing, recreation,
and renewable resources - they draw frequent comparisons of the
law's treatment of natural resources to allow students to analyze
the consistency or inconsistency of natural resources law across
diverse subject areas. For example, with some regularity they offer
comparisons of those natural resources that are allocated on a
first-in-time principle as opposed to those dispensed according to
notions of reasonable use. They also compare management regimes
throughout, including non-governmental decision making. The authors
make an effort to build on the students' studies of common law
doctrines like trespass, nuisance, and servitude law to show how
they influence the use, development, and preservation of natural
resources. The question of development vs. preservation is a
persistent issue, and the constitutional takings issue is another
repeated theme.
A concerned activist takes the conservation movement to task and
shows us what we stand to gain when conservation succeeds Critics
of environmental laws complain that such rules often burden people
unequally, restrict individual liberty, and undercut private
property rights. In formulating responses to these criticisms, the
conservation effort has stumbled badly, says Eric T. Freyfogle in
this thought-provoking book. Conservationists and environmentalists
haven't done their intellectual homework, he contends, and they
have failed to offer an understandable, compelling vision of
healthy lands and healthy human communities. Freyfogle explores why
the conservation movement has responded ineffectually to the many
cultural and economic criticisms leveled against it. He addresses
the meaning of good land use, describes the many shortcomings of
"sustainability," and outlines six key tasks that the cause must
address. Among these is the crafting of an overall goal and a
vision of responsible private ownership. The book concludes with a
stirring message that situates conservation within America's story
of itself and with an extensive annotated bibliography of
conservation's most valuable voices and texts-important information
for readers prepared to take conservation more seriously.
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