Tag: High Desert Partnership

Collaboration, Not Fighting, is What the Rural West is Really About

STEVEN C. BEDA – While the origins of many present-day rural extremist movements can be traced back to frustrations with BLM policy in the 1970s, the Sagebrush Rebellion spawned another less talked-about movement: collaborative land management. Many people recognized that fighting over wilderness, grazing rights, timber harvests and endangered species protections was getting them nowhere. So in the 1990s, rural workers sat down with environmentalists, government agents and tribal representatives, and together they worked out agreements that would protect the land, preserve tribal resource rights and allow for continued grazing, mining and logging.