Homes on the range: Cooperative conservation and environmental change on California's privately owned hardwood rangelands

Environmental History

Volumn 13, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 325-349

  Alagona, Peter S ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CHAPARRAL; ECOSYSTEM MANAGEMENT; ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE; ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY; GRASSLAND; NATURE CONSERVATION; RANGELAND; WOODLAND;

CALIFORNIA; NORTH AMERICA; UNITED STATES;

EID: 44949245095     PISSN: 10845453     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/envhis/13.2.325     Document Type: Article

References (93)

1. Monty Bell, personal interview, February 21, 2005, conducted by telephone (handwritten notes in the possession of the author).
2. For examples, see Robin W. Doughty, The Eucalyptus: A Natural and Commercial History of the Gum Tree (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000);
3. and Jeffrey P. Cohn, "Tiff over Tamarisk: Can A Nuisance Be Nice, Too?" Bioscience 55 (August 2005): 648-54.
4. William Rowley, U.S. Forest Service Grazing and Rangelands: A History (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1985).
5. Donald Worster, Under Western Skies:Nature and History in the American West (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 42.
6. For a recent academic portrayal, see Peter Walker and Louise Fortmann, "Whose Landscape? A Political Ecology of the 'Exurban' Sierra," Cultural Geographies 10 (October 2003): 469-91. For a popular depiction,
7. see Kantele Franko, "Conservationists, Ranchers Team Up," San Francisco Chronicle, August 13, 2007: A-1, A-8. A notable exception to the theme of conflict involves recent historical work on cooperative weed management by Mark Fiege, "The Weedy West: Mobile Nature, Boundaries, and Common Space in the Montana Landscape," Western Historical Quarterly 36 (Spring 2005): 22-47.
8. Sally Duncan, "Adaptive Management: Good Business or Good Buzzwords?" Science Findings, Issue 7, U.S. Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, Portland, OR (September 1998): 1-5.
9. Catherine M. Rigg, "Orchestrating Ecosystem Management: Challenges and Lessons from Sequoia National Forest," Conservation Biology 15 (February 2001): 78-90.
10. Nancy Langston, Forest Dreams, Forest Nightmares: The Paradox of Old Growth in the Inland West (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995), 233.
11. Nancy Langston, Where Land and Water Meet: A Western Landscape Transformed (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003).
12. For an excellent introduction to the subject, see Bruce M. Pavlik, Oaks of California (Los Olivos, CA: Cachuma Press, 1991).
13. L. T. Burcham, California Range Land: A Historico-Ecological Study of the Range Resource of California (Sacramento: State of California Department of Natural Resources, Division of Forestry, 1957), 214, 218, 232;
14. L. T. Burcham, "California Rangelands in Historical Perspective," Rangelands 3 (June 1981): 95-104.
15. David Igler, Industrial Cowboys: Miller & Lux and the Transformation of the Far West, 1850-1920 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001), 9.
16. Karen Waddell and Tara Barrett, "Oak Woodlands and Other Hardwood Forests of California, 1990s," USDA Forest Service Resource Bulletin PNW-RB-245 (Portland, OR, February 2005).
17. Langston, Forest Dreams, Forest Nightmares, 214-15, 219-20, 231-34.
18. Also see Marcus Hall, Earth Repair: A Transatlantic History of Environmental Restoration (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005), 103-16, 126-28.
19. Arthur W. Sampson, Pasture and Range Management (Boston, MA: Stanhope Press, New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1923), vi.
20. Sampson, Pasture and Range Management, viii. Also see Arthur W. Sampson, "Natural Revegetation of Range Lands Based Upon Growth Requirements and Life History of the Vegetation," Journal of Agricultural Research 3 (November 16, 1914): 93-147.
21. Sampson, Pasture and Range Management, v-vi.
22. Maarten Heyboer, "Grass-counters, Stock-feeders, and the Dual Orientation of Applied Science: The History of Range Science, 1895-1960" (PhD dissertation, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1992).
23. Harold Heady, personal interview, March 9, 2005, Berkeley, CA (audio recording in the possession of the author). The U.S. Soil Conservation Service, founded in 1935, is now referred to as the Natural Resources Conservation Service.
24. The Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service became the Farm Service Agency in 1994.
25. Melvin George, "Management of Hardwood Range: A Historical Review," University of California, Davis, Range Science Report 12 (March 1987): 3-4.
26. George D. Nordenholt, "Report to Governor Frank F. Merriam on the Department of Natural Resources: 1935-1938, Inclusive." California State Archives. Nature Resources-Administration-Director, Correspondence 1937-39, 1944-48.
27. State of California Department of Natural Resources Division of Forestry, "Activity in Range Improvement: Annual Report-1969," 11.
28. Also see Arthur W. Sampson and L. T. Burcham, "Costs and Returns of Controlled Brush Burning for Range Improvement in Northern California," Range Improvement Studies 1 (State of California Division of Forestry, 1954).
29. Burcham, "California Rangelands in Historical Perspective," 101.
30. Burle J. Jones, "Comprehensive Range Improvement Program Adopted," California Cattleman (September 1949): 6-7, 22.
31. Anonymous, "New U.C. Hopland Range Station Promises to Play Large Role in Range Improvement," California Cattleman (April 1953): 5-7.
32. A. H. Murphy, R. M. Love, and W. C. Weir, "Building a Research Program: 1951-1976," California Agriculture 30 (July 1976): 5.
33. A. H. Murphy, "Watershed Management Increases Rangeland Productivity," California Agriculture 30 (July 1976): 16-21.
34. Ann Foley Scheuring, Science & Service: A History of the Land-Grant University and Agriculture in California (Oakland: ANR Publications, University of California, 1995).
35. Also see Samuel Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959).
36. O. A. Leonard and W. A. Harvey, "Chemical Control of Woody Plants in California," University of California Division of Agricultural Sciences, Bulletin 755 (August 1956), 2. For other examples, see the California Department of Forestry's Range Improvement Studies series.
37. R. M. Timm and C. E. Vaughn, eds., Research at Hopland, 1951-2001:An Annotated Bibliography (Oakland: University of California Agriculture & Natural Resources, 2003).
38. For examples from the Hopland Station and the San Joaquin Experimental Range, see "Experimental Range Field Day Planned," California Cattleman (April 1953): 17;
39. and A. H. Murphy, R. M. Love, and W. C. Weir, "Extending the Knowledge," California Agriculture 30 (July 1976): 7.
40. Randall S. Rossi, "Land Use and Vegetation Change in the Oak Woodland-Savanna of Northern San Louis Obispo County, California (1774-1978)" (PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1979), 42-43.
41. Norman J. Dal Porto and Charles E. Carlson, "Blue Oak Cordwood From Foothill Rangeland," Range Improvement Studies 15 (December 1965): 1-4;
42. Greg Giusti, personal interview, February 17, 2005, Hopland, CA (audio recording in the possession of the author).
43. "Quotes of the Month," California Cattleman (April 1949): 13. For another example, see "Conservation," California Cattleman (August 1952): 16-17.
44. Deborah Fitzgerald, Every Farm a Factory: The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).
45. Monty Bell, personal interview.
46. Lynn Huntsinger and Richard B. Standiford, "Saving Someone Else's Oaks," Fremontia 18 (July 1990): 91;
47. Lynn Huntsinger and Louise P. Fortmann, "California's Privately Owned Oak Woodlands: Owners, Use, and Management," Journal of Range Management 43 (March 1990): 148.
48. Murphy, "Watershed Management Increases Rangeland Productivity," 16-21.
49. A. H. Murphy, H. F. Heady, and J. W. Menke, "Vegetation Changes Produce Benefits," California Agriculture 30 (July 1976): 22-24. Bill Brooks, personal interview, February 17, 2005, Hopland, CA (audio recording in the possession of the author).
50. Mark D. Stromberg, "History of Hastings 1940s to 2003," held in the uncataloged historical files of the Hastings Natural History Reservation.
51. Dorothy Reed, "Hastings Reservation A 'Natural' for Study," The Outlook (May 29, 1964): 18. This document is held in the uncataloged historical files of the Hastings Natural History Reservation, Also see Mark D. Stromberg and James R. Griffin, "Scientists at Hastings Reserve Study Local Plants, Animals," Carmel Valley Sun, July 26, 1989: 44.
52. Kenneth Thompson, "Riparian Forests of the Sacramento Valley, California," Annals of the Association of American Geographers 51 (September 1961): 294-315.
53. For examples, see H. L. Bauer, "Vegetation of the Tehachapi Mountains, California," Ecology 11 (April 1930): 263-80;
54. and Keith L. White, "Structure and Composition of Foothill Woodland in Central Coastal California," Ecology 47 (March 1966): 229-37.
55. James R. Griffin, "Regeneration in Quercus lobata Savannas, Santa Lucia Mountains, California," The American Midland Naturalist 95 (April 1976): 433.
56. Also see James R. Griffin, "Valley Oaks-The End of An Era?" Fremontia 1 (April 1973): 5-9.
57. For a synopsis of this work, see V. L. Holland, "Effect of Blue Oak on Rangeland Forage Production in Central California," in Ecology, Management, and Utilization of California Oaks, 26-28 June 1979, USDA Forest Service General Technical Report PSW-44, ed. Timothy R. Plumb (Berkeley, CA: USDA Forest Service, 1980): 314-18.
58. V. L. Holland, "In Defense of Blue Oaks," Fremontia 4 (April 1976): 3-8.
59. Cited in Mitchel McClaran, "Visalia and the Valley Oak," Fremontia 11 (October 1983): 24.
60. Also see Ginger Strong and Alan George, "Visalia is Saving its Valley Oaks," Fremontia 18 (July 1990): 99-100.
61. William F. Elemendorf, "Oak Tree Preservation in Thousand Oaks, California," in Proceedings of the Symposium on Oak Woodlands and Hardwood Rangeland Management, 31 October-2 November 1991, USDA Forest Service General Technical Report PSW-126, ed. Richard B. Standiford (Berkeley, CA: USDA Forest Service, 1991): 262-65;
62. Herbert A. Spitzer, "Oak Tree Ordinances," in Proceedings of the Symposium on Multiple-Use Management of California's Hardwood Resources, 12-14 November 1986, USDA Forest Service General Technical Report PSW-100, ed. Timothy R. Plumb and Norman H. Pillsbury (Berkeley, CA: USDA Forest Service, 1987): 148-50.
63. Randall S. Rossi, "Oak Ordinances: Do They Help or Hurt?" Fremontia 18 (July 1990): 96-98;
64. Sam Doak, Kass Green, Sally K. Fairfax, and Sharon Johnson, The Legal Environment for Hardwood Land Ownerships in California (Sacramento: California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, 1988); Peter Steinhart, "As the Old Oaks Fall," Audubon 80 (September 1978): 40.
65. V. L. Holland, personal interview, March 16, 2005, San Louis Obispo, CA (audio recording in the possession of the author).
66. Timothy P. Duane, Shaping the Sierra: Nature, Culture, and Conflict in the Changing West (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), 201;
67. Sharon G. Johnson, "Factors Contributing to Land-use Change in the Hardwood Rangelands of Two Central Sierra Nevadan Counties," in Proceedings of the Symposium on Oak Woodlands: Ecology, Management, and Urban Interface Issues, 19-22 March 1996, USDA Forest Service General Technical Report PSW-GTR-160, ed. Norman H. Pillsbury, Jared Verner, and William D. Tietje (Berkeley, CA: USDA Forest Service, 1997), 593;
68. Lynn Huntsinger, "Demographic Change and Land Use Change in California: Implications for Wildland Management," Proceedings of the Society of American Foresters Annual Meeting, Human Resource Working Group Session (1991): 485-90.
69. Duane, Shaping the Sierra, 174-75;
70. Walker and Fortmann, "Whose Landscape?" 469-91;
71. Lynn Huntsinger, "California's Oak Woodlands Revisited: Changes in Owners, Use, and Management, 1985 to 1992," in Proceedings of the Symposium on Oak Woodlands: Ecology, Management, and Urban Interface Issues, 19-22 March 1996, USDA Forest Service General Technical Report PSW-GTR-160, ed. Norman H. Pillsbury, Jared Verner, and William D. Tietje (Berkeley, CA: USDA Forest Service, 1997), 627.
72. Kenneth L. Delfino and Robert A. Ewing, "The State's Role on California's Hardwood Lands," Proceedings of the Symposium on Multiple-use Management of California's Hardwood Resources, 12-14 November 1986 (Berkeley, CA: U.S. Forest Service General Technical Report PSW-100, 1987), 376. For more on the history of the CDF and the Forest Practice Act, see T. F. Arvola, Regulation of Logging in California, 1945-1975 (Sacramento: State of California Resources Agency, 1976).
73. Peter Passof, personal interview, March 14, 2005, Hopland, CA (audio recording in the possession of the author). On California's hardwood timber industry, see Richard Wade and Guy Hall, "Cal Oak-Staying Afloat in the California Hardwood Lumber Business," in Proceedings of the Symposium on Multiple-Use Management of California's Hardwood Resources, 12-14 November 1986, USDA Forest Service General Technical Report PSW-100, ed, Timothy R. Plumb and Norman H. Pillsbury (Berkeley, CA: USDA Forest Service, 1987), 279;
74. Dean W. Huber and Philip M. McDonald, California's Hardwood Resource: History and Reasons for Lack of a Sustained Hardwood Industry, USDA Forest Service General Technical Report PSW-GTR-135 (Berkeley, CA: USDA Forest Service, 1992).
75. Hardwood Task Force, Policy Options for California's Hardwoods (Sacramento, CA: State Board of Forestry, 1986), 2-3.
76. Zane G. Smith, "California Hardwoods: A Professional Challenge to the Resource Community," in Proceedings of the Symposium on Multiple-Use Management of California's Hardwood Resources, 12-14 November 1986, USDA Forest Service General Technical Report PSW-100, ed. Timothy R. Plumb and Norman H. Pillsbury (Berkeley, CA: USDA Forest Service, 1987), 1.
77. For a depiction of rural westerners as ideologically opposed to government regulation, see R. McGreggor Cawley, Federal Land, Western Anger (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1993). For different perspective, more akin to the argument in this paper, see James McCarthy, "First World Political Ecology: Lessons from the Wise Use Movement," Environment and Planning A 34 (July 2002): 1281-1302. For a more specific discussion of the diversity of opinions about government regulation among ranchers in the hardwood rangelands, see Mitchel P. McClaran and James W. Bartolome, "The Importance of Oak to Ranchers in the California Foothill Woodland," Rangelands 7 (August 1985), 158-60.
78. Quotes from meeting printed in "Oak As Commercial Species," California Cattleman 66 (July-August 1983): 37.
79. Harold R. Walt, Dean A. Cromwell, and Kenneth E. Mayer, "Quo Vadis, Quercus?" Rangelands 7 (June 1985): 106-08.
80. Peter C. Passof and James W. Bartolome, An Integrated Hardwood Range Management Program: A Proposal for Research and Extension by the University of California, Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources (Berkeley: Wildland Resources Center, Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of California, 1985).
81. Gary Beall, "'Hardwood Management' Research, Education Stall Regulation," California Cattleman 70 (April 1987): 18.
82. University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources. "Integrated Hardwood Range Management Program 2005," 4-5.
83. Richard B. Standiford and Richard E. Howitt, "Multiple Use Management of California's Hardwood Rangelands," Journal of Range Management 46 (March 19931: 176-82. James Bartolome, personal interview, March 2, 2005, Berkeley, CA (handwritten notes in the possession of the author).
84. University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, "Integrated Hardwood Range Management Program 2005," 2.
85. Huntsinger, "California's Oak Woodlands Revisited," 627-28. Rebecca T. Richards and Melvin R. George, "Evaluating Changes in Ranch Management Practices through Extension Education," Journal of Range Management 49 (January 1996): 76.80.
86. Colin N. Brooks and Adina M. Merenlender, "Determining the Pattern of Oak Woodland Regeneration for a Cleared Watershed in Northwest California: A Necessary First Step for Restoration," Restoration Ecology 9 (March 2001): 1-12.
87. David M Rizzo and Matteo Garbelotto, "Sudden Oak Death: Endangering California and Oregon Forest Ecosystems," Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 1 (May 2003): 197-204.
88. Adriana Sulak, Lynn Huntsinger, Richard Standiford, Adina Merenlender, and Sally K. Fairfax, "The Agricultural Conservation Easement: A Strategy for Oak Woodland Conservation," in Sustainability of Agrosilvopastoral Systems: Dehesas, Montados, ed. Susanne Schnabel and Alfredo Ferreira (Reiskirchen, Germany: Catena Verlag GmbH, 2004), 353-64.
89. University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, "Integrated Hardwood Range Management Program 2005," 6-8.
90. Also see Adina M. Merenlender and Juila Crawford, Vineyards in an Oak Landscape (Oakland: University of California Division of Agriculture, and Natural Resources, 1998).
91. Aldo Leopold, unpublished manuscript, ca. 1935. Quoted in Curt Meine, Correction Lines: Essays on Land, Leopold, and Conservation (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2004), 55.
92. Nathan Sayre, Ranching, Endangered Species, and Urbanization in the Southwest: Species of Capital (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2002), xiv.
93. Donald Worster points to a similar conclusion in his chapter on "Cowboy Ecology," in Under Western Skies. Efforts to develop new hybrid conservationisms are, in fact, already well underway. For an example, see Nathan Sayre, Working Wilderness: The Malpai Borderlands Group and the Future of the Western Range (Tucson, AZ: Rio Nuevo Publishers, 2005).