Parks Stewardship Forum

In this "Letter from Woodstock," our columnist Rolf Diamant, joined by Nora Mitchell, recall the influence of their late friend, the historical architect Hugh Miller.

Reflections from a two-month road trip through national parks and other public lands in the American West.

A welcome and introduction to this special issue of Parks Stewardship Forum commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Bureau of Land Management's National Conservation Lands.

A short history and analysis of the evolution of BLM's mission to include conservation.

This paper examines the long-term, very-American pattern of participatory conservation involving public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) as part of large landscapes in the West. Conservation outcomes have become common, shared goals publicly expressed and supported through designations, as well as protection and restoration efforts. With varying degrees of success, communities of caring people have been the driving force underlying conservation.

This essay addresses the past and future of the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Although the least known of the four principal US federal land management agencies, it looks after the largest amount of land, about 250 million acres. Almost all are in the West and in Alaska, as shown on the following map. A growing proportion are stewarded primarily to preserve and allow the general public to enjoy their scenery, wildlife, and historic and other cultural values (hence the “Conservation Lands” of the title). Part One provides a capsule history of how this all came about, focusing first on the events leading up to BLM’s establishment in 1946, and then on the events leading up to the present. In Part Two, I assess current trends and what they suggest about the future of these BLM National Conservation Lands.

This essay, drawn from a forthcoming book, offers case studies of Hispanic and Native American advocacy for landscape-scale conservation in a new, culturally inclusive approach that includes both co-management and co-stewardship.

These national monuments, wilderness areas, wild and scenic rivers, and national scenic and historic trails (NSHTs) are all administered through programs under BLM’s National Landscape Conservation System, also known as the National Conservation Lands. In 2025, we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of this unique system of BLM’s crown jewels. In the following stories, you’ll read about each of these four programs as told by BLM’s recent national program leaders for these inspiring landscapes.

This article discusses my own journey of photography of BLM lands, followed by an essay of photos that I have taken that highlight the history of growing conservation designations on bureau lands, their unique niche and management challenges among federally protected lands, and examples of the power of photos in inspiring and motivating visitors and constituents.

As ancient petroglyphs and pictographs of animals, plants, and objects demonstrate, art has long connected people to nature. The BLM’s Artist-in-Residence Program continues in this tradition by connecting people to the resources of public lands administered by BLM through the power of artistic expression. Whether a musical tour of several locations, like D’DAT’s, or a painter’s individual work at one site, the program “offers opportunities for painters, photographers, potters, sculptors and other artists to promote deeper understanding of, and dialogue about, the significance of natural, cultural, and historic resources on public lands managed by the BLM—including the National Landscape Conservation System.” All the artists are volunteers, receiving no financial compensation from BLM for their time and creations.

An account of the development and activities of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition.

The author shares his deep connections to hunting and fishing traditions on public lands in the American West.

Local organizations in Las Cruces and surrounding Doña Ana County, New Mexico, have nurtured and promoted the positive economic benefits of Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument (OMDP) as a way to actively foster a broader cross-societal appreciation for and stewardship of National Conservation Lands. Since the designation of OMDP in 2014, this region has served as a national example of collaborations between conservation groups, local businesses and governments, non-profit organizations, and tourism agencies. These partnerships serve multiple purposes of education, conservation, tourism, and outreach. Economic studies regarding OMDP’s designation conducted in 2013 and again in 2023 (BBC Research & Consulting 2013, 2023) illustrated the potential and actual positive economic impacts, respectively, to the area around OMDP. The result of “thoughtful stewardship” by local businesses, coordinated marketing, creative events like “Monuments to Main Street” month, educational hikes with under-served communities, and public relation campaigns in different parts of the country increased community appreciation and non-local visitation and spending. The resulting sense of community ownership increased involvement with the Bureau of Land Management and in turn strengthened partnerships and conversations about the stewardship of our public lands.

This paper examines the historic role and place of outdoor recreation in the National Landscape Conservation System (now called the National Conservation Lands) and how these lands can coexist with the growing demand for outdoor recreation. We will explore why this critical 21st-century conservation system needs to continue to provide diverse outdoor recreation opportunities, and why sustainable outdoor recreation needs the National Conservation Lands.

The National Landscape Conservation System consists of unique and beautiful places across America’s landscapes where identified resources and values are protected and science is highlighted. The mission of the National Landscape Conservation System (NLCS), which is managed by the Bureau of Land Management and is often referred to as the agency’s National Conservation Lands, is to conserve, protect, and restore nationally significant landscapes for their cultural, ecological, and scientific values. This clear inclusion of science in the NLCS mission sets the stage for individual units to serve as places of learning, teaching, discovery, and innovation. Science is an integral part of managing the National Conservation Lands, and science conducted within and across the more than 900 units that make up the NLCS can inform and influence conservation and public land management well beyond its boundaries. Here, we highlight seven core aspects of National Conservation Lands that present valuable science opportunities: (1) the scientific values for which individual units are designated; (2) the many other resources, objects, and values within units; (3) the value of units as “control” sites for understanding the effects of activities such as mineral extraction that commonly occur elsewhere on multiple-use public lands but are often prohibited within National Conservation Lands; (4) the value of units for studying the effects of activities such as recreation that regularly occur and may be intensified on National Conservation Lands; (5) the high visibility of units, which draws strong interest and engagement from scientists, partners, and the public; (6) the functioning of the units as a network managed for a common purpose, which provides an opportunity to explore cross-cutting science questions across widely varying contexts and geographies; and (7) the opportunities units provide to promote and apply Indigenous Knowledge to scientific research to manage natural and cultural resources. Because of all of these characteristics, National Conservation Lands can serve as hubs for basic and applied science that can inform management of all public lands and resources into the future. We highlight these science opportunities through examples from existing units and suggest two actions that could help further science activities and impact on National Conservation Lands.

On September 18, 1996, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM) became the first national monument managed by the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and one of the first to protect a landscape based partly on its opportunity for scientific discovery. Its creation was a watershed moment in public land management, because to meet the mandates for its first monument, BLM opted to implement unprecedented support of resource investigations for numerous natural and cultural sciences, including establishing its first ever in-house paleontological field program. The rationale for this was taken directly from the establishing presidential proclamation (6920) which called out GSENM’s untapped paleontological treasure trove as “world-class.” The proclamation also singled out the Late Cretaceous vertebrate fossil record of the Kaiparowits Plateau, largely known at the time through the pioneering work of Drs. Jeff Eaton and Rich Cifelli, who had spent years teasing out the mammalian evolutionary story preserved within. Their work on Mesozoic mammals, alongside sporadic work by other institutions (mainly the University of Utah and Brigham Young University) in the 1970s and 1980s, demonstrated that the Kaiparowits Plateau also held a substantial macrovertebrate record that included beautifully preserved dinosaur skeletons. However, a lack of coordinated effort and the difficult nature of fieldwork in the rugged badlands led to what can only be described as desultory results. The leverage that came with monument status, including logistical and financial support provided by BLM, made this resource more accessible to the paleontological community, stimulating a sudden burst of new field research and discovery. Initial, coordinated, and collaborative fossil inventories started in 2000 by joint BLM, Utah Museum of Natural History, Museum of Northern Arizona, and Utah Geological Survey teams led to a cascade of discoveries, including sites preserving plants, invertebrates, trace fossils, microvertebrates, and macrovertebrates, contextualized by new geological insights. Many of these new fossil finds represent species entirely new to science, with some sites preserving intact snapshots of Late Cretaceous ecosystems that are unmatched globally. Unique geologic conditions resulted in spectacular preservation, sometimes even including soft tissue traces. This renaissance in North American Late Cretaceous paleontology would not have been possible without the focused resources and effort facilitated by the creation of GSENM and the subsequent prioritization of inventory and basic research in its mission. In addition to the science, the public benefits of these efforts have been immense, providing opportunities for direct involvement in the scientific process through volunteer programs, training for several generations of future paleontologists and geologists, innumerable educational programs, and exposure in national and international media outlets through articles, television, and interviews. The collaborative and far-reaching paleontological effort at GSENM has highlighted an often overlooked aspect of public lands management: the importance of US public lands for scientific discovery and education.

The Friends Grassroots Network—established and sustained by the Conservation Lands Foundation, whose mission is to protect, restore, and expand the National Conservation Lands—is made up of just over 80 non-profit organizations. This article spotlights a few of them.

This article highlights the importance partnerships have brought to the National Conservation Lands system through a series of vignettes from partners, like the Conservation Lands Foundation and our 80-plus network of local organizations called the Friends Grassroots Network, who work with each of the system’s programs. The vignettes honor a fundamental organizing principle the Conservation Lands Foundation’s founders held: that meaningful stewardship and enduring protections within National Conservation Lands can only be achieved when there is broad local support for sound conservation decisions.

Wilderness may be a designation, but it is more than that. It is a feeling. A feeling that can be realized if you visit some of the more than 10 million acres of wilderness managed by the BLM as part of the National Conservation Lands system.

The author relates how her experiences on public lands have been a fundamentally important part of her life.

The Conservation Lands Fund thanks those who helped with this special issue of Parks Stewardship Forum.

An introduction to the following set of theme papers in this issue of Parks Stewardship Forum, “Interpreting Energy at Historic Sites and Museums to Inspire Climate Action,” which provide examples of how to connect past energy use patterns and attitudes to new ones that are more responsive to the challenges of climate change.

Every NPS site faces the realities of climate change’s impacts and has an enduring responsibility to communicate about climate change with the public. However, some sites struggle with this mandate, as interpreters find it difficult to identify relevant connections between climate change and their park story. Others forego storytelling in favor of a “just the facts” approach, which is often insufficient for expanding visitor perspectives. To help bridge this communication gap, Graves and Villano developed History & Hope for Climate Action: An Interpretive Toolkit with support from NPS’s Climate Change Response Program and the Cultural Resources Office of Interpretation and Education. This essay will explore three NPS examples that can interpret the unseen threads of energy and connect them to climate change using the History & Hope framework. First, we will show how the historic house of a prominent American leader can be used to illustrate the growing separation of energy production and consumption at the turn of the 20th century. This separation has made energy sources largely invisible to most people today. Next, we will examine how energy is intertwined with the way people travel, recreate, and experience parks through the development of “Mission 66” infrastructure in the NPS. The initiative had long-lasting consequences, embedding fossil fuel-based transit into park visitation to this day. Finally, we’ll explore the unintended consequences of World War II (WWII) mobilization, when the need to organize the nation as an “arsenal for democracy” led to increasing use of fossil fuels that persisted and grew throughout the post-war era.

A description and analysis of how interpretation at Chief Vann House The Vann House site’s dual shift in interpretation—to include the experiences of enslaved people, and call attention to historical energy-efficient building design—opens a treasure trove of narratives and stories that were almost lost to American history, to the detriment of our society. When recognizing the craftsmanship and accomplishments that the working classes or enslaved people brought to these plantation homes, visitors are offered the chance to empathize with and humanize these previously under-appreciated individuals.

Nearly a million visitors flock to northwestern Connecticut each year to enjoy the natural wonders of autumn leaf peeping excursions, spend a snowy winter day on the ski slopes, or simply soak in the rural charm. Unfortunately, many visitors never know that in the not-so-distant past, the area had a much different aesthetic than the bucolic hills and densely forested river valley they experience today. If we were to turn the clock back a little over 100 years, visitors to the region would experience an entirely altered landscape, devoid of trees, the air thick with smoke, bustling with the sights and sounds of the number one industry, ironmaking. Today, the only obvious evidence of the industry that once dominated the region is the stone ruins of the iron furnace complexes, which stand like sentinels among the trees. However, if you know where to look, you can find traces of the industry’s impact on the landscape and discover its role in shaping the region as we know it today. One such place can be found in Kent, Connecticut, at the Eric Sloane Museum & Kent Iron Furnace. Here, in this quaint New England town, nestled along the banks of the Housatonic River, a 30-foot granite tower protrudes from the hillside, drawing the attention of curiosity seekers and history enthusiasts alike. While the structure is a unique historic landmark, its history, interpretation, and preservation have undergone many changes since the last furnace fires were extinguished in 1892. Since 1969, the Eric Sloane Museum, as part of the Connecticut State Historic Preservation Office, has worked to promote and preserve the furnace and its history. Recently, the museum embarked on a new approach to rekindle interest in the Kent Iron Furnace and northwestern Connecticut’s industrial history.

This essay explores how Muscle Shoals National Heritage Area (MSNHA) interprets the energy history of the Tennessee River in northwest Alabama. Additionally, it considers how MSNHA—and other national heritage areas across the country—can help guide the interpretation of the human history and environmental consequences of power generation, while also helping apply the lessons learned from past power projects to future endeavors.

Most of the public interpretation of nuclear technologies occurs in the places where large-scale facilities involved in, first, the Manhattan project and, later, the growth of both nuclear weapons and nuclear power have been located. These interpretive efforts are important and worthwhile, particularly as remediation efforts by the Department of Energy have often razed historic structures and other physical testaments to the nuclear landscape. But where else might we look? Where might we situate our interpretive work, and what other stories might we tell? I suggest that we think of these energy stories not as nuclear stories or atomic stories—terms that emphasize the scientific, technological, and military dimensions of nuclear energy—but as stories of radioactivity and radioactivism. Reframing our preservationist, interpretive, and commemorative work in this way both enlarges the field of what counts as a nuclear energy site or story and invites us to pay attention to a wider swath of people, especially the activists who resisted the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the expansion of nuclear power.

This article is an interview with Ashley Rogers, executive director of Whitney Plantation. Whitney Plantation is the only plantation museum in Louisiana with an exclusive focus on the story of slavery. The museum is located on 200 acres of a former sugar, indigo, and rice plantation that operated from 1752–1975. Whitney Plantation is now a non-profit museum that preserves over a dozen historic structures, many of which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Whitney Plantation Historic District. I asked Rogers to give an interview for this issue of Parks Stewardship Forum because Whitney Plantation is a multi-phase energy story, with compelling climate and environmental justice themes.

An excerpt from the book The Parks Belong to the People: The Geography of the National Park System.

A memoir of the career of Vernon C. (Tom) Gilbert, who played a key role in developing the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization's Man and the Biosphere Program.

A poem in the "Verse in Place" section of Parks Stewardship Forum.