front cover of The Environmental Politics and Policy of Western Public Lands
The Environmental Politics and Policy of Western Public Lands
Erika Allen Wolters
Oregon State University Press, 2020
The management of public lands in the West is a matter of long-standing and oft-contentious debates. The government must balance the interests of a variety of stakeholders, including extractive industries like oil and timber; farmers, ranchers, and fishers; Native Americans; tourists; and environmentalists. Local, state, and government policies and approaches change according to the vagaries of scientific knowledge, the American and global economies, and political administrations. Occasionally, debates over public land usage erupt into major incidents, as with the armed occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016.

While a number of scholars work on the politics and policy of public land management, there has been no central book on the topic since the publication of Charles Davis's Western Public Lands and Environmental Politics (Westview, 2001). In The Environmental Politics and Policy of Western Public Lands, Erika Allen Wolters and Brent Steel have assembled a stellar cast of scholars to consider long-standing issues and topics such as endangered species, land use, and water management while addressing more recent challenges to western public lands like renewable energy siting, fracking, Native American sovereignty, and land use rebellions. Chapters also address the impact of climate change on policy dimensions and scope.
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front cover of New Strategies for Wicked Problems
New Strategies for Wicked Problems
Science and Solutions in the 21st Century
Edward P. Weber
Oregon State University Press, 2017
According to Wikipedia: "A wicked problem is one that is impossible or difficult to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize.  The term 'wicked' refers to such a problem's resistance to resolution, not to an evil nature.  Classic examples of wicked problems include economic, environmental, and political issues.”
 
We now live in a world full of wicked problems, most of them urgent challenges calling out for creative, democratic, and effective solutions.  Ed Weber, Denise Lach, and Brent Steele, of the Oregon State University School of Public Policy, solicited papers from a wide variety of accomplished scholars in the fields of science, politics, and policy with significant research experience to address this challenge.  The resultant collection focuses on major contemporary environmental and natural resource policy issues, and proposes an assortment of alternative problem-solving methodologies to tackle such problems. 
 
New Strategies for Wicked Problems will appeal to scholars, students, and decision-makers wrestling with wicked problems and “post-normal” science settings beyond simply environmental and natural resource-based issues.  It will provide much needed guidance to policymakers, citizens, public managers, and various stakeholders who are struggling with wicked problems in their professional lives.

Other Contributors:
Tanya Heikkila
Helen Ingram
Ann C. Keller
Bob Lackey
Anna Pakenham Stevenson
Christopher M. Weible
Daniel R. Williams
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