Interpreting wilderness policy in the Bureau of Land Management.

In 1976, Congress directed the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to review 178 million acres of public lands to identify, by 1991, areas warranting wilderness designation. In response, BLM established a wilderness program and conducted a wilderness review of the public lands in eleven western states. This action generated controversy inside and outside the agency. Much of the controversy arises from the opposition between the development philosophy associated with management of the public lands and the preservation philosophy associated with wilderness. This study examined process and content aspects of the BLM wilderness program. Data were gathered from documents and through participant observation and in-depth interviews. They were analyzed by ethnomethodology, content analysis, and semiotic analysis to develop interpretations of how wilderness policy is implemented within the context of agency culture. As policy process, this is a case of agency members implementing ambiguous policy. Ambiguity exists when multiple or no clear single meanings are present; it is accompanied by interpretive action taken by policy participants. Thus, BLM personnel interpret wilderness policy repeatedly as the program moves through various phases. Relative to content, the study considered interpretations of wilderness in light of environmental ethics and political geography. It examined how agency personnel interpret connections between nature and humans and, further, how these interpretations are manifested in space through the creation and enforcement of boundaries. The agency structure as a set of resource programs that facilitate use provides one understanding through which wilderness is interpreted. This dominant understanding is in tension with another understanding of agency activities as regulating use to mediate among uses. The idea of regulating use to mediate among uses is shown to be sometimes challenged by interpretations of wilderness policy used to minimize impacts of human use on environmental subjects. The boundaries of wilderness areas provide a mechanism through which interpretive action occurs. They are used to enforce meanings of territories relative to (1) other resource programs; (2) the wilderness program; and (3) elements of nature. As debate occurs over what constitutes appropriate action in wilderness areas, new understandings of wilderness policy arise.PhDUrban, Technological, and Environmental Planning: Environmental PlanningUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/104466/1/9527632.pdfDescription of 9527632.pdf : Restricted to UM users only