James R. Skillen

While a rather dry book, which I read for professional reasons, if you're interested in the deep history of the confrontation on the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge you could do worse in terms of a source of insight. Having one time worked in the federal government in resource management, the author traces the halting evolution of the Bureau of Land Management from an agency that existed to facilitate local economic interests (particularly ranching, post-1945) to an agency that would like show more to pursue not just environmental preservation, but environmental restoration. As with most such studies one already gets the sense of a monograph being overtaken by events, but as someone who has had a career working with the records of the BLM I came away much better informed about the materials I was trying to interpret. show less