1
" The annual volume of forest felled during the Obama administration was higher than all the years during the George W. Bush administration but one. In the year Obama took office, 2009, the cut was 1,954,092,000 board feet; at the end of the Obama administration in 2016 it was up to 2,536,601,000 board feet, an increase of almost 30 percent. Much of this was done under the pretext of preventing wildfire. "
― Christopher Ketcham , This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption Are Ruining the American West
6
" Unmolested and with grass to eat, a tortoise can live eighty years. Their populations have plummeted in the Mojave in recent years, victims of a perfect storm of drought, sprawl development, solar energy projects, off-road vehicle enthusiasts (who crush them under their wheels), poaching, vandals with pistols (who use them for target practice), and, not least, livestock grazing. "
― Christopher Ketcham , This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption Are Ruining the American West
11
" Attack the value of public lands as a national birthright, reduce their worth in the public eye, diminish the institutions that protect the land, cut down their authority, bring them into disrepute, undermine public confidence, neuter enforcement, create a climate of uncertainty and disorder, demoralize the land managers--this is the long game now being played. "
― Christopher Ketcham , This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption Are Ruining the American West
12
" Public lands seizure, conceived as a fell swoop of the sword, will likely never come to pass. The law bars it, precedent bars it, and the Supreme Court has spoken to this effect repeatedly. FLPMA, unless amended by Congress, establishes that the land shall remain in the hands of all citizens in perpetuity. I think the seizure will require more delicate schemes, slowly moving and imperceptibly violent. In Congress it starts with an amendment to an appropriations bill here and there. A rider or two or three to bills that otherwise must pass to maintain the budget. It’s easy to curtail the protection of seeming irrelevancies like grass, soil, water, air, and wildlife when the public is distracted with the question of whether the government will go on functioning. "
― Christopher Ketcham , This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption Are Ruining the American West
16
" The socially validated natural beauty, deriving charisma from moisture, is the forest, the waterfall, the alpine meadow, the mountaintop crisp with snow. But the grace of the arid steppe, the subtlety of the life there, the muted shades of color, the delicate perfumes, these are unsung, unloved. The sage steppe is the orphan child of the environmental movement. There is almost no literature celebrating it. "
― Christopher Ketcham , This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption Are Ruining the American West
