This Land

Starred review from May 1, 2019
How arrogance and greed are eviscerating public wilderness. Making an impressive book debut, journalist Ketcham, a contributor to Harper's and National Geographic, among other publications, reports on his journeys throughout the West investigating the state of public lands: 450 million acres of land--of which national parks are only a minor portion--that are "managed in trust for the American people" by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. Both agencies, argues the author persuasively, have shown inept oversight, caving to demands of oil, gas, mining, and lumber industries to "defund and defang" environmental laws, "leading always to the transfer of the commons into the hands of the few." In Utah, "rabid Mormons" stridently insist that the "entire federally managed commons" are constitutionally illegal. Latter-day Saints, Ketcham asserts, are anti-science, deny climate change, and hold "naked contempt" for environmental regulation. But they are not alone: Enormously wealthy--and federally subsidized--cattle ranchers, who dominate millions of square miles of public land throughout the West, viciously attack lawmakers and activists who dare to stand up to them, refuse to acknowledge endangered species, and mount sadistic hunts for wolves and coyotes that, they claim erroneously, threaten their cows. Grassland has been degraded by overgrazing and watersheds contaminated by bacteria from cattle waste. Republican and Democratic administrations--including "self-proclaimed protectors" like Barack Obama--have repeatedly betrayed their mandate to protect the environment. Wildlife Services, a Congressional agency, "kills anything under the sun perceived as a threat to stockmen." The Nature Conservancy, likewise, has bowed to corporate power, and federal funding has compromised the missions of well-meaning nonprofits. "To save the public lands," the author maintains, "we need to oppose the capitalist system." Echoing writers such as Bernard DeVoto, Edward Abbey, and Aldo Leopold, Ketcham underscores the crucial importance of diverse, wild ecosystems and urges "a campaign for public lands that is vital, fierce, impassioned, occasionally dangerous, without hypocrisy, that stands against the tyranny of money." Angry, eloquent, and urgent--required reading for anyone who cares about the Earth.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 13, 2019
A vast endowment of public land is being ravaged with the help of the regulators who are supposed to protect it, argues this passionate, sometimes vitriolic environmentalist jeremiad. Journalist Ketcham roams western states surveying commercially driven environmental destruction on huge swaths of federally owned land: grasslands in Utah’s Grand Escalante National Monument ruined by cattle-grazing; wolves and grizzly bears hunted by sportsmen after being cavalierly kicked off the endangered species list; precious sagebrush grouse habitat obliterated by fracking; old-growth wilderness fragmented by roads, logged, and opened to off-road vehicles. His roster of villains is long, including the National Forest Service, portrayed as supine before business interests; the Fish and Wildlife Service, whose trappers slaughter economically inconvenient critters with cyanide bombs; the Bureau of Land Management, “a faithful servant” of lawless cattlemen and “a slavering prostitute” to oil and gas drillers; “collaborationist” environmental groups who greenwash corporate resource extraction; and humankind in general (“Homo sapiens is out of control, a bacteria boiling in a petri dish”). Ketcham balances vehemence with sharp-eyed reportage, fascinating explanations of ecological intricacies, and rapturous evocations of wild places (“the world glows with the new sage and ripples, and the glow races to the ends of the perceptible earth”). Ketcham’s indictment of national environmental policy isn’t evenhanded, but it is powerful. Agent: Jim Rutman, Sterling Lord Literistic.

June 1, 2019

In this debut, journalist Ketcham reports on the conflict between the West's romantic appeal and its current reality, and how these forces are playing out on public land in 11 Western states. The culmination of years of research, interviews, field observation, and travel, this work makes the case that neglectful or corrupt local, state, and federal agencies, along with corporate players and conservation organizations, are either intentionally or inadvertently weakening, disregarding, privatizing, or circumventing laws. In the first section, Ketcham investigates events such as the 2014 Bundy standoff as well as the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and the shrinking of Escalante-Grand Staircase National Monument, both in 2016. Later he focuses on various federal agencies that are complicit in propping up the cowboy myth. The final section describes how conservation organizations have compromised away their vigorous defense of the environment for the "least-bad of the worst options." Ketcham offers solutions to ensure the health and vitality of the West, including ending timber sales, decommissioning roads, and abstaining from giving away public property. VERDICT This work is guaranteed to generate controversy and discussion, and will be a solid companion to Steven Davis's In Defense of Public Lands.--Margaret Atwater-Singer, Univ. of Evansville Lib., IN

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.