A New Vision for Public Lands.

Americans learn about public lands in history class, but if you live east of the Mississippi, you probably haven't thought about them much since. You might know about the Homestead Act, which encouraged westward expansion by allowing settlers to make claims on land and take ownership after five years of residence. You could possibly recall the Taylor Grazing Act or the Federal Lands Policy and Management Act, which together changed the government's approach from disposal and privatization to holding and management. But unless you've recently gone on a Western road trip, you're unlikely to have noticed that the federal government still owns more than a quarter of the land in this country and that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is the nation's largest landlord, managing 10 percent of the land in the United States. You likely don't know that drilling on public lands is responsible for about a quarter of U.S. carbon emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]