035 - Erika Wolters & Brent Steel - The Environmental Politics & Policy of Western Public Lands

A conversation with Erika Wolters and Brent Steel about their edited collection The Environmental Politics & Policy of Western Public Lands (Oregon State University Press, 2020).

 

Erika Allen Wolters (PhD, Oregon State University) is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and Associate Director of the Public Policy Undergraduate Program in the School of Public Policy at Oregon State University. Her research focuses on environmental behavior, adaptation and policy in response to resource use and conservation in an era of rapid climate change. Focusing primarily on the Western United States, Dr. Wolters examines the interface of science and policy, public lands issues, community resilience, contested natural resources, sustainable behavior, adaptive capacity, and policy regarding food, energy, and water.

Brent S. Steel (PhD, Washington State University) is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Public Policy Graduate Program at Oregon State University, which offers the Master of Public Policy, Executive Master of Public Policy, and the PhD in Public Policy. He teaches courses in science policy, public policy theory, rural policy, climate change politics, and energy policy. Professor Steel is also on the founding and executive boards for Vote Smart (https://votesmart.org), a nonpartisan and nonprofit voter education organization. 

Their collection of essays, The Environmental Politics & Policy of Western Public Lands was published by Oregon State University Press in 2020 but is also available digitally for free (and will be as they update it in the future) via OSU Open Educational Resources. This collection features writers from the fields of political science, public policy, environmental science, the law, and others. It is an excellent primer on a variety of intersecting topics that is powerful as a collection. Together, they demonstrate how interconnected our Western environmental problems (and solutions) are. The individual chapters are also valuable as stand-alone pieces.

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 Podcast Notes:

• Host and Producer Brenden W. Rensink is Associate Director of the Redd Center, an Associate Professor of History at BYU, General Editor of the Intermountain Histories project, and author of the 2018 book Native but Foreign: Indigenous Immigrants and Refugees in the North American Borderlands. Links to other publications and projects here: https://linktr.ee/bwrensink
• Support provided by the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University.
  
• Podcast Music was written and recorded by local Provo composer by Micah Dahl Anderson.