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Book Review
| Where Land & Water Meet: A Western Landscape Transformed. By Nancy Langston. Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books Series. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003. xiv+230 pp. Photographs, notes, selected bibliography, index. $26.95.
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| Where Land & Water Meet is a thoughtful journey along the borders between land and water, between the human and the natural. A timely examination of the creation and evolution of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, it coincides with the centennial of the refuge system and more recent conflicts involving the water resources of the Pacific Northwest. |
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Malheur, one of the original fifty-five refuges created by Theodore Roosevelt, is a microcosm for a century of changing land-use practices and evolving conservation ideas. Located in southeastern Oregon, Malheur Lake has been an oasis for waterfowl, humans, and livestock. Beginning in 1872, ranchers and farmers battled for the local land and (more desperately) water, entangling this region's history with Progressive politics and the nascent conservation movement. Drainage and irrigation projects helped make the formerly verdant landscape a dust bowl by the 1930s. It was at this moment that Malheur Refuge was reconstructed from one of the West's great cattle empires into a new empire of ducks. |
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Malheur Refuge was the result of a long-running public relations campaign by photographer William Finley, who depicted the watershed as a wildlife Eden. Yet no sooner were the refuge boundaries expanded in 1934 than a massive era of management and manipulation occurred, arguably more intrusive than earlier grazing regimes. Irrigation canals were dug, waterfowl ponds excavated, and dams built. Natural enemies of this carefully constructed landscape were ruthlessly attacked: 2,4-D was sprayed along waterways to kill willows and carp were poisoned with rotenone, while badgers, muskrats, and other non-avian inhabitants were trapped. The term refuge became a misnomer to all but the favored waterfowl. An emphasis on waterfowl production required intensive management of all natural processes. |
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Yet in a nuanced analysis, Langston finds the strongest advocates for environmental manipulation were not Progressive managers and engineers but rather the most dedicated "preservationists" like Finley, eager to restore a mythical pristine wildlife habitat. Decades of static management ideas and rigid ideologies led to a series of conflicts over floods, grazing, and native fisheries culminating in contemporary compromises and success stories in managing these riparian areas. In the final chapter Langston abandons history for policy proposals, suggesting any successful management regime will require understanding the historical context of various interest groups. Langston's careful explanation of 130 years of landscape management and construction will be of interest to environmental historians. Historians of the American West will appreciate her subtle analysis of the effects of intensive beef and later duck production, while natural resource managers will benefit from her proposed solution of pragmatic adaptive management. |
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Malheur Refuge nicely intersects pivotal moments in the American conservation movement: Theodore Roosevelt's promotion of public lands and the conservation idea, the dust bowls of the 1930s that created the modern refuge system, the vast chemical war against nature that resulted in Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, and new management challenges from the Endangered Species Act. While focusing on the local Langston challenges the reader to reconsider the broader implications of managing natural areas in an increasingly domesticated world. |
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Mark Madison is the historian for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at the National Conservation Training Center, Shepherdstown, West Virginia. |
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