Thomas (1997a, pp 283-85) Unless otherwise indicated, all the information in this section is drawn from a doctoral thesis by Craig Thomas (Thomas, 1997a) I was a mem-

ber of the supervising committee. I have also benefited from personal conversations with Thomas.

California was geographically distributed in patchwork style. Any plan for endangered species habitat would almost certainly involve the BLM with many adjacent landowners, both private and public. It would be far easier to deal with other public land managers than with private landowners.

Hastey's concern for protecting the bureau's traditional multiple-use policies of land management dovetailed with the biodiversity concerns of environmental scientists and ecologically minded resource managers in the BLM and in a number of federal and state agencies. By 1991 this professional ecologist community had established a fairly strong com- munications network across the relevant agencies. In 1983 three federal regional offices and three state agencies had created an Interagency Natural Areas Coordinating Committee that committed them, in prin- ciple, to a "vaguely defined process" for identifying natural areas and recommending management alternatives.83 The plan languished for six years but was given a new life in 1989 when a revised agreement was signed, this time with the forceful support of Hastey, almost alone among agency directors.

Also in 1989 the California state legislature directed the California Resources Agency to improve interagency coordination on wildlife and timberland management. This agency housed both the Department of Fish and Game and the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The agency convened the Timberland Task Force, composed of high-level representatives of five state agencies, four federal regional offices, and two private organizations. It was assisted by a technical committee. Progress was slow, however—too slow for Hastey, who successfully persuaded the task force chair to establish an ad hoc committee to the task force, which he hoped would come to grips with the problem of planning and managerial fragmentation in, at least initially, the key tim- berland province of concern to the BLM: the Klamath. This ad hoc com- mittee brought together a wide range of professional ecologists and some ecologically minded resource managers from the several agencies. The result of the ad hoc committee's efforts was a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on biodiversity signed in mid-1991 by ten state and federal agency directors; within the next year it was signed by another sixteen agencies. The signers "agree to make the maintenance and enhancement of biological diversity a preeminent goal in their

protection and management p o l i c i e s . . . . The basic means of imple- menting the strategy are to be improved coordination, information exchange, conflict resolution, and collaboration among the signatory parties. . . . [The] tools may include the establishment of mitigation and development banks, planning and zoning authorities, land and reserve acquisition, incentives, alternative land management prac- tices, restoration, and fees and regulation."84

The BLM conception of best practices in resources management entailed heavy reliance on the voluntary cooperation of local parties, private and public. Along with the Soil Conservation Service, BLM had been a heavy user of the coordinated resource management and plan- ning process (CRMP, or "crimp") developed in the 1950s in Oregon and Nevada to resolve multijurisdiction problems on western rangelands. Hastey and others saw to it that the MOU on biodiversity, therefore, had a clear commitment to involving local interests in all aspects of planning and implementation.

As an exercise in interagency cooperation the memorandum subse- quently proved to be a great success. In terms of promoting actual bio- diversity, however, it has been a seeming failure, at least in the short run. Apart from pooling data—admittedly no small matter—very little collaboration on biodiversity planning or joint implementation has actually occurred as a result. The reason is simple: Politically, biodiver- sity has too many enemies and not enough friends. The commitment to localism packed the policymaking arena with county supervisors, most of whom had no use whatever for biodiversity, ecological thinking, or the Endangered Species Act. As it turned out, CRMPs were a mislead- ing forerunner, inasmuch as the implementers of the system rarely asked local interests to forgo as much prospect of private wealth as the MOU on biodiversity would normally have implied. Also, not all the relevant agency directors believed their agencies were subject to possi- ble lawsuits of the type that had undone the Forest Service and that clearly threatened the BLM. Moreover, even those who were more con- cerned, such as Hastey, were unable to convince their middle managers that biodiversity was itself desirable or that lawsuits were actually wait- ing in the wings.

In the longer run, the MOU may have a significant effect. It has raised awareness of biodiversity as a value, legitimated the use of eco-

logical rhetoric and analytical models, and given lower-level staff and managers a certain mandate, albeit an imprecise and contestable one, to use agency resources, within limits that must usually be strenuously negotiated, for the purposes of protecting biodiversity. Although many ecologists are disappointed in the results, it is probable that their com- munity and their ideals are today in much better shape with the mem- orandum in place than they would have been otherwise.

Military Base Closure and Reuse

Since 1988 the Department of Defense (DOD) has closed approxi- mately 130 military bases in the United States in four separate rounds.85 Unlike earlier base closure efforts, the task of designating the bases was given to a special commission. The commission was to name its list for each round, and the Congress and the president would accept or reject the whole list. The intention was to minimize the veto points that local opponents of closure might be able to manipulate politically. These clo- sures were also to be different in that each community affected by clo- sure would be given a chance to create a Local Reuse Authority (LRA) that would plan for the reuse of the property and to purchase or lease the property for its own purposes. The military was to defer to local desires as expressed in the plan. The DOD Office of Economic Adjust- ment was to make grants to the LRA to help the members plan, and it would assign staff members to act as liaisons among the LRA, the mili- tary services, and the DOD. Congress hoped that these procedures would soften the impact on the local economies.

Many of the bases are severely contaminated. In the aggregate, the cost of environmental cleanup on closing bases could run into the tens of billions of dollars and last until 2010 or longer. Negotiations over how much cleanup is appropriate at any site and what remedies ought to be chosen are often difficult, but they are probably no more so than in

85. For a time during 1995-971 w a s consulting to an MIT team studying base closure