ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes both the changes and the continuities in federal land management over the period 1970–2000. It shows a marked increase in federal lands managed for wilderness and conservation purposes. Personnel in the Fish and Wildlife Service find themselves in much the same budgetary bind as in Bureau of Land Management, and the National Park Service and Forest Service staff see themselves as only marginally better off. Arguably the most significant change—and certainly the most apparent—in federal land management over the past thirty years has been in the area of workforce diversity. Lawsuits divert time and money from the agencies' basic activities. The agency workforce maintaining this land has also changed over the past thirty years. The most important trend identified has been the positive increase in workforce diversity, both in gender and in ethnicity.
