The Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources and the Environment
is one of seven inaugural academic partners for Ground Shift, a new independent, cross-partisan initiative to reimagine how the United States manages its public lands, waters and ocean.
Ground Shift will leverage and support the work of the Stegner Center, which has long been a source of deep expertise and high-impact scholarship on public land and water policy and law. The partnership will encourage fresh thinking and dialogue about the future of America’s public lands and waters in the face of accelerating 21st-century challenges.
Ground Shift operates as an ideas hub, including through an online platform to publish essays from a wide range of voices with bold, new proposals; convenings to tackle foundational questions; and partnerships designed to build a broad and innovative agenda.
The initiative is rooted in a simple premise: Americans across political, geographic, and cultural lines value the parks, forests, oceans, deserts, and rivers they share. And they want to see more of what they care about: healthier parks and forests, thriving big game populations, balanced use of resources, more voice for communities, and greater collaboration with Tribal nations in the stewardship of ancestral homelands.
“There is a growing consensus across geographies, political parties, and perspectives that it’s time to rethink and reimagine the future of America’s public lands, waters, and ocean,” said Matt Lee-Ashley, executive director of Ground Shift. “Ground Shift’s mission is to help lift up new ideas, encourage serious and respectful dialogue, and help forge innovative solutions to the challenges facing the lands and waters that bind us together.”
Ground Shift’s inaugural academic partners are:
- The Wallace Stegner Center at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law
- The Bolle Center for People and Forests at the University of Montana
- The Emmett Environmental Law Center at Harvard Law School
- The Environmental Law, Science, and Policy Program at the University of Arizona School of Law
- The Getches-Wilkinson Center at the University of Colorado School of Law
- Penn Washington at the University of Pennsylvania
- The Salazar Center for North American Conservation at Colorado State University
To learn more about Ground Shift, visit GroundShift.us.