Symposium on Recreation Challenges on Public Lands
The Stegner Center’s 24th annual symposium on “Recreation Challenges on Public Lands” generated tremendous interest, attracting over 400 attendees and bringing together 19 speakers from a variety of disciplines from around the country. Bob Keiter, the Director of the Stegner Center and one of the organizers of this year’s symposium, observed: “This year’s symposium topic of Recreation Challenges on Public Lands responded to suggestions we received following last year’s symposium on public lands. Reviewing those comments, we recognized the strong interest in the growing scale, impact, and related conflicts of diverse recreational activities on the public lands in Utah and across the West. Outdoor recreation is big business today and has become the most pervasive use of public lands, presenting public land managers with difficult challenges especially in this era of shrinking budgets. We designed the symposium to highlight these issues and provide the audience with potential solutions.”
On Thursday, the symposium examined the economic, social, and legal framework for recreation on the public lands. The symposium opened with a presentation entitled “An Introduction to Recreation on Public Lands” delivered by Rebecca Watson, former Dept. of the Interior Assistant Secretary for Lands and Mineral Management, and a presentation by Ray Rasker of Headwater Economics on economic and demographic changes in the West. There followed a panel discussion on perspectives on outdoor recreation, with Stephen Lockhart of NatureBridge and Vicki Varela of the Utah Office of Tourism. Christopher Keyes, the editor of Outside magazine, was supposed to also join the panel discussion, but he was unable to attend. Lunch was followed by a moving film on “Return from Desolation” and a discussion with Garrett Eaton, a veteran, on the healing and regenerative aspects of recreating in nature. Nextwas a panel discussion on “Recreation Challenges in Moab, Utah” with a diverse group of speakers, including Clif Koontz of Ride with Respect, Ashley Korenblat of Western Spirit Cycling, Emily Niehaus, the Mayor of Moab, and John Steiger, the former Dept. Of the Interior Regional Solicitor. The day concluded with “A Conversation with the Secretary” between Sally Jewell, Secretary of the Interior, 2013-2017 and Bob Keiter, the Director of the Stegner Center.
On Friday, the symposium opened with a presentation on “Hunting, Fishing, and Conservation on Public Lands” by Whit Fosburgh of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, followed by a panel discussion focused on “Recreation Dilemmas on the Wasatch Front.” This lively discussion included Ralph Becker with the Central Wasatch Commission, Carl Fisher with Save our Canyons, Nathan Rafferty with Ski Utah, and Dave Whittekiend with the USDA Forest Service Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest. The symposium concluded with a conversation on “Confronting the Recreation-Conservation Divide: A Dialogue,” in which Ethan Linck of the University of Washington Dept. of Biology and Louis Geltman of the Outdoor Alliance considered the thorny question of how—or if—outdoor recreation creates a conservation ethic. Linck’s 2018 op-ed entitled “Your Stoke Won’t Save Us” stirred considerable attention when it appeared in High Country News (HCN), including a spirited response from Louis Geltman in a following HCN issue.
Additional information about the symposium, including a link to the brochure, is available online at https://law.utah.edu/projects/stegner-annual-symposium/ The symposium was recorded and the talks have been posted online at https://youtu.be/8Y9Wf4aXjN8
Stegner Conference on PURPA@40
The Stegner Center held an all-day conference on November 9 on “PURPA@40: Renewable Energy Law and Policy in the United States.” Topics covered included the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA) and the rise of U.S. renewable energy policy, PURPA challenges today, emerging trends in U.S. renewable energy law and policy, international perspectives on renewable energy policy, and rooftop solar and the future of the electricity grid. Speakers included the following:
- Vicki Baldwin, Shareholder, Parsons Behle & Latimer
- Galen Barbose, Research Scientist, Electricity Markets and Policy Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
- William Boyd, Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law; Professor, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability
- Allison Clements, Program Director, Clean Energy Markets at the Energy Foundation
- Peter Connor, Senior Lecturer in Renewable Energy Policy, University of Exeter
- Penelope Crossley, Senior Lecturer, University of Sydney Law School
- Lincoln Davies, Hugh B. Brown Presidential Endowed Chair in Law and the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law (now Dean, Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University
- Emily Sanford Fisher, Vice President, Law and Corporate Secretary, Edison Electric Institute (EEI) in Washington, D.C
- Seongwook Heo, Professor of Public Law and Faculty Director for the Graduate Program in Public Law, Seoul National University Law School
- Richard Hirsh, Professor of History of Technology and Science & Technology Studies, Virginia Tech
- Kevin Jones, Professor and the Director of the Institute for Energy and the Environment (IEE), Vermont Law School
- Travis Kavulla, Vice Chairman, Montana Public Service Commission
- Michelle Brandt King, Partner, Holland & Hart LLP
- Alexandra Klass, Distinguished McKnight University Professor, University of Minnesota Law School
- Kate Konschnik, Climate & Energy Program, Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, Duke University; Senior Lecturing Fellow, Duke Law School
- Robert Lifset, Associate Professor of History, University of Oklahoma
- Felix Mormann, Professor, Texas A&M University School of Law; Faculty Fellow, Stanford University’s Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance
- Danya Rumore, Director, Environmental Dispute Resolution Program, Wallace Stegner Center; Research Assistant Professor, S.J. Quinney College of Law and the College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Utah
- Leah Stokes, Assistant Professor, U.C. Santa Barbara
- Megan McKay Withroder, in-house attorney, PacifiCorp
- Christopher Worley, Director of Rate Design, vivint.Solar
Young Scholar Uma Outka
Uma Outka, a Professor of Law at the University of Kansas School of Law, joined the Stegner Center as the 14th Annual Stegner Center Young Scholar on November 14 to15, 2018. She delivered a Young Scholar Lecture at the College of Law on November 14 on “State Energy Law for a Modern Low-Carbon Grid” and a Downtown CLE presentation at Holland & Hart on November 15 on “Recent State Law Developments for Renewable Energy.” Her Young Scholar Lecture will be published in an upcoming environmental and natural resources law issue of the student-edited Utah Law Review.
Stegner Center Lecture Series
The Stegner Center hosted a variety of speakers for our noon-hour lecture series, including the following speakers:
- “This Land is… Whose Land? Conflicts in Federal Land Management and Why They Matter” a panel discussion with Jared Bennett, First Assistant United States Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice; Steve Ellis, Former BLM-Deputy Director; Tyler Green, Solicitor General, Office of the Utah Attorney General; and William Myers III, Holland & Hart (Former Interior Department-Solicitor)
- “The Future of Conservation in America: A Chart for Rough Water” with Jon Jarvis, Former National Park Service Director, and Gary Machlis, Former Science Advisor to National Park Service Director
- “Wildfire: On the Front Lines with Station 8” with Heather Hansen, award-winning reporter and author
- “Energy Sprawl Solutions: Balancing Global Development and Conservation” with Joseph Keisecker, Lead Scientist, The Nature Conservancy’s Conservation Lands Team
- ”Sage Spirit” with Dave Showalter, Conservation Photographer and Author
- ”Breakpoint—Reckoning with America’s Environmental Crises” with Jeremy Jackson, Professor of Oceanography Emeritus, Scripps Institution of Oceanography; Senior Scientist Emeritus, Smithsonian Institution
- “Sidestepping Impasse in the U.S. Senate” with Jeff Bingaman, Former U.S. Senator, New Mexico, 1983-2013