For the past 10 years I’ve been documenting the fate of the least protected and most at-risk portion of the national commons: the roughly 450 million acres across 12 Western states overseen on our behalf by the US Bureau of Land Management and the US Forest Service. …Both the B.L.M. and the Forest Service operate with a congressional mandate for what’s called “multiple use” management. On paper, multiple use means exploiting the land for its resources in a way that maintains ecosystem health. In practice, it long amounted to… “semantics for making cattlemen, sheepmen, lumbermen, miners the main beneficiaries.” Regulation has improved somewhat since that time. …Journey across the B.L.M. and Forest Service domain today and you’ll find no shortage of uses that look more like abuses. …Forests are felled for timber interests, grasslands are overgrazed for the benefit of cattlemen. The result is ecological impoverishment. [a NY Times subscription is required to access the full story]