Mission Convergence?: Climate Change and the Management of US Public Lands

Rapid anthropogenic climate change is initiating significant transformations in the ways in which public lands management agencies carry out their mandates. The US Forest Service, US Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, and Bureau of Land Management are each acknowledging and responding to the reality that management techniques that may have been effective in the past will need to change in the current period of accelerated climate change. This essay proposes that climate change offers environmental historians new lenses through which to study the historical trajectory of these agencies as well as the broader issues of American federalism and climate governance. As they adapt their management tools and techniques, the disparate public lands agencies may be experiencing a form of "mission convergence." Responding to the agency of climate, they are reconceptualizing the meanings of conservation, preservation, and wilderness-themes central to environmental history.