Declaring Disaster

Abstract

The major federal lands laws, the National Environmental Policy Act ("NEPA"), the Endangered Species Act ("ESA"), the Federal Advisory Committee Act ("FACA"), and the traditional principles of administrative law have all combined to set a status quo with which public lands lawyers and conservationists are familiar. But wildfire has just as surely made each of our four compass points into its own special sort of paradox and is now undermining the very norms that defined this field. Whatever happens next, fire is one force among several poised to remake public lands law into a wholly unprecedented collection of institutional and normative forms still in their infancy-challenging anyone who would call it an "architecture" to explain and justify it. One way or another, in the face of mounting ecological disturbance, risk, and political turmoil, public lands law as we know it is either going to adapt or be marginalized. I conclude with some suggestions for how we might bring the values that gave rise to the field of public lands law into a future of assessing and managing multiple-scale risks like wildfire across our intermixed landscape. Part II first sketches the fire problem and the intermixture of our land use systems. Part III then introduces the new normative and organizational forms wildfire has prompted into existence. And Part IV seeks to reconcile what we know about fire and these innovations with our hopes for land and local autonomy as they intermix in the WUI.