Paul F. Starrs

Hunting in Managed Oak Woodlands: Contrasts Among Similarities

Distinct cultural and legal histories governing the property rights that regulate wildlife and land tenure in California and Spain have created dissimilar hunting systems. The differences that are manifest in the methods of hunting, the economic return to landowners, the actions taken to manage game species, and the accompanying environmental effects. Private landowners in Spain retain greater control of game species, while in California, the state and federal government exerts greater authority. After providing background on the game species and systems of hunting in California and Spain, a review of the legal and cultural history illustrates how distinct systems evolved in places that are similar in many other ways. In terms of economics, hunting revenue in Spain is often greater than in California, due to higher hunter participation rates, fewer governmental restrictions that limit the commercialization of hunting, and greater liberties in hunting methods and game management practices. As such, income from hunting provides a greater incentive for Spanish landowners to maintain areas of habitat for game species. Some of the greatest contrasts between these places are illustrated in wildlife management practices, where Spanish landowners can implement far more intensive practices to manipulate populations of game species. Numerous environmental effects can result from these management practices, which include changes to vegetation, erosion, genetic impacts, invasive species introductions, and impacts to non-game species.

Utopia, Dystopia, and Sublime Apocalypse in Montana's Church Universal and Triumphant

Abstract. The search for a perfected place on earth is rarely easy or forgiving. Utopias and dystopias demonstrate the practical frailties of attempts to build better human associations, whether as literary efforts or in actual, on‐the‐ground experiments. With a proprietary interest in evaluating the dimensions of place making, geographers can lay claim to be frontline critics of efforts that attempt to craft a better world. The catalog of personality cultists, charismatically murderous leaders, and apocalyptic mass death is long. The Church Universal and Triumphant, currently of Paradise Valley, Montana, is examined as the home for twenty‐five years of an ongoing effort to “improve” lives. If its dilemmas and apparent failures are in keeping with the history of past utopian ventures, geographical lessons remain to be learned about the costs of planning for perfection.

Working Landscapes of the Spanish Dehesa and the California Oak Woodlands: An Introduction

Oak woodlands have offered a welcoming environment for human activities for tens of thousands of years, but how that history has unfolded has many variations. The long-time collaboration that led to this book ran into complications arising from the different meanings attached to many a term, including struggles over the most appropriate title, settling on common units of measurement and area, quantifying the woodland’s extent in Spain and California, and even in deciding how many oaks constitute a woodland. Defining with anything approaching international precision such terms as oak woodlands, oak woodland ranches, and wooded dehesas is nuanced, and is compounded by distinctions in culture and language. But our efforts to dovetail one inscrutable system with another may offer insight into the relationship of humans with environments long occupied and modified, as further shaped by location, history, and opportunity. In 15 chapters we offer a comparison of conservation and management on California oak woodland ranches and in the dehesas of Spain, including economic, institutional, ecological, spatial, and geographical aspects, from how to raise an Iberian pig to what we can learn about oak woodlands with remote sensing.

The Paradoxical Black Rock City: All Cities Are Mad

Since 1986, Burning Man has evolved from an obscure bohemian San Francisco solstice celebration into the worlds largest intentional community, anchored by annual burns on a playa in Nevadas Black Rock country. Participants embrace an ethos that radically challenges mainstream culture through Black Rock Citys yearly (re)formation, negotiation, immolation, and deconstruction. Voicing curiosity, as humanists, in who we are, what we do, and why we do it, we examine rituals associated with this transitory yet international‐scale event. Such happenings imply a human need to seek clarity, dwell in close confines, and engage with a utopian desire for concerted communal participation. Yet, there exist historical‐cultural paradoxes associated with Burning Man, including steep entry barriers that reinforce an elite homogeneous population no longer representative of Burning Mans distinctive California roots.

Raising Livestock in Oak Woodlands

In Spain and California, oak woodlands are often used for livestock grazing and husbandry. Livestock raised on the range include sheep, goats, cattle, and horses. In addition, two distinctive Spanish dehesa products are only rarely seen in California, the free-range domestic pig and the fighting bull. The grazing and land-use systems are markedly distinct in each country, even though strong historical and economic connections exist, and climate and ecology are similar. Discussion of the use by livestock of mast and other forage emphasizes the agrosilvopastoral roots of livestock husbandry in Spain. A facet especially worthy of note is the distinctive rearing of the Iberian pig, and the pig’s role in modern-day Spanish food culture and iconography. In California, land use change is a major threat to traditional oak woodland ranching, while in Spain the declining economic value of some dehesa products has caused losses in the diversity of management. In Spain, markets for unique local livestock products are well developed, with denominations of origin and certification of livestock breeds and production systems. In California, attempts to develop niche markets for unique rangeland livestock products are in early development, but fit a growing interest in local, sustainable, forms of agricultural production, and demand for grass-fed, organic, or “natural” meats (with no hormones or sub-therapeutic antibiotics). The conclusions highlight commonalities and differences between Spanish and Californian livestock production. It remains to be seen whether changing markets can make grazing in the woodlands an enterprise profitable enough to sustain itself in the decades ahead.

MEETINGHOUSES IN THE MORMON MIND: IDEOLOGY, ARCHITECTURE, AND TURBULENT STREAMS OF AN EXPANDING CHURCH*

ABSTRACT. Early work by D. W. Meinig delimiting “The Mormon Culture Region” focused on the spread of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‐day Saints (lds) in a core, domain, and sphere scheme that recognized diffusion of a fast‐growing group bent on shifting its station from cultural edge to religious mainstream. Such a changeover from fringe belief to international force lacks any widely circulated rule book. The lds and its followers today extend influence through diverse, distinct pathways: making missionaries a recognizable global force, offering education on church‐controlled university campuses, emanating wholesomeness, entering high‐security federal service, and attaining national political power. But nothing so locks in an lds message as the standard‐plan meetinghouses, in uniform styles, that mark church presence in North America and other continents. This work analyzes that architecture and examines its fit within lds expansion and presentation of self, not just in the Salt Lake City church but even as imitated by outcast outliers.

Whither Working Oak Woodlands

Comparative research into the human-maintained economic and ecological systems referred to as working landscapes is a rarity in the literature. Nonetheless, developing such comparisons is the end goal of this book. Altogether, 44 field scientists are contributing authors, with some appearing in multiple contributions, but others spelling out the specific knowledge crucial to just one part of a single chapter. In this final commentary, the book’s editors lay out the conclusions attained in this extended inquiry, suggest research needs and lessons learned, and raise the issue of policies that are needed, some urgently, to support oak woodland working landscapes. We recognize a number of takeaway lessons from this long-term project, including advances in economic analysis that make it possible to assess the total economic value of a landscape. We have come to, as we journeyed through the production of this volume, an overall conclusion that seems to us important: Just because two places appear similar hardly means that they are alike; oftentimes the variations are far more than skin deep. But with that as an initial concession, it pays to acknowledge how much can be learned from comparative research that matches physical, cultural, historical, economic, and geographical features, and then carefully places likenesses and departures side-by-side, in a deliberate attempt to learn across oceans, landscapes, economies, and societies.

GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW ESSAY: WHEN THE DOZERS CAME, ONLY MUSIC WAS LEFT: RY COODER ON CHÁVEZ RAVINE*

CHÁVEZ RAVINE: A Record by Ry Cooder. Produced by Ry Cooder, with Little Willie G., Lalo Guerrero, Ersi Arvizu, Don Tosti, Flaco Jimenez, Bla Pahinui CHÁVEZ RAVINE, 1949: A Los Angeles Story. By Don Normark. CHÁVEZ RAVINE: A Los Angeles Story. Directed by Jordan Mechner; produced by Jordan Mechner, Don Normark, Andrew B. Andersen, and Mark Moran; photographs by Don Normark; music by Ry Cooder; narrated by Cheech Marin; 24 minutes.

Hard Places: Reading the Landscape of America's Historic Mining Districts by Richard V. Francaviglia (review)

As A SLICE OF ANALYTICAL cultural geography, Richard Francaviglia’s 1991 Hard Places: Reading the Landscape o f America’s Historic Mining Districts is more readily respected than enjoyed. This is a decent book in a well-meaning academic sense. It is solid and strongly built, an Oldsmobile of the cultural landscape. Beyond its easily recognized worthiness as a pedagogical volume, this book suffers from overbearing seriousness. It fails to convey even a fleeting glimpse of the wondrous sense of joy that enchants devotees of ghost towns and the all-but-abandoned mining sites that dot North America and especially the arid American West. Not quite a field guide or a “how-to” book, nor a conventional historical geography, the text, with a terrific assortment of well-integrated photographs, is mostly just