This Land

How Cowboys, Capitalism and Corruption are Ruining the American West

De: Christopher Ketcham

Narrado por: Christopher Ketcham

A hard-hitting look at the battle now raging over the fate of the public lands in the American West--and a plea for the protection of these last wild places

The public lands of the western United States comprise some 450 million acres of grassland, steppe land, canyons, forests, and mountains. It's an American commons, and it is under assault as never before.

Journalist Christopher Ketcham has been documenting the confluence of commercial exploitation and governmental misconduct in this region for over a decade. His revelatory book takes the reader on a journey across these last wild places, to see how capitalism is killing our great commons. Ketcham begins in Utah, revealing the environmental destruction caused by unregulated public lands livestock grazing, and exposing rampant malfeasance in the federal land management agencies, who have been compromised by the profit-driven livestock and energy interests they are supposed to regulate. He then turns to the broad effects of those corrupt politics on wildlife. He tracks the Department of Interior's failure to implement and enforce the Endangered Species Act--including its stark betrayal of protections for the grizzly bear and the sage grouse--and investigates the destructive behavior of U.S. Wildlife Services in their shocking mass slaughter of animals that threaten the livestock industry. Along the way, Ketcham talks with ecologists, biologists, botanists, former government employees, whistleblowers, grassroots environmentalists and other citizens who are fighting to protect the public domain for future generations.

This Land is a colorful muckraking journey--part Edward Abbey, part Upton Sinclair--exposing the rot in American politics that is rapidly leading to the sell-out of our national heritage. The book ends with Ketcham's vision of ecological restoration for the American West: freeing the trampled, denuded ecosystems from the effects of grazing, enforcing the laws already in place to defend biodiversity, allowing the native species of the West to recover under a fully implemented Endangered Species Act, and establishing vast stretches of public land where there will be no development at all, not even for recreation.

Cover Photo courtesy of TWIG Media/Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance

History and more

If you have, or will spend any time in the west you need to listen to this book. Incredible, lyrical and in many ways depressing.

Probably the best book I have listened to

This book is excellent, both in its content and its narration. I highly recommend it for anyone who cares about our public lands. It is well organized and gives the reader a good understanding of the dysfunctional dynamics brought about by our exploitative economic system. Anyone who cares deeply about the plight of wild animals would benefit from listening. Especially meaningful for those of us who live in the western United States but relevant to all. Very well narrated by the author.

Very well read. Thoroughly researched.

Our public lands are on death row, and now we can explore some of  the details of a corrupt and greed-driven prosecution, moved by hypocrites and zealots who subvert our legal system and pervert the language of scripture to justify their personal gain, at the expense of our sacred public trust, and hopefully all just in a nick of time. These gloomy machinations are rolling away as we read on.


And I hope this is just the opening volley from this author, the Helen Prejean of our public lands and the endangered fauna that are facing down a certain death sentence. More needs to be dragged into the light by this dedicated author, who has doggedly investigated and so eloquently written on our behalf many heretofore unheralded facts and facets thus far. So please give him 5 stars everone, it's the best way to ensure another volume will be forthcoming.

Suddenly we have dropped Nature Conservancy from our donations

A tough read but necessary for every remnant 60’s environmentalist that wants to understand a new generation of activism & how we lost the war.

Very Very Powerful

I had to stop listening and just breathe several times with this book. I am aware of a great deal of the environmental damage and corruption in the United States and especially the West but to listen to the history laid out word by careful word, leaving no prisoners , is devastating, powerful, and enlightening. I feel a little wrung out, depressed and above all determined to do more than just donate to Sierra Club and pick up trash.