Homes on the range: Cooperative conservation and environmental change on California's privately owned hardwood rangelands

This essay describes the conservation history of California's hardwood rangelands: a vast region of oak woodland, grassland, and chaparral vegetation that occurs almost entirely on private property. Conservation has played as important a role in the history of California's privately owned hardwood rangelands as it has on the neighboring public lands administered by the U.S. Forest Service. The story of the hardwood rangelands, which includes a long history of cooperative conservation, challenges the conflict narrative of western rangeland history. It also demonstrates that neither local private control nor centralized public administration offers a panacea for range management.