The Stegner Center’s twenty-second annual symposium, to be held March 23 to 24, 2017, will focus on “Addressing Western Water Issues: Untapped Solutions.” The symposium will first assess how the twin drivers of climate disruption and demographic change are likely to impact water availability in the West over the next 50 years. With these challenges as a backdrop, the Stegner Center’s solution-oriented symposium will focus on practical solutions to problems involving: changing law—legal innovations to address these issues; changing science and the role of technology in improving data-driven water resource planning and management; changing infrastructure and new approaches like recycling wastewater; and changing behaviors—creating incentives that bring about the changes needed to respond to a dynamic world. The symposium will be interdisciplinary in nature and include speakers from the physical, biological and social sciences, academia, government, industry, public interest organizations, and the legal profession. Eric Freyfogle, Swanlund Chair and Professor of Law, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will deliver the Wallace Stegner Lecture in conjunction with the symposium on March 22.
Sanne Knudsen, Stimson Bullitt Endowed Professor of Environmental Law, Associate Professor of Law, University of Washington School of Law, will join the Stegner Center as the Twelfth Annual Stegner Center Young Scholar on November 3 and 4, 2016. During her residency, Professor Knudsen will deliver a Young Scholar Lecture entitled “The Flip Side of Michigan v. EPA: Are Cumulative Impacts Centrally Relevant?” at the College of Law on November 3 and a Downtown CLE presentation on “Has Michigan v. EPA Elevated the Importance of Cost?” on November 4 at Holland & Hart.
The Stegner Center will host John Cruden, Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Environment and Natural Resources Division, United States Department of Justice, for a noon hour talk on September 22 on ”Public Lands, Federal Environmental Law, and the Department of Justice” as part of the Stegner Lecture series. He will discuss the history of public lands and federal environmental law in the context of the work of the U.S. Department of Justice. John C. Cruden was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on December 16, 2014, as the Assistant Attorney General (AAG) for the Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD). Before becoming AAG, Mr. Cruden served as President of the Environmental Law Institute, a nationally recognized bipartisan organization well‐known for its work in educating, publishing, and researching environment, energy, and natural resource issues.
Author and former park ranger Jordan Fisher Smith will join the Stegner Center for a noon hour presentation on September 28 on his new book Engineering Eden: The True Story of a Violent Death, a Trial, and the Fight over Controlling Nature. In the summer of 1972, a young man named Harry Walker left his home on an Alabama farm to find himself in the wide-open spaces of America. Nineteen days later he was killed by a grizzly bear in Yellowstone National Park. Beginning in a federal courtroom where some of the greatest wildlife biologists of the twentieth century testified in a lawsuit filed by Harry Walker’s parents after his death, Smith traces Walker’s fated path to his fatal encounter with the bear and a long scientific controversy over how to restore and maintain patches of wilderness amid growing numbers of people.
On February 23, 2017, the Stegner Center will host Leisl Carr Childers, Assistant Professor, Public History and the American West, University of Northern Iowa, for a presentation on her book “The Size of the Risk: Histories of Multiple Use in the Great Basin.” Leisl Carr Childers examines how different constituencies worked to fill the presumed “empty space” of the Great Basin with a variety of land-use regimes that overlapped, conflicted, and ultimately harmed the environment and the people who depended on the region for their livelihoods. She examines the conflicts that arose from the intersection of an ever-increasing number of activities, such as nuclear testing and wild horse preservation, and how Great Basin residents have navigated these conflicts.
The Stegner Center will join with Utah Open Lands to sponsor a one day conference on Gaining Ground—Utah Open Lands Seminar on November 11. Details and speakers are forthcoming.
The Stegner Center’s popular noon hour Green Bag Series and Stegner Lecture Series will include the following speakers. Additional green bags and Stegner Lectures will be announced.
- September 15, “Population and Climate Change: Coupling Earth and Human Systems,” Eugenia Kalnay, Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland
- January 19 , “The Kolob Tragedy – The Lost Tale of a Canyoneering Calamity,” Noel De Nevers, Author and Professor Emeritus, Chemical Engineering, University of Utah
- January 26, Cagan H. Sekercioglu, Assistant Professor, Biology, University of Utah; Honorary Research Associate at the Centre for Biocultural Diversity, Anthropology Department, University of Kent
- February 16, “Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West,” Sara Dant, Professor of History, Weber State University
- March 7, Bill Hedden, Executive Director, Grand Canyon Trust
For program details, including times and locations, see the Stegner Center online calendar at http://law.utah.edu/research/stegner/.