Public land management: New mandate for the land grant university?

Today‘s urbanized society no longer views natural resources primarily as commodities for extraction. There is growing concern for developing sustainable, healthy life styles from the land base; there is increasing controversy about the effects of agriculture on the management of natural resources, and public lands in particular. California’s natural resources emanate from a rich and diverse land base of 100 million acres. Of that land, less than 20% has been completely converted to human use, whether for cultivated farmland or urban and suburban development. More than 80 million acres are to some degree ”natural lands,” including 40 million acres used for grazing, 12 million in parks and reserves, and 17 million in productive forest available for timber harvest.