Amenity Landownership, Land Use Change, and the Re-Creation of “Working Landscapes”

Abstract

In recent years the “working landscape” concept has risen to prominence in popular, academic, and policy discourse surrounding conservation of both natural and cultural values in inhabited landscapes. Despite its implied reconciliation of commodity production and environmental protection, this concept remains contested terrain, masking tensions over land use practices and understandings of human–nature relations. Here we draw on a case study of landownership and land use change in remote, rural Wallowa County, Oregon to explore how working landscapes are envisioned and enacted by various actors. The arrival of landowning amenity migrants, many of whom actively endorsed a working landscape vision, resulted in subtle but significant transformations in land use practices and altered opportunities for local producers. The working landscape ideal, while replete with tensions and contradictions, nevertheless functioned as an important alternative vision to the rural gentrification characteristic of other scenic Western environs.

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