The Roads Less Traveled: Looking for Certainty in the Colorado Roadless Rule and Media Coverage

While debates centering on people and their relationship to the environment have been an important point of controversy in environmental public policy arenas, there has also been significant debate about the devolution of governmental control of federal lands. Scholars, politicians, and special interest groups have long debated whether state and federal agencies manage public lands for increased economic or environmental benefits (Koontz, 2002). This paper presents a small piece of ongoing discussion, highlighting how the media portray contestation over land management between key stakeholders. To do this, researchers focused on one rule, the Colorado Roadless Rule (CRR), which is a unique site for exploring the debates surrounding proper use and management of federal lands, devolution of governmental control, and stakeholder contestation involved in environmental land management cases. Researchers used newspaper articles to examine how media professionals with different audiences (namely local, regional, and national) report the CRR controversy. This paper presents an overview of the debate surrounding roadless areas since their creation in 1999, and what themes and content were present in articles covering the CRR controversy during a 90-day public comment period in 2008.