Environmental & Natural Resource Economics 10th Edition by Thomas Tietenberg,Lynne Lewis

Exercise 2

his book The Federal Lands Revisited, Marion Clawson proposed what he called the "pull- back concept":
Under the pullback concept any person or group could apply, under applicable law, for a tract of federal land, for any use they chose; but any other person or group would have a limited time between the filing of the initial application and granting of the lease or the making of the sale in which to "pull back" apart of the area applied for. … The user of the pullback provision would become the applicant for the area pulled back, required to meet the same terms applicable to the original application,… but the use could be what the applicant chose, not necessarily the use proposed by the original applicant [p. 216].
Evaluate the pullback concept as a means for conservationists to prevent some mineral extraction or timber harvesting on federal lands.