The Western landscape is in flux. Populations are swelling, sprawl is expanding population centers, water is becoming more precious as a result of drought and diversions, land-management philosophies and practices are generating political frictions. In her latest book, Sara Dant brings perspective to these changes by examining the factors that precipitated them.

That her book should arrive now, at a 180-degree pivot in presidential administrations and political philosophy, in many ways raises the importance of the book. Certainly the recent takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon by a band of Westerners who want the federal government to turn over many of its lands to the states adds to the verity of the book's title, Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West.

There is conflict in the West, between those who want to preserve the landscape and those who believe in multiple use of its resources and that the states should be able to use the lands within their borders as they see fit, regardless of the public domain. An entire book on those disputes could stand on its own, and some have. That we are very likely on the verge of a new environmental philosophy promoted by the incoming Trump administration, one that likely will emphasize exploitation of natural resources, makes it timely to see how the West has been settled and developed.

What Ms. Dant gives us is that background, flowing up almost to the brink of the 2016 election. Indeed, she should be poised and waiting now to produce an addendum to Losing Eden focusing on both the machinations of the Trump administration as well as the ongoing protests of those who believe that the federal government not only commands too much land but manages it miserably. 

We are living, and creating, environmental history on a daily basis in the West. How should grizzly bears be managed in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem? What can be done about dwindling water supplies along Colorado River? Wildfires in recent years have been larger and more damaging than in the past. Climate change is threatening to make over wide swathes of the land. Can we maintain connectivity between various genetic pools of both fauna and flora to help them flourish, or will development further strangle them on shrinking biological islands.

Ms. Dant's book provides context and perspective to this ongoing change. She lays the foundation by geographically defining the West -- "... in this text, the term describes the contiguous, continental region lying west of the 100th meridian." -- and then leads us forward through the human colonizations from Paleoindians and the Fremont and Anasazi cultures, to the arrival of Europeans, and on up to present day. We have the Public Lands Survey System, created by the Congress in 1785 to create a "township and range grid system" explained to us, and are receive a primer on the acquisition and exploration of Western lands through the Louisiana Purchase and other treaties and purchases along with pertinent explorations by the likes of Lewis and Clark, Zebulon Pike, and John Fremont.

And then she outlines the great influx of settlers flowing through the West, looking for suitable lands for cultivation, religious freedom, and, of course, personal gain. She reminds us of the miners, the mountain men, the cattlemen, and the settlers, and the native cultures they forced out and the change they brought to the landscape. All these aspects of, and attempts at, taming and dominating the West continue today. And, of course, these efforts have great impact on the landscape, as Ms. Dant makes clear.

As the world rushed in, however, the rising human tide brought with it techniques to wrest gold from the land that paid little heed to the environmental costs such a bonanza incurred.

Ms. Dant does, as well, remind us of the prophecy made by Major John Wesley Powell, who quickly realized the aridness of the West was a major impediment to settlement.

Needless to say, Powell's caution clashed with western boosterism, and Congress essentially ignored his careful report in favor of "booming" the region's natural resources and transferring public lands into private hands as quickly as possible. In the end, western development would bear little resemblance to Powell's proposals, for better and for worse, yet his prescient observations masterfully identify the environmental challenges still confronting the West even in the twenty-first century.

Though barely 200 pages, and so only a scraping of the surface of the West's evolution, Ms. Dant does much justice, touching on the Mormons' arrival in Utah, the passing of the Indian tribes, dams and water diversions, California's insatiable thirstiness, John Muir's lost battle over Hetch Hetchy, the arrival of the National Park Service to protect some of the West's landscapes, atomic bomb testing, the Spotted Owl, and, Interior Secretary James Watt -- "We will mine more, drill more, cut more timber."

Realizing her editorial limitations, Ms. Dant ends each chapter with a robust list of suggested readings through which you can further bolster your understanding of the issues in play.

The author leaves us without an illuminating panacea for how we can sustainably consume the West. Rather, she urges us to talk and compromise for what's best for this landscape we love.

"The complex symbiotic relationship between humans and the environment reveals that there is no 'pristine myth' to which we should strive to return; the West as 'Eden' has always been a false illusion and it is time to lose it once and for all," she concludes. "Instead, it is time for a new, collective paradigm -- what we might instead call a 'triumph of the commons.' Just as no one person is responsible for environmental decline, no one person can hope to change the West's -- or the planet's -- environment. But when each individual acts in the common good, rather than in his or her own selfish interest, the results promise extraordinary dividends -- what writer Sherwood Anderson has called 'a sense of bigness outside ourselves.' If it is true that we care about what we know, then the simple question is: what will you do? "