Moving Toward Community-Based Environmental Management

Abstract

As environmental protection efforts increasingly focus on land use decisions, local governments face mounting pressures to control development in wetland areas. These pressures are especially strong as citizens and environmental groups recognize the limitations of federal efforts to protect wetlands. Door County, Wisconsin, offers an interesting example of the perils and pitfalls associated with trying to move beyond federal and state wetland regulations. Door County, by adopting wetland districts as part of its county zoning ordinance, created greater protection of wetlands—but at the expense of increasing confusion about the various roles of town, county, state, and federal governments. Although the case reveals a high level of interest to protect wetlands among key stakeholder groups, bureaucratic inertia and political tensions between town and county governments hamper efforts to move beyond the existing program. Most striking is the tenuous nature of partnerships formed in the process of community-based environmental protection.