| Abstract: | Worldwide, agencies with high levels of contamination are faced with decisions about remediation and restoration. These decisions should be informed by future land use and long‐term stewardship goals. In the United States, the Department of Energy has lands in some 34 states that require cleanup. They are involved in massive remediation and restoration efforts on lands from the Cold War legacy and wish to reduce their overall footprint. Understanding future land use preferences is essential for determining the nature and degree of remediation and restoration. The objective of this study was to examine future land use preferences for the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory as a function of ethnicity for attendees at the Los Alamos Gun Show in New Mexico (1999), and to determine whether their own activity influences future land use preferences. The highest preferred future land uses for Los Alamos National Laboratory were hiking, camping, National Environmental Research Park, and birdwatching, followed by hunting and fishing. Increased nuclear waste storage and building homes and factories were rated the lowest. Further, hiking and camping were rated higher than at two other DOE sites. There were few ethnic differences, although American Indians rated camping, hiking, building houses, and returning the land to American Indians higher than did others, and Hispanics rated using it for a preserve as a higher preferred land use than all others. The differences, however, were not great. Relative ratings for using the land for hunting and fishing were directly related to individual frequency of hunting and fishing for both whites and Hispanics, indicating that people perceive the importance of land use by how they want to use it. Ratings for hiking and camping were not related to the number of days people hiked and camped, suggesting these are general preferences overall. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. |
