Robert H. Nelson is a professor of environmental policy in the School of Public Policy of the University of Maryland and a senior fellow of the Independent Institute. He is the author of A Burning Issue: A Case for Abolishing the U.S. Forest Service and, most recently, The New Holy Wars: Economic Religion versus Environmental Religion in Contemporary America. From 1975 to 1993, he served as a senior economist in the office of the secretary of the Interior, where he worked principally on public land matters.