Information about Wise Use

The Wise use movement in the United States is a loose-knit coalition of groups promoting private property rights and use of the natural environment as a natural part of human survival. This includes use by commercial and public interests, seeking increased access to public lands, and often opposing government intervention. Wise use describes human use of the environment as "stewardship of the land, the water and the air" for the benefit of human beings. The wise use movement cohesion comes largely as a result of opposition to the environmental movement and critics see it as effectively an anti-environmentalist movement.

Some organized opposition efforts have included environmental legislation such as wetland protection, and the Endangered Species Act. It critiques most environmentalist ideology as radical, and argues that most such ideology aims to make fundamental changes to the mainstream political order.

The Wise Use Movement

The Wise use movement consists of a range of groups, including booth industry front as well as grass-roots organizations of loggers, mill workers, ranchers, farmers, miners, off-road vehicle users and property owners. It also includes libertarians, populists, as well as both religious and political conservatives. The movement became known as "wise use" after the 1988 Multiple Use Strategy Conference in Reno, Nevada. The movement includes or is supported by most anti-environmentalist groups. It's supported by companies in the resource extraction industry, land development companies, and libertarian organizations. The movement was most active in the Western United States in the late 1980s and 1990s.

Major organizations

According to James McCarthy,[1] the most prominent Wise use groups receive most of their support from resource extraction industry. In addition to populist support from ranchers and farmers and industry, the movement is also supported by libertarian and other think tanks and larger umbrella organizations. The policies and political orientations of groups in the Wise Use movement range from some who self-identify as free-market environmentalism, to industry-backed public relations groups and relatively mainstream think tanks, to some militia groups and fundamentalist religious groups. Major organizations promoting Wise Use ideas include Alliance for America, the American Land Rights Association, the Cato Institute, the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, People for the West, the Blue Ribbon Coalition, and the Heartland Institute.

Most members of the Wise use movement, including the related County Movement,^[1] share a belief in individual rights, as opposed to the authority of the federal government, in particular with regard to the rights of land use. They believe that the environmental movement is both anti-private property and anti-people. While some in the wise use movement have strongly anti-environmental views, others believe that the free market, rather than government regulation, will better protect the environment.

Wise use vs Environmental movement

Many Wise use groups believe that rural residents suffer a greater impact from environmental regulations and that the environmental movement was biased toward urban elites attitudes and the rural perspective was being ignored. Others observe that the extractive forces behind the Wise Use movement harm rural residents more and prey on the independence of rural residents - preaching the "right to ride" when behind that is the desire to strip mine and clearcut using unsustainable methods. Some environmentalist disagreed with the Sierra Clubs "no-cut forest" policy. Steve Thompson wrote the goal of the policy should be to "provide greater flexibility to achieve true forest restoration". A blanket, one-size-fits-all 'zero cut' policy severely restricts the Sierra Club's ability to provide solutions to complex forest mismanagement problems."[2]. A non-American who has advocated some Wise Use positions is Dr. Valerius Geist, who emigrated to Canada from the Soviet Union. In his book Moose: Behavior, Ecology, Conservation (published in 1999 by Voyageur Press of Stillwater, MN) he wrote:

"Those who care most passionately about moose are - paradoxically - hunters, in particular people who live in wilderness and rural communities and those who depend on moose for food. In Sweden, no fall menu is without a mouthwatering moose dish. The Swedes fence their highways to reduce moose fatalities and design moose-proof cars. Sweden is less than half as large as the Canadian province of British Columbia but the annual take of moose in Sweden - upward of 150,000 - is twice that of the total moose harvest in North America. That is how much Swedes cherish their moose."

Wise Use Strategies

Wise use groups see themselves as (and seek to promote themselves as) true environmentalists with close ties to the land and cast environmental groups as advocating radical environmentalism. Wise use groups also downplay threats to the environment and highlight uncertainty in environmental science that they believe environmental groups ignore or conceal. Wise use groups also portray the environmentalist movement as having a hidden agenda to control land. [3]

Ron Arnold and Wise use

The wise use movement first gained prominence when Ron Arnold helped organize a Multiple Use Strategy Conference in Reno, Nevada in 1988. Arnold, a vice-president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise,and advocate of the "right to own property and use nature's resources for the benefit of mankind." [4] helped produce a 25-point Wise Use Agenda. The 25-point Agenda included initiatives that have sought to ban commercial use of public lands for timber, mining, and oil, and to open recreational wilderness areas for easier access by the general public. Critics point out that Ron Arnold has been quoted as saying his goal is to "destroy the environmental movement".[5]

According to Ron Arnold many in the wise use movement believe the possibility of unlimited economic growth in which environmental and social problems can be mitigated by market economy and the use of technology. In his book Ecology Wars which has been called the bible of the wise use movement Arnold writes: "Environmentalism is an institutionalized movement of certain people with a certain ideology about man and nature" and that "the goal of our ecology wars should be to defeat environmentalism. Arnold claims that environmentalism is " the excess baggage of anti-technology of anti-civilization, of anti-humanity, of institutionalized lust for political power" ^[2]

Wise use and Political Ecology

James McCarthy has contrasted the environmental movements treatment of claims made by the organized wise use movement with the approach taken when local resources users conflict with conservationist in developing countries. According to McCarthy "academics, leftists, and environ- mentalists who had been broadly sympathetic to movements elsewhere" in contrast dismissed similar claims, when made by groups in the United States as simply a corporate front. McCarthy argues that the wise use movement could be studied as Political ecology.

Access to public lands

In the 1980s and 1990s the management focus on public lands shifted from the harvest of timber to ecological goals such as improvement of habitat, largely as a response to the environmental movement. The resultant reduction in timber harvest contributed to the closures of sawmills and the layoff of loggers and other workers. Some members of the wise use movement objected to what they saw as a shifting of control of Federal lands resources from local, to outside, urban interests. They argued the National Forests were established for the benefit of the local community. They cite Gifford Pinchot, who wrote ``It is the duty of the Forest Service to see to it that the timber, water-powers, mines, and every other resource of the forests is used for the benefit of the people who live in the neighborhood or who may have a share in the welfare of each locality' Wise use members have also argued continued access to public lands was required to maintain the health, culture and traditions of local communities.

Similarly Jill M. Belsky wrote:

"there is a pattern for rural peoples and communities to be viewed as destroyers of nature in the United States, given their reliance on extractive industries such as mining, logging, grazing and commercial, petrochemical based-farming; and they provided political action in support of these industries. Given this history, it is not surprising that there has been a reluctance on the part of conservationists to envision how rural peoples and rural livelihoods could have played any significant role in the formation of wildlands or in any potential role they could play in the restoration and protection of large wildlands in the future. In the United States policy emphasizes ecosystems and ecosystem management. But while I understand this logic, I think it underestimates the importance of rural places, peoples and livelihoods in the management of large wildlands."[6]

Critics and criticism

Academics Ralph Maughan, Douglas Nilsona write the wise use is a "desperate effort to defend the hegemony of the cultural and economic values of the agricultural and extractive industries of the rural West." and have "argued that the Wise Use agenda stemmed from an ideology that combined laissez-faire capitalism with “cultural characteristics of an imagined Old West"^[3]

Some critics of the Wise Use movement claim that the strong rhetoric used has deepened divisions between opposing interest groups as well as created a climate that has led to an increase in violence and threats of violence against environmental groups and public employees. Some link strong anti-government rhetoric to militia groups. [7]

Environmental historian Richard White has criticized the wise use movement for upholding the rights of large landowners at the expense of working rural people in his essay, "'Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living?': Work and Nature." [8]

Stephenie Hendricks has claimed in her book Divine Destruction that wise use is in part " being driven by biblical fundamentalists who believe exhausting natural resources will hasten the Second Coming of Jesus Christ."[9]

Grass roots or front groups

The most common criticism made by the environmental movement was the the wise use movement was orchestrated entirely or mostly by industry. David Helbarg's book "The War Against the Greens" argues that the Wise Use movement is not grassroots uprisings but “Astroturf” movements created by big business. Another writer, Carl Deal, author of The Greenpeace Guide to Anti-Environmental Organizations also made the same claim, that Wise Use groups give the appearance of being popular grassroots movements, but are actually astroturfing front organizations for industry groups with a financial interest in the movement's agenda. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. also details this conspiracy against the environment by Wise Use organizations in his 2004 book Crimes Against Nature.

These critics have largely portrayed grass-roots groups as being front groups and rural Westerners as serving as dupes for extractive industries. However while corporate power played an important role in the Wise Use movement the relationship between rural westerners and extractive industries was not citizens blindly accepting corporate narratives. Instead the wise use movement was an alliance between groups with similar goals regarding private property rights and access to public lands. Corporations also were better able to connect with rural residents because, according to James McCarthy: "Corporations were in fact often more sensitive to the region's cultural politics than many environmentalists and so were better able to engage culture for instrumental purposes."

Response to criticism

Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair wrote: “The Wise Use movement, led by former Sierra Clubber Ron Arnold and staked (like the big Greens) by oil companies, was able to score many hits and rally populist opposition precisely because so many of the charges rang true. The mainstream environmental movement was elitist, highly paid, detached from the people, indifferent to the working class, and a firm ally of big government.…The environmental movement is now accurately perceived as just another well-financed and cynical special interest group, its rancid infrastructure supported by Democratic Party operatives and millions in grants from corporate foundations.”[10]

Fringe groups associated with Wise Use

A radical fringe element of the Wise Use movement emerged in California for a period during the early 1990s with two now defunct groups, the Sahara Club and Mother's Watch, openly encouraging harassment and vandalism directed at environmental activists, and include placing billboards [11] in small towns in the western United States which were recent victims of wildfires, falsely blaming "environmentalists" for causing those fires. There have been instances where the appearance of Wise Use speakers in a town, especially the activities of the aforementioned fringe groups, was followed by violent attacks on local environmental activists, burnings in effigy, or by rhetoric voiced by local citizens that all environmentalists "should be lined up and shot" (Helvarg, 1994).

In Northeastern Minnesota, the Northern Counties Land Use Coordinating Board has a history of ties with wise use, as does St. Louis County Commissioner Dennis Fink.

History

The term "wise use" was coined in 1910 by U.S. Forest Service leader and political Progressive, Gifford Pinchot, to describe his concept of sustainable harvest of natural resources.

• Today's wise use coalition has appropriated a nineteenth-century term. According to historian Douglas McCleery, the idea of "conservation as wise use" of natural resources began with conservation leader Gifford Pinchot in the late nineteenth century. The original wise use movement was a product of the progressive era and included the concept of multiple use—public land can be used simultaneously for recreation, for timber, for mining, and for wildlife habitat. The multiple-use and wise use concepts advocated by Pinchot reflected the view that nature's resources should be scientifically managed so as "to protect the basic productivity of the land and its ability to serve future generations." http://www.texasep.org/html/lnd/lnd_5pub_wise.html

The modern use of the term wise use to refer to opposition to the environmental movement dates to the publication of Ron Arnold's book Wise Use Agenda in 1989. The Wise Use movement has it roots in both the earlier "Sagebrush Rebellion" in the western United States around 1980 and to the earlier opposition to the formation of the National forests. However unlike Sagebrush Rebellion, which consisted largely of the formation of industry public relations groups by resource extraction industries led by companies such as Coors and Co, Wise Use included grass-roots groups. Ron Arnold believed that the inclusion of citizen groups would make the movement more effective In 1979 in Logging Management magazine Arnold wrote: “Citizen activist groups, allied to the forest industry, are vital to our future survival. They can speak for us in the public interest where we ourselves cannot. They are not limited by liability, contract law or ethical codes…industry must come to support citizen activist groups, providing funds, materials, transportation, and most of all, hard facts.”[12]

McCarthy wrote:

• The Wise Use movement is a broad coalition of over a thousand national, state, and local groups. Its existence by this name dates from a 1988 ‘Multiple-Use Strategy Conference’ attended by nearly 200 organizations, mainly Western-based, including natural resource industry corporations and trade associations, law firms specializing in combating environmental regulations, and recreational groups. The conference produced a legislative agenda intended to ‘destroy environmentalism’ and promote the ‘wise use’ of natural resources - an intentionally ambiguous phrase strategically appropriated from the early conservation movement. http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/DissPropWorkshop/examples/McCarthyNSF.pdf

References

Books

• Ron Arnold, Ecology Wars: Environmentalism as if People Mattered (Bellevue, WA: The Free Enterprise Press, 1987). ISBN 0-939571-00-5
• Alan M. Gottlieb, The Wise Use Agenda (Bellevue, WA: The Free Enterprise Press, 1989). ISBN 0-939571-05-4
• Ron Arnold and Alan Gottlieb, Trashing the Economy: How Runaway Environmentalism is Wrecking America (Bellevue, WA: Free Enterprise Press, 1993). ISBN 0-939571-13-7
• David Helvarg, The War Against the Greens (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1994). ISBN 0-87156-459-9
• Carl Deal, The Greenpeace Guide to Anti-Environmental Organizations (Berkeley, CA: Odonian Press, 1993). ISBN 1-878825-05-4
• J. McCarthy, First World political ecology: lessons from the Wise Use movement (2002).
• Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Crimes Against Nature (2004).
• Pat Robertson, The New World Order (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1991). ISBN 0-8499-3394-3
• William Cronon, editor, "Uncommon Ground: Rethinking Human Place in Nature" (1996).
• Jacqueline Vaughn Switzer, Green Backlash (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1997). ISBN 1-55587-635-8

See also

United States Environmental Protection Agency Pete Coors Pollution Global Warming ANWR Heritage Foundation George W. Bush Bush Administration Superfund Kraft Foods Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Ron Arnold Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise Think tank Cato Institute Heartland Institute Mountain States Legal Foundation Anne Gorsuch Anti-environmentalism James Watt Bureau of Land Management

Newt Gingrich Contract with America Tom DeLay Ralph Reed Dick Cheney National Legal Center for the Public Interest Gale Norton J. Steven Griles Monsanto Koch Industries James Connaughton National Cattlemen's Beef Association Pete Wilson Endangered Species Act Lynn Scarlett Reason Foundation Dirk Kempthorne Greenpeace Political Research Associates Gifford Pinchot David Helvarg Pat Robertson

External links

• A Wise Use manifesto written by Ron Arnold
• A critical view of Ron Arnold and his influence from the Clearinghouse on Environmental Advocacy and Research (link is to an archived copy of the defunct website at archive.org)
• Wise Use Movement entry in SourceWatch.org, service of the Center for Media & Democracy, publisher of PR Watch.
• The Use of the National Forest Reserves"1905 Use Book"