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W.J. McCabe Chapter Izaak Walton League of America

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Some organizations build consensus. Others build barriers. The Wise Use Movement is one of those and the Duluth News Tribune, in a recent editorial, had no trouble reaching that conclusion.

Their editorial followed a visit to Duluth by Wise-Use founder, Ron Arnold who believes environmentalists are working to cripple rural economies by eliminating resource industries. The News Tribune noted that conservative writer George Will recently wrote a column that included Ron Arnold and Alan Gottlieb of the Wise Use Movement among "quasi-political entrepreneurs who have discovered commercial opportunities in merchandising discontent."

Discontent...for dollars.

The News Tribune said Arnold was in northeastern Minnesota to promote his latest book and suggested that Northeast Minnesotans should make it known that they aren't buying his line.

"It's easy to foment discontent in a climate of rapid change," they wrote. "It's easy to exploit people's feelings of economic insecurity at a time when our natural resource-based industries respond to international market forces and technological advances continue to reduce the number of jobs."

The News Tribune said Arnold would have us believe that our economic uncertainties are due to current laws protecting the environment, and that is "a bunch of hooey."

It certainly is. But, this northeastern Minnesota newspaper is not alone in their analysis of the Wise Use Movement.

Few would consider Retired General Normal Schwartzkopf a liberal, bleeding-heart, environmental extremist. The News Tribune reminded us of his remarks at a Nature Conservancy press conference: "These 'Wise Use' extremists claim that economically, you are going to take their jobs away from them; they're all going to become poor; their children are going to starve; and it's all because you're a bunch of fuzzy tree-huggers. How they present things is, in many cases, blatant lying."

Like the News Tribune editorial writers, Schwartzkopf, a hunter and a military strategist whose credentials speak volumes about what makes America great, can spot the rotten apples in the barrel. He speaks of the "black helicopter" crowd who uses ugly rhetoric. They blame environmentalists for all their problems. In the past, that meant the Earth Firsters and many groups far to the left of mainstream thought. However, in recent years, they've included conservation organizations such as the Izaak Walton League and National Wildlife Federation because they support mainstream environmental laws like the Clean Water Act. The fact is, the Wildlife Federation is a collection of local rod & gun clubs situated in mostly small, rural communities in nearly every state. The Ikes are one of the oldest and most respected mainstream conservation groups in the nation and, Ikes membership is comprised of mostly hunters and anglers who understand that without a good habitat base, fish and wildlife won't make it.

Extreme thinking?

Does anyone believe that some corporate "suit" who's about to lay off workers is going to call them together and tell them it's new technology that's made their jobs obsolete when it's so much easier to blame the Sierra Club? Especially when they can bring in a Wise-User who will reinforce that with an emotional, 'it's them against us," appeal?

The News Tribune added, "Ironically, Arnold has taken the name for his movement from Gifford Pinchot, named by President Teddy Roosevelt as the first head of the Forest Service. Roosevelt created the nation's system of public parks and national forests as a protection against what he called ''land grabbers special interests.'' Pinchot led the way, saying in 1907 that ''Conservation is the wise use of resources.'' Both men would roll over in their graves to learn the current use of their 'wise use' message."

Yet, they noted, "Arnold admits the modern wise use movement does not hold Pinchot in reverence; he was just another bureaucrat who believed conservation had to come by government control of resources."

They believe the same of Mike Dombeck, the current Chief of the Forest Service, who grew up not far from Duluth in the Chippewa National Forest in Hayward, WI. Dombeck cut timber, became a fishing guide and later, a fisheries biologist who did landmark research on muskies. Still later, he worked as a Forest Service fisheries biologist and Acting Director of the Bureau of Land Management before his appointment as Chief of the Forest Service. Mike's a pragmatist who believes it's time to redefine "multiple use." In Mike's practical mind, that means all uses of public lands should be equal and none should dominate. That's a belief that does not resonate well with the Wise-Users.

The Wise Use Movement demonizes groups like the Sierra Club and the latter, all too often, plays into their hands by opposing every timber sale in some areas. That doesn't mean every member of the Sierra Club is a radical extremist. I know a few who are avid anglers, hunters and Sierra Club members. However, the Wise-Users like to paint all conservation groups with the same, guilt by association, brush. If you side with the Sierra Club on any issue, then, you must be one of them.

Wise-Users are anti-government and believe that every federal government leader is a bureaucrat out to take away "rights" such as free timber cutting or bargain basement grazing rates on public lands. Of course, most folks would consider these privileges...but not the Wise-Use crowd. So, when Mike Dombeck plunges ahead and has the gall to call for a moratorium on building new roads to aid private companies at taxpayer expense, he's actually adopting a conservative philosophy. He points out the Forest Service doesn't have the budget to maintain the roads in existence so, why build more? When a few Congressmen have the courage to say that taxpayers should get paid fairly by cattlemen who graze public lands, they are painted as liberals. Never mind the fact that it is a view shared by the Cato Institute, a conservative think-tank. When Dombeck starts acting like a real conservative, the Wise-Users come unglued.

Most recently, Don Amador, the Blue Ribbon Coalition's Western State Representative wrote that "Dombeck and his green buddies may be developing a "closed unless posted open" vehicular travel policy for all national forest lands without consulting conservative multiple-use organizations and other sporting interests."

Let's examine the "radicalness" of such a move with a real life example, one that took place in my community.

The Fort Pierre National Grasslands is a 15-minute drive from my home in Pierre, SD. Years ago, local sportsmen tired of seeing so-called "hunters," roaming across the grasslands in their 4wd's, shooting prairie grouse from the pickup box. I presume some of the locals were conservatives while a few might have been liberals. Sort of what you'd expect in an area where us Republicans outnumber the Democrats by about ten to one. However, they had a common tie. Unrestricted vehicle use was destroying their grasslands and messing up their hunting on their public lands. By season's end, the prairie bore plenty of scars and there was always a danger of fires caused by vehicles with catalytic converters at a time of year when the grass was usually tinder-dry. So, this band of conservative-liberal do-gooders, none from outside, raised particular hell. The local Forest Service District Ranger took the local pulse and closed all but certain established roads and trails to vehicular travel. It's been that way ever since. The hunting is a lot better and so is the health of the land. It showed us most bureaucrats will do the right thing if they can count on some public support.

Now, the Forest Service is proposing similar restrictions on the National Grasslands across both Dakotas, Nebraska and Wyoming and the howls aren't coming from sportsmen. They're coming from grassland grazing permit-holders and a few of their banker and business friends who are trying to tell sportsmen (especially in North Dakota) in a series of sophisticated, advertising agency-designed ads running in newspapers and outdoor publications, that the Forest Service is closing the grasslands to hunters. Imagine, they suggest, you might have to actually drag a deer out from way back there. Can't even go in there in your pickup truck and get it. Well, I've been there-done that and I'm probably a better man for the experience

If you're not up to dragging a big buck a long ways, the best place to shoot him is...a few miles closer to the road. But, you have to admire those who are still willing to go way back there where the big ones are...because there aren't a bunch of four wheelers running them out of the area... and drag them out when it's over. We don't need fewer areas like that. We need a helluva lot more.

No, those slick ad campaigns aren't fooling many real hunters.

When Amador attacked Dombeck, he said the Forest Service Chief "admitted that he had failed to invite mainstream recreation and conservation organizations to help develop the USDA's new road and access policy. Of course, that's Amador's version of what Dombeck allegedly said. Speaking for Dombeck again, he said the Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society and other green groups had 'sat around the table,' other organizations such as Safari Club International, Quail Unlimited, the Blue Ribbon Coalition, United Four Wheel Drive Club, American Motorcyclist Association and the American Snowmobile Council, had not been invited to participate."

Golly, it sounds like the Ikes and Wildlife Federation weren't represented, either.

It may...or may not be an accurate portrayal of what actually took place but it does make for a pretty good story. The Chief shut out all of us conservatives and listened only to those green whackos.

I'm not opposed to snowmobiles or 4wd ATV's. I'll be hauling my portable shack and ice fishing gear across many snow-covered lakes this winter...with an Arctic Cat. My wife's an avid elk hunter and would love a 4wd ATV to climb the Colorado mountains where she and a another lady hunter go each fall...on their own, sans a guide or outfitter. See, these two know what they're doing in the outdoors. However, if she had an ATV, she'd know when to park it and hunt by foot. She's still blazing mad about the day, two autumns ago, when she was holding her breath, creeping up on a big bull elk only to have some yahoo drive his ATV across an open meadow and, while still in motion, blaze away at the same animal. He didn't hit it, of course. You can't hold the cross-hairs very steady when you're bouncing around.

The point is, ATV's and snowmobiles are wonderful machines but there are times and places to use them. Sometimes, it's appropriate, sometimes, it's not. It's up to each of us to make individual decisions, something that comes easy to most users. However, to allow unrestricted use on public lands under the guise of "multiple use," is nothing more than...multiple abuse. Oddly, the Wise Use groups fiercely defend private property rights so it's fair to ask, how many private property owners are willing to open their lands to unrestricted, do-what-you-want,go-anywhere-you-want use of an ATV?

For all their smoke, the Wise Use Movement, other than stirring up some discontent in various places around the country, hasn't been very successful. On a national level, they've tried to dismantle every environmental protection law passed in the early 1970's but I can't think of a single major victory they've scored.

The News Tribune noted, "Arnold is very effective and should not be underestimated. Author David Helvarg describes him in this way: 'He has taken a personal bitterness against the environmental movement, the organizing theories of Lenin, the collective-behavior analysis of a couple of professors in the social movements field, and a broad reading of Abraham Maslow and other social psychologists, and synthesized them into a new force on the political right that sees environmental change as an imminent threat to free enterprise, private property and industrial civilization."

They add, "His program includes unrestricted timber cutting on public lands; mining and drilling in national parks and wilderness areas; rollback of clean air and water quality and other landmark environmental legislation."

Just a gut feel but I suspect once the public finds out who this group is and what they believe in, they'll be following their James Watt-Sagebrush Rebellion predacessors into the same box canyon called the end of the trail. I'm all for property rights...and responsibility...and there isn't enough land in America for each of us to own our own piece large enough for recreation. That's probably why most Americans like the idea of public land, a place where they and their kids can enjoy the outdoors. And, since they're the rightful owners, they understandably get a bit out of whack when they find the land either overgrazed, overcut or overdug.

They feel pretty much the same way about natural resources and their values.

In the Dakotas, where more ducks are produced than in any other geographical area on the continent, Wise-Users work behind the scenes to gut regulations that protect wetlands, that is, when they're not harping about "takings" and "property rights." When two major agricultural organizations pushed the NRCS State Conservationist to change wetland mapping procedures that would allow drainage, it was a pair of sportsman organizations, the mainstream National Wildlife Federation and South Dakota Izaak Walton League along with an Indian Tribe and an environmental group who took them to court. Wise users pushed to make grazing the dominant use of public lands while calling it "multiple use." In their vocabulary, multiple use means "me first."

They aren't fooling most folks.

The probably aren't fooling you.

They didn't fool the Duluth News Tribune.

"Wise-Users are as out of touch with the American mainstream as those at the other extreme who advocate tree spiking," they concluded.

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