When viewed head on, the appended article is unlikely to be of interest. But like with those magic screens that came in Cracker-Jack's packages, if you tilt this, it taken on a very different, and perhaps more interesting, appearance.

For getting the angle correct, you'll need to know that ESPN is owned by Disney and that Disney's Environmental VP, Kym Murphy, is also a Senior VP of the American Recreation Coalition's Recreation Roundtable and a Board Member of both the ARC and of Leave No Trace.

Should the image not become clear, a holographic version is can be viewed here.

Scott

Quoted from appended article:

 Joshua Tree, Yellowstone and Organ Pipe Cactus parks have cut educational programs, and Congress has suggested extending the temporary $20 park entrance fee at national parks beyond the scheduled September expiration to help pay for anti-terror measures.

Hmmmm.  Who would have guessed that fee-demo would become a de-facto mechanism for replacing tax revenues lost with Bush's tax-cuts? Who would have ever suspected that recreation user fees would have become a funding mechanism for Bush's War on Terror?

Ya' know .... in re-reading the legislation which authorized this temporary program, I can't find a damn thing that allows National Park fees to be used to pay for anti-terror measures. Heck, based upon what the NPS has long said about the value of this program to the general public, I thought fee-demo revenues paid for toilet paper, toilet cleanser and those other things that the Park Service can no longer afford.

Scott 

This Saturday, Sept. 28th, is "National Public Lands Day" ... and what a farce it is!

Did you know that National Public Lands Day is being brought to you by Toyota and that the American Recreation Coalition and Walt Disney are two "partners" for this big event?

Did you know that the BlueRibbon Coalition, United Four Wheel drive and, in fact, the whole darned motorized recreation industry will be playing up their "participation" in this event to the very hilt??

Did you know that the American Recreation Coalition, National Geographic, the USFS, BLM and a host of tourism companies have arranged the "American Frontiers" public lands traveling spectacle to come to a crescendo in Salt Lake City on this Saturday and thus to highlight every form of motorized recreation imaginable while portraying the public lands as a playground for these activities.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that National Public Lands Day is BAD.... I'll leave that for you to decide.

I will, however, say with total confidence that National Public Lands Day is not what federal land managers and their private partners would have you believe it is.

Those  wishing to discover the truth about National Public Lands Day, I've pasted a few web links below to help you get a handle on what this day is all about. A Google search will produce many more such links.

For those who'd like help in fitting the pieces together or in understanding who the players are and how they are all interconnected (and perhaps what they want from this event), give me a call. There's a story here that the press will certainly miss if they fail to look behind the curtain. There's a much bigger news story waiting behind the curtain. There almost always is....

Scott

In a public internet forum someone asked:

    > WAKE UP! IT'S CALLED "TOO MANY PEOPLE"!
    > IT'S OVERPOPULATION! Why does the entire
    > country suffer from this mass blindness?
    > People 30 years ago could see that
    > overpopulation is driving all the other problems.

Pasted below is my reply.

After being disgraced for financial improprieties and for selling to Subaru Motor Company the use of the Smokey Bear character for promotional purposes, the National Forest Foundation disappeared off the face of the earth. Their web site was taken off the internet and NFF remained in hiding for nearly two years. Well.... they are back!

To get a concept of who they are, here is a short quote from their own "About Us" web page:

NFF was created in 1990 by the United States Congress, pursuant to  Public Law No. 101-593 to serve as the official non-profit partner of the USDA Forest Service.

NFF is charged with: accepting and administering private contributions;

   undertaking activities that further the purposes for which the National Forest System was established; and

   conducting educational, technical, and other activities that support the multiple use, research, and forestry programs administered by the Forest Service.

And here is a link to those resources NFF considers of greatest importance.

Under the heading "Recreation" just two names are provided:

   American Recreation Coalition
   American Hiking Society

Under the heading "Collaborative Forest Stewardship" only the following links are provided:

   USDA FS State and Private Forestry: Cooperative forestry
   Rogue Institute for Ecology and Economy
   Pinchot Institute for Conservation
   Sustainable Communities Network
   Society of American Foresters
   National Association of State Foresters
   American Forest Foundation
   American Forests

And to quote from their web site one last time:

"The NFF is particularly interested in projects that address the rising demand for outdoor recreation in national forests ..."

None of what you've just read does more than hint at the dark side of NFF....

... but in the article titled, "Playing With the Big Boys", investigative reporter  Renee Menus, shined an intense beam upon NFF and exposed a very dark side indeed.

Oh... there is one more thing that is pretty important. On February 2, 1995, Derrick Crandall (President of the American Recreation Coalition) filed a document with the Commonwealth of Virginia. In that document he requested to have his own name removed from NFF's corporate charter where he was, at the time, listed as NFF's President. See for youself.

Scott 

Ok ... so they weren't really naked, but the following recreation industry insider update from the American Association for Nude Recreation (AANR) is a eye-popper anyway.

If you want to see how things get done in the Bush Administration ... then read on!

Scott

PS...  the author of the following, Turner Stokes, is web master for the American Recreation Coalition, for AANR and for ARC's National Recreation Lakes Coalition.

Here's some food for thought about the fate of wildness.

Pasted below are excerpts from two web pages. The first is a recent news release celebrating National Tourism Week with Shoppertainment®.  The second begins with the words: "New Nature-Based Attraction To Offer Close-Up Look At American Wilderness. Stepping Inside The Great Outdoors May Soon Be As Close As The Local Shopping Mall."

Both speak of the same physical place...
... a shopping center called "Ontario Mills".
BUT, do they speak of more that this?

Do they speak of Wilderness?

Do they speak of America's National Parks?

Do they speak of The Great Outdoors as envisaged by leaders of the tourism, entertainment and wreckreation industry?

AND does this represent a genuine threat to the spirit of wildness and to wild places? Perhaps the final article pasted below can help answer those questions.

Scott 

Quoted from John Borowski's Op-Ed

>>Who would ever think, that Michael Sanera, avowed enemy of environmental education, would be given a forum for his "snake-oil" diatribe, by self-proclaimed friends of children? Yes, the wonderful world of Disney, power brokers for ABC news and their industry puppet, John Stoessel, have environmental education in their "cross-hairs."

Scott Replies:

Who better to give a forum for such snake oil than the Walt Disney Company???

Pasted below is a web page from the site of the American Recreation Coalition. It describes Disney's WOW program ... an education program which introduces underprivileged kids to the great outdoors.  Sounds great -- doesn't it?

But consider -- ARC is a hard-core, wise-use, organization in which Disney plays a leading management role (being a sustaining member and represented both on ARC's Board and upon its Recreation Roundtable). Is it possible that there is a hidden agenda behind the WOW program???

I would suggest that there are a great many commercial interests promoting WOW that are looking upon these children as potential customers and political advocates for high impact wreckreation. If properly conditioned/ brainwashed /educated to want/ demand/ expect particular consumer goods/ services and forms of recreation,  these kids will make life-long customers and political allies. (It's analogous to Whittle's Channel One, Project Learning Tree and to so many similar efforts to co-opt children's education!)

Pasted below the ARC page is some more information about the commercial interests behind the WOW program. And below that is something from the National Marine Manufacturers Association which clearly reveals the Wise-Use, Motorized Wreckreation Hook embedded within the WOW program!

There's absolutely nothing surprising about "Disney Co Corrupting Our Children's Education." Heck, it's what they do best. It's what they've done for 50 years!

Scott 

Does the Busch Beer/Conservation Fund PARTNERSHIP (see below) represent a meaningful conservation effort, or is it yet another example of Shameless Greenscamming?

It's so predictable which organizations are becoming the Voice of the Environmental Community. It's the groups who are represented on President Bush's (Busch's?) Interior Transition Team.

It's groups such as The Conservation Fund, Political Economy Research Center and National Parks Conservation Association.

It's shameless.

Scott 

Pasted below is an "As The Expert" exchange titled: "Innovative Finance and Increasing Funding for Parks".

The source is "The Urban Parks Institute" at "Project for Public Spaces, Inc.", a four year old organization which appears be particularly keen to feed at the LWCF trough and to leverage public funding using private partnerships. Their stated purpose is to revitalize urban parks for underprivileged children.

In the question which follows, a reader asks --- how can a poor child enjoy pay-to-use public recreation facilities without being excluded or feeling stigmatized.

The answer provided by the expert is, I suggest, particularly DISGUSTING  --- YET, it is the same answer the American Recreation Coalition and the USFS has developed to respond to the analogous situation created by the Recreation Fee Demonstration Program.

It is entirely inappropriate to suggest that a 13 year old girl should be required to "clean windows, floors, empty trash, stuff envelops, pull weeds" etc. if she wants to play in a public playground without paying --

--- not when rich kids won't be required to do these same things for their access. Recreation user fees are EXCLUSIONARY and DISCRIMINATORY and there is no know mechanism to make these fees work without stigmatization of the affected, low-income, populations.

Unfortunately, I don't expect our "compassionate" President or his "free-market"-advocating Interior Secretary, Ms. Norton, to agree with this assessment. I expect they will propose a "solution" similar to the one you are about to read.

Scott 

In alphabetical order, you can read the names of those who are making the decisions which will set this new policy on the environment. Notice how many are from extractive industries. Others represent the leadership of the Wise Use Movement. We will have our hands full with this aggressive crowd.