There's an old saying about "being careful what you wish for...."  When communities throughout the West decide that their economy is dependent on recreation their reaction won't be to preserve wild places, wildness or other "non-economic" values.  Instead, it will be on promoting policies and schemes to exploit wild lands to make the most recreation dollars.  it won't be pretty.  It will continue the ruination of wildness and other values most of us hold dear, and that future generations may never know.  The "new economy" (really the same old dance, just different partners) is gobbling up the "last best places" just as fast as--and probably more permanently than--any of the old economies.

One doesn't have to read a lot of conservation history to learn that our forebearers in this movement understood that wildlands are doomed if they're forced to "serve the economy."  As John Muir warned, "Nothing dollarable is safe."  There's a reason the Wilderness Act, for example, prohibits all commercial enterprise, even relatively benign ones.  The law made an exception for outfitters and guides ("commercial services") and Wilderness is increasingly suffering for that.  It slays me, then, that so many of our conservation colleagues want to promote public lands as economic engines rather than as sources of clean air, clean water, wildlife security, and inspiration for the human soul.  Why do these lands have to serve the economy, especially this economy, which is incredibly unsustainable?

I believe that recreation, especially quiet, muscle-powered contemplative recreation, is good for human beings.  Nothing better than a walk in the woods.  But it's not good for anything else.  We displace wildlife, trample soil, crush vegetation, all the while consuming massive amounts of hydrocarbons and other materials to make the "stuff" we use to recreate and to get "out there" in our cars.  Without a very strong measure of restraint we six billion humans--and counting--will consume it all, even while engaged in seemingly benign activities like going for a walk in the woods or wending our way down a slickrock canyon.  I'm sad to say that I see nothing about restraint in this news release from the Sierra Club (see appended).  I only see rah-rah cheers promoting the increasing unsustainable "wreckreation" juggernaut that will, sure as any modern-day economy that came before, destroy what's best about our public lands, while continuing our lifestyles' ravish consumption of planet Earth.

George Nickas
Executive Director
Wilderness Watch

The hyping of the recreation industry's Richard Louv (Brand) - Nature Deficit Disorder (NDD) campaign has taken an interesting twist with Maine Governor John Baldacci recently announcing: "We don't have to fly to Disneyland. We have Disneyland all around us."

That statement is obviously false but it is a concept we hear with growing frequency. The recreation and tourism industry leaders who dictate public lands recreation policy and who have long been engaged in the 'Corporate Takeover of Nature and the Disneyfication of the Wild', find it beneficial to equate nature with artifice. Public land managers, following industry's lead, are amongst the worst offenders, continually equating the lands they manage with themeparks and other purely commercial forms of entertainment.

For years now we have been bombarded with a message which asks: "Isn't a day on public lands worth as much as a day at Disneyland?"  The comparison is false and the question does not deserve a response. One can not, and must not, equate nature with artifice. It is wrong to price nature using artifice as a comparative reference point and yet this has all but become the accepted norm.

For the mass market to which the recreation industry has pitched it's message,  the Disneyland comparison has raw nature coming up short. Nature needs to be improved upon, experiences need to be packaged and adventure needs to be made predictable if this Nature-Disneyland comparison is to hold true. In other words, Nature must be Disneyfied.

When reading the appended article about Balacci's new "Take It Outside" initiative, please remember that there is no such thing as "Nature Deficit Disorder". NDD is an idea put forth not by a psychologist or qualified medical professional, but by a newspaper reporter, Richard Louv. It was the recreation industry that successfully transformed the NDD idea and Mr. Louv himself into their self-serving public relations campaign.

Perhaps this quote from the appended article will help explain why this was so.

Acadia National Park Superintendent Sheridan Steele said the success of the initiative could be measured by monitoring park fees for children and sales of youth sporting equipment.

Scott

Get Outdoors USA! is the driving force behind a national movement to help our children seek out healthy, active outdoor lives and to embrace America's Great Outdoors - our parks, our forests, our refuges and other public lands and waters.

Convicted felon J. Steven Griles had asked that for his punishment he be permitted to work for his old friends and associates at the American Recreation Coalition.

Just moments ago, a federal judge ruled that Griles must go to prison instead.

As news of Griles' incarceration spreads, I sincerely hope that many more media outlets associate the criminal and the ARC.... as does the article which appears below.

Scott

Tom Sansonetti is one of three candidates seeking to fill the Senate vacancy resulting from the recent death of Craig Thomas (R-WY). Sansonetti's nine page bio/resume was filed last week with the Wyoming GOP and can be found at this link -- and here's a short passage quoted from page nine:

"As Assistant Attorney General, Tom also supervised litigation that had great impact on the people of Wyoming and the West. He defended the Bush Administration's effort to keep a full range of recreational opportunities, including snowmobile, available to the visitors in Yellowstone National Park..."

Giving Sanonetti the credit he is due, it now seems appropriate to suggest that he is one of the five most important players in the never-ending Yellowstone snowmobile access issue. Of these five, three (Sansonetti, William Horn and Derrick Crandall) also have in common the fact they they recently pleaded for leniency for former Deputy Secretary of Interior, J. Steven Griles.

If Sansonetti is responsible for recommending Griles to be Interior Deputy Secretary, what does that say about Sansonetti's ability to judge character and his environmental values?

 

If Sansonetti headed, and presumably hand picked,  the Bush Interior Transition team, what might that suggest about the persons who served upon that team?

 

If Sansonetti is as extreme as he appears, then what kind of a US Senator will he be if he is selected as Senator Thomas' replacement?

J. Steven Griles and Derrick Crandall
Photo credit: American Recreation Coalition

 [I am writing in support of J. Steven Griles, who is to be sentenced before you on June 26, 2007. I write to ask you for leniency as you determine his sentence and consider how he might best benefit society.
 
 I have known Steve Griles for more than twenty years, both during his government service and his work in the private sector. I have always found him to be honest, committed to the core mission of my organization (connecting Americans with our legacy of the Great Outdoors) and hard-working.] 

J. Steven Griles on left, Fran Mainella (middle) and Derrick Crandall on right.
Photo Credit: American Recreation Coalition 

PHOTO: Deputy Secretary of Interior, Steve Griles takes time for a picture with ARC's June 10th Volunteer Work Day Coordinator, Carolyn Crandall, daughter of American Recreation Coalition President, Derrick Crandall.
(Photo Credit: the American Recreation Coalition)

One year ago the American Recreation Coalition came into the sights of the New York Times for their non-too-subtle efforts to re-write National Park Service policies and turn America's Crown Jewels into motorized playgrounds.  On June 10, 2006 the New York Times editorialized against the ARC in these words:

   [What's most worrying about this last-minute lobbying - besides the fact that recreation seems limited to activities involving an internal combustion engine - is the suggestion, put forward by the American Recreation Coalition, that the Park Service revise the management policy regularly. There is only one reason for a suggestion like that: to give "recreation leaders" a regular chance to pressure the park system for increased motorized vehicle access.]

That was last year. Today, everything is suddenly different!

While the American Recreation Coalition remains as committed as ever to their long-term goal of commercializing, privatizing and motorizing recreational opportunities upon our nation's public lands, today they are using entirely new, and far more effective (and dangerous) messaging.

Today, the ARC has wrapped their agenda within a framework of children and using this frame they, and their agenda,  are gaining incredible ground. Today you will not find the NY Times editorializing against the ARC's efforts. On the contrary, today newspapers from coast to coast are lauding the ARC's "Kids in the Woods" campaign as if it were other than simply another approach being taken by the same old recreation industry insiders.

Appended in an article published yesterday in which I had much to say about ARC's new tact. Pasted here is a quote from an article published today in which ARC's President explains how it is now possible to use technology in order to lure kids to nature. Make special note of these words --- "at one time technology was seen as the enemy of outdoor activity. Now, he [Crandall] said, the goal is to make it a 'friend.' "

Derrick Crandall is president and CEO of the American Recreation Coalition, a non-profit group that wants to get people outdoors. As such the group does research, keeps an eye on legislation, and tries to get out the message of encouraging "fun outdoors." Crandall shared a challenge that hits close to home with technologists: getting kids to recreate outside of the 6.5 hours a typical sixth-grader spends in front of a screen (TV, computer, iPod…). The research is fascinating. Kids, it turns out, are well aware of why they congregate in fast food places - there are triggers (like signs on the highway) that lure them there and allow them to network with others. If there were similar triggers for outdoor activities, perhaps they'd make those choices. Crandall explained how groups pushing the outdoors need to use the triggers that get to young people: text messaging, MySpace and the like. He also noted that at one time technology was seen as the enemy of outdoor activity. Now, he said, the goal is to make it a "friend." In fact, a study done with young people involving a treasure hunt was rated much higher when it involved GPS than when it did not.

Contrast what you've just read with these words from Aldo Leopold and ask yourself whose vision do you support, that of Crandall or Leopold.  And finally, KNOW that in the eyes of today's land mangers, Crandall's vision has all but totally replaced that of Leopold.

 "Bureaus build roads into new hinterlands, then by more hinterlands to absorb the exodus accelerated by the roads. A gadget industry pads the bumps against nature-in-the-raw: woodcraft becomes the art of using gadgets. And now, to cap the pyramid of banalities, the trailer. To him who seeks in the woods and mountains only those things obtainable from travel or golf, the present situation is tolerable. But to him who seeks something more, recreation has become a self-destructive process of seeking but never quite finding; a major frustration of mechanized society....

   Then came the gadgeteer, otherwise known as the sporting-goods dealer. He has draped the American outdoors man with an infinity of contraptions, all offered as aids to self-reliance, hardihood, woodcraft, or marksmanship, but too often functioning as substitutes for them. Gadgets fill the pockets, they dangle from neck and belt. The overflow fills the auto-trunk, and also the trailer. Each item of outdoor equipment grows lighter and often better, but the aggregate poundage becomes tonnage."        
    -Aldo Leopold, in A Sand County Almanac

Scott

The anti-environmental wreckreation interests which last year attempted to rewrite the National Park management policies and transform the National Parks into places of greater fun, are at it again. This time, however,  they're partnering with the US Forest Service and using honey instead of a big stick. This time the danger is greater -- because this time almost no one will stand in their way.

The villains are the same. Their interests and objectives are the same. Their vehicle is motherhood, virginity and apple pie ... and exposing what the industry is attempting to do will be unusually difficult.

I'd just add that their entire frame, while conceptually brilliant, is built upon a false presumption. In the appended article from today's Casper Star-Tribune I get the last word and with it, I do my best to stand in the American Recreation Coalition's way.

I'd sure appreciate some help from others within the conservation community, because without help, the industry's vehicle will likely make some deep tracks.

Scott

Those on the political RIGHT are having a field day with a commentary written by a British-based American author Lionel Shriver. The article, titled "How Green Was My Garbage" was published this week in the Wall Street Journal and makes the startling claim that "Environmentalism has become the fashionable fig leaf to cover for extortion." (See appended)

Sadly, and speaking as a hard-core progressive environmentalist, I believe the claim is largely justified and, if anything, understated.

Almost a decade ago, during the Clinton/Gore era and long before the events of 911, I predicted that a particular brand of Free-Market Techno Environmentalism would some rise up and become a direct replacement for what I assumed would be the declining role played by the Military Industrial Complex as the primary engine of crony-capitalism. It turns out that I was only half wrong.

Free-Market Techno Environmentalism is quickly becoming a fig leaf that will do more to redistribute wealth to those who are already wealthy than it will do to solve pressing and real environmental problems.

Free-Market Techno Environmentalism will DELAY the day when genuine progress is made toward solving genuine environmental problems.

And Free-Market Techno Environmentalism will, or so I predicted, evolve into a tool used by those who rule the world to further advance what is fundamentally an anti-democratic RIGHT-WING pro-corporate-dominance agenda.

Right-wing bloggers and commentators will bitch and moan either reflexively and without thinking, or deliberately and with considered malice.

My fellow progressive enviros will look the other way.

As a result, the collapse of democracy, quality of life and environmental integrity will occur at an accelerated pace.

Here is a quote from the warning I issued almost a decade ago:

[So, in the waning days of this century we are witnessing the creation of the replacement for that venerable, WWII institution. With every passing month we will see new examples of federal subsidies being thrown at finding 'Technological Fixes' for our numerous environmental problems. Those problems of our own creation. While technological fixes may slow down the escalation of Global Warming, or food shortages, or air pollution, or those other maladies that threaten the sustainability of the human race, technological fixes, on their own will never solve the problem.]           

Scott

Contacts:
Alasdair Coyne, Keep Sespe Wild
Robert Funkhouser Western Slope No Fee Coalition

NO FEE RESOLUTION PASSES CALIFORNIA ASSEMBLY

On Monday April 23rd, the California Assembly passed Assembly Joint Resolution 21 (AJR 21), which memorializes the President and Congress to repeal the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act (FLREA), a 2004 law which authorizes federal public lands agencies to charge fees for access to those lands.  AJR 21 passed the Assembly floor by 62:10 votes. 

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National Parks Conservation Association has long been a supporter of National Park entrance fees and, more specifically, a staunch advocate for the retention of these fees by the agency. That said, on April 6th, NPCA issued the Position Statement which appears below. In it, NPCA expresses new and serious concerns with the current NPS fee program. Wild Wilderness is delighted that NPCA has taken this important first step.

That said, Wild Wilderness opposes the legislative authority which made it possible for National Park entrance fees to skyrocket and for those new and higher-priced fees to be retained by the agency. We are staunch opponents of fee retention — specifically because of the reasons why this authority was created and what this new authority is expected to accomplish.

The concept of fee retention was first proposed in 1982 by President Ronald Reagan's Office of Management and Budget and is strongly supported by Libertarian ideologues such as the Deputy Director of the Department of Interior, Lynn Scarlett.

For 25 years, efforts to authorize NPS fee retention was DIRECTLY coupled with efforts to defund the National Park Service and to starve them of public funding. The ideological PURPOSE for permitting land management agencies to keep entrance fees has, for more than two decades, been to shift the method of park funding FROM tax-dollars TO user-fees.  Click here to learn more.

Wild Wilderness is delighted to see NPCA starting to move in the right direction and we are thankful that, in their small way, they are challenging the course upon which Reagan set the National Park System and its funding. Perhaps it is not yet too late to prevent the worst of that agency's long-planned commercialization, privatization and motorization.

Scott

Written in response to "Back to Nature" (March 13, 2007 )

During a recent Sierra Club hike, we were discussing the lack of young people on the trails. We figured that the reasons were multiple.

Hiking requires time that the parents may not have and stamina that neither parents nor kids may have. Kids these days would rather stare into a GameBoy than learn the names of the plants and animals.

Yes, we need to get the kids out into nature to experience the natural world, away from human amenities and electronic annoyance.

They need to feel the ruggedness of our local mountains as they climb up a trail; to see the incredible variety of plants and animals even in the harsh desert; to smell the fragrance of cedars and chaparral damp with morning dew; to hear coyotes, owls and critters scurrying around in a pitch-black moonless night.

But I agree with the Bartschs. I, too, question the real motive behind the American Recreation Coalition's desire to get "more kids in the woods."

The ARC does not represent the public, it represents corporations that make, sell, operate, or provide recreational vehicles, equipment, facilities or services.

The ARC's interest in getting kids into the woods is not to help them connect with nature, but to increase and expand their customer base.

CLICK ON IMAGE TO PLAY VIDEO 

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Parks need work, not fluff
They were created as wilderness; keep them like that

The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild, and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World. Every tree sends its fibers forth in search of the Wild. The cities import it at any price. Men plow and sail for it. From the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind.

 — Henry David Thoreau, "In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World"

A few years back, I was on a fishing trip in the Yellowstone Park area, enjoying the wonders of the park as much as the fishing. It was early fall, and everything had turned golden. The days were sunny, the tourists were few and the park's wildlife abundant. At a park campground, we were serenaded to sleep each night by the bugling of the elk.

One morning, as we were heading out of the park to fish the Madison River below Quake Lake, we were caught in a bison-induced traffic jam. A herd of the shaggy beasts was moving, quite slowly, from its grazing area near the river up into pines where the bison could rest in the shade. They were making a mess of things as only bison that have just eaten and drunk their fill can. The air was pungent.

Having visited the park many times, we were well-instructed in their ways, knowing that bison move at their own speed and no amount of encouragement, especially the honking of horns, would move them faster than they wanted to go.

We were behind a very large recreation vehicle, whose owner, a man not at all versed in the nature of bison, was demonstrating an impatience that bordered on rage. He honked his horn repeatedly and tried to nudge several of the animals along with the bumper of his vehicle. After much effort, a large bull that weighed about 2,000 pounds and sporting an impressive set of horns moved onto the shoulder of the road.

The animal plodded along steadily as the RV pulled alongside and tried to pass. The RV was about halfway past the bull when it decided to use its horn. Quite deliberately, it swung its massive head and planted its left horn deep into the side of the RV. After taking a 3- to 4-foot gouge out of the vehicle, the bull pulled his horn free and ambled on down the road, completely indifferent to the damage it had done.

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I recently spoke with a social scientist who believes National Park Service visitation is poised to collapse in the near future. This prediction is, in part, based upon the fact that the bulk of today's visitation comes from boomers and that there really isn't a continuum of interest extending into younger generations.

The explanation that he will offer is NOT the simplistic 'American Recreation Coalition - Richard Louv' one which claims parks are no fun and are irrelevant to fat kids. It will be far more challenging, more thought provoking and more honest.
 
I am deeply troubled that declining visitation will be used as the chief motivation for the NPS to reinvent (and thus destroy) the parks.  I'm not particularly worried about declining visitation per se ... merely about how the ISSUE will be used and abused by those, such as the ARC, who have long been pushing a particular agenda.

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