Bill Schneider of the New West online magazine has published TWO very important articles in as many days.

Yesterday, Bill shared an internal memo from within the ranks of the Montana Wilderness Association. That memo called upon MWA to return to its roots and distance itself from positions and policies said to be overly compromising and harmful to the very purposes for which the organization existed. It called upon MWA to break free from the PEW/ Campaign for America's Wilderness orbit and to refuse to "submit to Faustian bargains in an attempt to cut across the switchbacks on our way to new wilderness."

That piece can be read here.

 Today Bill followed up with further discussion of what he refers to as "a feud between green groups." Here are a few lines quoted from that piece, to give you an idea of what it is about:

 [First, if wilderness groups can’t find enough common ground to form a unified front in the battle for Wilderness, we should just give up and go to Plan B, to be explained later in this commentary. I still can’t imagine Congress passing a true Wilderness bill with a large percentage of wilderness advocates opposing it--or to be fine-line political, not supporting it.

 Second, I probably shouldn’t call it a green group feud. It no longer seems like green vs. green; it’s more like green vs. brown, with supporters of the quid pro quo approach being brown and supporters of the save-what-we-have-left approach staying green.]

I'd like to thank Bill for giving exposure to this issue. I'd also like to suggest to Bill and others, that there are many "Plan Bs" and no one should feel confined to select between the current "Plan A" and those few alternatives offered in Bill's article available at this link.

I'd furthermore like to suggest that those who see themselves as "green", as Bill defined above, should consider aligning themselves with the efforts of "Voices for Public Lands".  VPL is a coalition, now consisting of some 45 member organizations united in support of a set of Principles for Public Lands. VPL is prepared to challenge overly compromising Plan As and to create and advocate for, better Plan Bs, Cs and Ds.

To learn more, click here.

Scott

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