Assaults upon our public lands by those whose concept of ‘multiple use’ means ‘extractive abuse’, are nothing new. The current wave of industry supported, and privately financed attacks being waged upon the very Concept of Nature, is unprecedented.
It used to be our right-wing Western States Congressmen and their corporate partners wanted to strip our lands of whatever public riches they held. Today they want more, more than the land itself. They seek to reshape the ways in which we perceive Nature and relate to the natural environment.
To accomplish this task, they have developed a brilliant and cunning strategy. It is called "themed, motor-sport oriented, industrial strength recreation". It’s a new brand of recreation that has been carefully defined, thoughtfully packaged, and comes with a very strong take-home message.
Those who visit our forests, deserts, mountains and rivers of the future will no longer be encouraged to discover Nature for themselves. Wild, raw nature will have been tamed and domesticated. Future visitors to America’s public-lands will find an assortment of recreation experiences constructed for their consumption. More ominously, these experiences will have been fabricated, not just to enrich the concessionaires providing the experience, but to instill and disseminate the corporate message saying: "Trust us, we know how to Manage Nature" … and to control you!
Every element of our daily existence has become imbued by the omnipresent forces of commercialization. From the moment we open our eyes to our last thought of the day, we cannot escape the fact that we exist to consume the goods and services of the multinational corporations that now control our society.
Some of us won’t have a clue about what I am speaking. Many of us no longer concern ourselves about this trend. Years ago we might have worried that we had become little more than insignificant cogs in a giant machine, but we’ve made peace with the system and willingly embrace it, so long as it can adequately satisfy our material needs.
Another fraction of the population wish to escape the system, and adopt one of the increasingly popular alternative lifestyles, such as "voluntary simplicity". A few have actually taken the plunge, purchased the authoritative how-to book, quit their high paying jobs and moved to the country. Many within this category are discovering that they can not live as simply as their voluntary poverty requires.
And finally there’s the category where, I believe, the majority of Americans now fall. This is the group which has developed a dynamic coping mechanism involving maintenance of a meta-stable equilibrium. We willingly, even passionately, run the maze each day, and with only the occasional tinge of guilt, consume like there’s no tomorrow. But we willingly participate and thrive within the system because we know, or at least believe, that a more pure and less commercially proscribed alternative exists. For urban environmentalists, that special refuge is often the idea of Wilderness; for others, that special place is the more utilitarian ‘great outdoors’.
Once or twice a year we throw the old backpack into the new SUV and head into the backcountry for a revitalizing romp in the wild. And after spending three or four days and nights of ‘roughing it’ we find our spiritual batteries adequately recharged and we’re ready to once again immerse ourselves in our normal life. Others might prefer to spend a long weekend peacefully camped by the lake while fishing or just plain relaxing. Whether you’ve been sleeping on the ground or in your heated RV, that brief return to nature is enough to refresh you, to lift your spirits and to provide fortitude sufficient to last until your next nature fix.
Unfortunately, that link to sanity is, at this moment in time, under intense attack by the very same powers that dominate our daily lives. Perhaps the multinational corporations have simply discovered that there is an enormous profit to be made from providing ‘institutionalized recreation’ to a nation that requires it with the need of a heroin addict. More worrisome, is the possibility that these corporations have realized that the path to total domination is to dominate totally. As the cattle barons of the American West discovered, to control the bottomlands did not assure success. To gain domination and total power you needed to control the watershed.
America’s wild and scenic places are the watershed from which our strength and resiliency springs. We will tolerate, even accept, being treated as cattle so long as we have plenty to eat and are permitted free access to the stream. If made to drink instead from galvanized stock tanks, we become dependent upon the owner of those tanks for our very survival. Free access to raw nature is too important a human resource to institutionalize and turn into just another commodity.
Unfortunately for all of us who care about wild and natural places, they are now in greater danger than at any time in recent history, because the newly stated goal of federal land-managers is to turn leisure into a ‘product,’ to create, market, and sell ‘brands’ of institutionalized recreation, and to operate like profitable businesses instead of as public resource managers.
Unless we can halt the rush toward public/private partnerships for the management of our public lands, the ‘great outdoors’ will soon be little more than a series of highly structured, 'eco-tainment' theme-parks. Through the growing use of corporate sponsored ‘educational interpretation’ and similar ‘visitor services’, our public lands themselves will become the final vehicle through which our concepts of nature will be defined and redefined to advance the agenda of Corporate America. We will have no option except to drink from their contaminated stock tanks.
In contrast to my message of doom and gloom, I am increasingly finding my mailbox filled with jubilant messages from environmental groups. These are congratulatory statements explaining how such-and-such forest was saved from clear-cutting. These are optimistic messages, suggesting that through ever more diligent work, additional lands may be saved in 1998. But I am sorry to say, that while my friends may save more trees in 1998, we will almost certainly begin to lose the very land and ecosystems upon which these trees now grow.
Not even during the Reagan years, did James Watt present a threat equal to that which we now face. America’s wild and scenic places are less in danger of classical extractive industry abuses than of a concerted effort to "commercialize, privatize and motorize" them to the maximum extent possible. This effort is largely being orchestrated by dominant recreation and entertainment corporations and facilitated by anti-environmental Western States Congressmen. It is being coordinated within the US Forest Service by Francis Pandolfi, a former recreation industry insider, now Chief of Staff to Michael Dombeck. And it is being implemented by land-management bureaucrats who, quite frankly are sick and tired of fighting with us environmentalists on extraction issues and are glad to be moving on to something new!
Most environmentalists are keenly aware of the unprecedented, yet largely unsuccessful, attack waged upon federal lands by the 104th Congress. But the 105th Congress, having learned from its mistakes, has renewed its attack with increased vigor, and with substantially greater tact and stealth.
And who is going to stop them? Certainly not our President or a populous myopically fixated upon the next promised tax cut. And I say with sadness, not the environmental community as it’s now structured and currently focused.
These are very tough times for the environmental community. It’s not that we’re incapable of coping under conditions of adversity. On the contrary, we are at our finest when the forces of darkness are most apparent. James Watt did more to expand our ranks, and fill our coffers, than did any of our actual successes. In fact, the mere suggestion that we are gaining the upper hand, would probably send the movement into recession.
But that is not the problem we face in 1998. It’s far worse than that. Those of us working at the grass roots level know what we want to accomplish and why we dedicate our lives to activism. We are close enough to our issues, and operate on sufficiently low budgets, that we can pursue our visions faithfully, without distraction and without feeling compelled to settle for less than we know is right.
Not so for the large national environmental organizations who have developed a much greater sense of political savvy and requirement for significant funding. And certainly not so for the ever growing number of fallacious corporate-sponsored groups who profess to represent ‘the new environmentalism.’ Also not so for the hundreds of astro-turf organizations sprouting up everywhere; groups with names suggesting green, but who are anything but.
The reason 1998 is going to be such a tough year for the environmental movement is because the general public has become lost amongst the increasingly discordant cacophony of environmental issues. They haven’t a clue which threats are real, which can probably be ignored, which could shrink their wallets, or which will cause their early demise.
Even we, in the environmental community, are finding it increasingly difficult to tell friend from foe, especially when we see bona fide environmental groups joining highly questionable coalitions having obviously anti-environmental members or leaders. I can usually quickly identify a fake environmental group. But when I see coalitions forming between groups that I actively support, and those that I actively oppose, I become totally baffled.
It also disturbs me to find that although my beliefs and values systems have, over the last ten years, remained rock solid, I find my position drifting, relative to the mainstream. In reality, the middle is moving so quickly to the right, that ‘absolute’ positions become disconnected from previous landmarks. And with the introduction of so much ardently anti-environmental, yet green sounding chaff, the battleground has become chaotic indeed.
Amongst all of this confusion, the issues facing the environmental movement have shifted radically. So the purpose of my writing this article is to impress upon my readers the simple fact that an important paradigm shift in public lands management has already occurred. There is a major new issue before us and it will deserve much more attention and scrutiny than it is now receiving.
That’s not to say that the battles with the extractive industries have ended or that federal land-management agencies now suddenly share our views. But starting in 1998, we will find that the industries most threatening the environment will no longer be those we’ve grown accustomed to fighting. Furthermore, the federal land-managers who we’ve so diligently watch-dogged, will become seemingly more disinterested in defending their newest timber sales or mining projects.
However, to mistake their apparent retreat for evidence that our righteous efforts have finally paid off, would be the biggest of all possible mistakes.
While this management shift has been occurring for several years, in 1998 it will become painfully clear that the new business of the USFS, the BLM and other federal agencies is "industrial strength recreation". From now on, trees will be rented by the hour instead of sold by the board foot. And while that might sound like a step in the right direction, it is absolutely not. The sad truth is that this recreation agenda is being driven by corporate and wise-use forces whose mission is to ‘privatize, commercialize and motorize’ our public lands to the highest extent possible.
The new environmental enemy is not so different than the old. The Congressmen behind the recreation agenda are the same people we have fought for years: notably Senators Frank Murkowski, Ted Stevens, Larry Craig, and Representatives Don Young and Jim Hansen. The corporate powers however, are quite different, and may be unfamiliar to many. They are, with few exceptions, singularly united within an easily identified, high profile target. And it is this target, this coalition, that we must defeat in 1998. The name of the enemy is the American Recreation Coalition. Its leader is Derrick Crandall, and its membership consists of over 120 high-powered recreation-industry corporations and associations.
In 1998, the American Recreation Coalition will attempt to pass Senator Murkowski’s upcoming Recreation Superbill Initiative. And while it pains me to see so many of our national environmental groups now rallying behind Senator Murkowski on a related recreation issue, I am confident that there could be no political gain so great as to have the environmental movement support this particularly dreadful legislation. In 1998, please help me to defeat Murkowski’s Recreation Superbill Initiative. And more importantly, please take the time to become more familiar with the threats to our wild lands now being codified through the current shift to industrial strength recreation.
Scott Silver, Executive Director,
248 NW Wilmington Avenue, Bend OR 97701
Phone (541) 385-5261 E-mail: ssilver@transport.com