Nearly a year ago, Undersecretary of Agriculture Jim Lyons acknowledged this new battleground when he stated that the recreation industry is poised to replace timber as a major funding source for public lands.
Interestingly, It was Lyons who last month heralded the first significant display of Big Recreation's political might. At a national trade show for the outdoors manufacturers in Salt Lake City, he announced that his office had overridden the chief of the U.S. Forest Service and reversed a ban on the installation of permanent bolts for climbers in federally designated wilderness areas.
The crowd - the makers and retailers of tents, boots, mountain bikes and yes, climbing gear - heartily approved. After all. it had taken a well-orchestrated campaign to get the feds to back off.
As a climber for 30 years, I don't argue that the wilderness bolt ban would have limited my access to many peaks and cliffs. But wilderness recreation is supposed to be engaged substantially on nature's terms and not at the expense of the resource. Drilling hundreds or thousands of holes in the rock each year to install bolts permanently alters the resource.
This is the "leave no trace" wilderness ethic I thought national environmental groups embraced. But Big Recreation also visited the offices of the nation's largest and most staunch wilderness defenders; The Wilderness Society, The Sierra Club and The National Parks and Conservation Association. And the groups gave ground, agreeing to abandon their earlier position and oppose or at least not take a position on the bolt ban. How could they back down? The answer comes right out of the extractive industies' playbook: money and power.
Consider the reaction lobby's appropriation of Republican Sen. Slade Gorton, Wash., to the cause.
In the weeks before Lyons' announcement, Gorton found himself at REI's main store, in Seattle, holding a press conference with REI's CEO Wally Smith. What was the avowed anti-environmental lawmaker doing amidst such a green crowd. Expressing "outrage" that climbers were being so ill treated and announcing his proposed rider to the Interior appropriations bill that would prohibit the Forest Service from enforcing its bolt ban. This is the same Gorton who is also continually "outraged" at the poor treatment our government has given to the timber, mining and public lands grazing industries.
Gorton is the sponsor of another legislative rider backed by Big Recreation that could have an even more profound effect on wilderness.
This measure would prohibit the Forest Service from managing wilderness to maintain "the subjective concept of solitude."
Never mind that the Wilderness Act defines wilderness as having "outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation." Never mind that one of the most frequent complaints from visitors to wilderness is of overcrowding and a lack of "solitude."
Limiting the number of visitors to wilderness is not an option Big Recreation wants the Forest Service to consider. Just think of all the backpacks, hiking boots, sleeping bags and camp stoves that might not be sold.
It's time for the conservation community to wake up to the threat posed by the recreation industry. Today the issue is climbing bolts; tomorrow it could be a shole new definition of public lands, where, once again, the environment takes a back seat to commerce.
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