New West Column
What Can We Make of Multiple Use?
When environmental politics become deeply partisan, the West's public lands suffer.By Steve Bunk, 8-02-11
House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), in a subcommittee hearing.
Former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt’s re-entry in the political fray in recent weeks, which he says was precipitated by fears over the future of the nation’s wild lands, brings up the question of what it means nowadays to be a Westerner.
To many people, the answer probably would be the same as it ever has been: wide-open spaces. Even though relatively few of us actually live in undeveloped areas anymore, wild lands remain central to our collective identity.
It’s hard to think of any topic that gets Westerners going more intensely than wild lands and all they contain. Wolves, elk, salmon, sage-grouse, logging, mining, rivers, off-road vehicles, roadless areas, the list goes on and on. Is there a greater number of special interest groups involved in any other aspect of Western life?
Everyone here believes in the importance of wild lands; it’s a common creed. But how that creed is interpreted varies enormously.
Babbitt, who led the Department of the Interior under Bill Clinton, took the rather surprising step in June of publicly chastising the Obama administration for wavering in its commitment to environmental protections. In late July, he said in a House hearing that a proposed Republican bill was “the most radical, overreaching attempt to dismantle the architecture of the public lands laws that has been proposed in my lifetime,” according to an AP report.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., intends to open about 43 million acres of public land now designated as wilderness study areas and inventoried roadless areas to logging, grazing, motorized sports, and other activities.
Babbit saw it as a major concern, especially coupled with a proposed environmental appropriations bill so extreme in its curtailment of funding and regulatory powers that it has little chance of survival in its present form.
Republicans favoring McCarthy’s bill argue that allowing public lands to be managed for multiple use, rather than being “locked up” as wilderness, promotes responsible resource development and healthy forest management, among other benefits.
The problem with everybody preaching the gospel of Nature is that each side thinks they’re the only ones who are keeping the faith. When the wild is a common church whose congregation disagrees on its tenets, charges of idolatry and paganism are inevitable.
Faith, or belief without proof, may be an attribute central to human contentment, but it also promotes the laying aside of critical appraisal. It doesn’t work on a cognitive level; it taps into other aspects of who we are.
Blind faith in, say, the importance of wolves to the food chain or the endlessly regenerative powers of Nature can’t sustain us without taking away our breadth of vision. In the midst of this paradox, we struggle with multiple use.
Battles of this sort have been waged ever since enactment in 1960 of the federal Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act.
During the first decade of this century, which was the heyday of “quid pro quo wilderness” bills in Western states, it began to look like multiple use might finally emerge as a template for resolving wild lands debates. All sides would compromise and everyone would benefit.
Alas, the huge array of competing activities, interests, and investments involved in such ecumenicalism made it hard to keep the faith, and quid pro quo lost support.
Even so, the choir sometimes sings in tune.
Take the various regional collaborative efforts to restore Western watersheds and landscapes, often funded by the U.S. Forest Service. These coalitions draw together such disparate groups as loggers, local government officials, environmentalists, hunters, Indians, and ORV enthusiasts.
Another example is the new national planning rule being developed by the Forest Service, a long process in which unprecedented efforts have been made to involve all stakeholders.
In the end, our choices boil down to confrontation or collaboration. Wallace Stegner famously called wild country a part of the “geography of hope.” He also believed cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the trait that best characterizes the West, and is best-suited to preserve it.
Standing in the woods somewhere listening to the big quiet can make anyone feel like part of Nature’s interconnectedness, and, really, that’s the larger message of multiple use.
It’s not a grid for parceling out each component, wilderness here, mining there, as if everything were a commodity. It’s not supposed to be a power struggle over who gets the biggest slice of the management priorities pie.
It’s a mosaic, in which each thing, sentient or not, plays a part. Done right, multiple use is all about community.
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Speaking as a mountain bicyclist it is almost a daily ritual reading about how Wilderness advocates want to close practically the entire country off to (human powered) mountain bicycling.
One of the lowest impact, easily dispersed in the wide open lands activity where some trails see almost no use and the Wilderness proponents see it fit to close access to simple bicycles.
These people could have had so much more support if they had not treated bicyclists as second rate citizens.
So yeah multiple use makes sense as does diminishing significantly the loud vocal minority that seems to think hikers and horseback riders are the only ones who should be allowed to experience these lands.
Where is all this abuse by or from Grizzlies and any regulatory provision of ESA as applied in a real world actuality ?
If it's just " bears being bears" are you still gonna hang it on the ESA hook somehow ? Do you mind if I also bring up untended cattle and overgrazing; abusive irreverant law-flouting ATV drivers and poachers ? Do you somehow think that public land belongs exclusives to the humans back in town but not the wildlife who live there or have every natural right to occupy it under their take on " Multiple Use", such as food, water, shelter, denning, too ?
One other thing. Don;t hange me on your virtual Environmental organization hook. I don;t belong to any of those green groups and I do not support them , financially or otherwise. I probably dislike them as much as you , these days, but I do not let it become hatred or rabid villification , nor do I make them out to be anything more than they are , in reality.
What would you know about reality, anyway ?
Our Federal government is 14 trillion dollars in debt; they go 1 billion dollars in debt every DAY. That equate to almost 50 grand per person in the US or $200,000 for a family of four! …. The USFWS has tried way too many times to remove the Grizzly & Wolf from its responsibility back to the states. These states recognized around the world for their first class Fish and Game departments would manage the animals to the will of their people….. in the end the wolf and grizzly would certainly not be any less for wear. Bottom line is wolves and grizzlies are not endangered….. wolves never were. My Federal government cannot afford to be spending endangered resource dollars on these animals!
With that being said, the environmental groups have no business abusing the ESA to keep Federal protection for non(non-endangered or threatened) animals because the law was poorly written and allows them to further their anti-hunting agenda! Abuse!
It shouldn't be about MONEY with wildlife and especially specie reintroduction. A factor?--yes. A sole determinant ?--never. Managing any wildlife strictly by financial accounting is awfully poor policy, besides being regressive. For instance, Wyoming's elk population does not exist solely to be a put-and-take huntable harvest , no matter how much it resembles just that .
I also have some serious issues with the national debt. But using it as a lame talking point to condescend on wolves and grizzlies is seriously absurd. What planet are you writing from ?
Try groping for an argument somewhere else.
( You can't even stay on topic after you go off topic. All those aspersion generators must be firing at once throwing you off course ).
Take the various regional collaborative efforts to restore Western watersheds and landscapes, often funded by the U.S. Forest Service. These coalitions draw together such disparate groups as loggers, local government officials, environmentalists, hunters, Indians, and ORV enthusiasts."
Thanks Steve for pointing this out. Collaboration take a lot of work, and everyone has to give, but it can be exceptionally rewarding when you solve some of these tricky issues locally.
I think Bob's comment after your article illustrates exactly why it can be so challenging however. He deals in superlatives and claims he is losing everything as a mountain biker - that stems from anger and resentment and bitterness. Based on his comment's I'm not sure a guy like that would be able to come to the table. At a certain point you've got to be a grown up in order to collaborate and sometimes the grown-ups are in short order.
One could have predicted that this is approach you would take when it comes to the grizzly..... A person that claims he has had hundreds of encounters with the animal, makes himself the center of attention when the subject comes up on blogs , and defends the animal like the animal itself (defending its cubs) IS NOT QUALIFIED to be the end all advice on how it should be protected & how much tax dollars should be spent on it. You’re too close to the situation!
Today’s blog illustrates that to a tee! You would not & could not be objective to talk about how molloy’s ruling on September 19th 2009 was an abuse of the ESA!
what is your background in outdoor/nature pursuits? do you live in the West? what activities in tax payer funded USA national forests do you participate in that are under threat of being managed out of participation (by the hundreds of thousands of acres) in the national forests due to lobbyists in Washington?
thanks in advance for the timely, grown up answer.
I know there's much more than just managing bicycles in this grand equation. But I also know that bicycles are simple, quiet and healthy. I just think when recreation/nature appreciation is 'managed' bicycles belong in the same league as other human powered activities (exceptions to be made where large volumes of people and/or special circumstances apply).
p.s imba (int'l mtn biking assoc) has been coming to the table for decades thanks
thanks,
Bob
We have 109 million acres in wilderness. That's less than five percent of the total U.S. land base, and when you factor out Alaskan wilderness, it's just two percent of the land base of the lower 48 states. Much of our wilderness is 'ice 'n rock', so there's still gobs of room for mountain bike fans and ATVers to ride around.
I've seen a great deal of cooperation and cooperation in natural resource issues, but it has long struck me that multiple use is simply a way for extractive industries to get their way and leave the leftovers for the rest of us. There are occassional setbacks for industry, but they've done pretty well over the years. The same cannot be said for habitat and wildlife in the main.
Where I live (Bozeman/Big Sky) there is no longer "still gobs of room for mountain bike fans and ATVers to ride around."
Much of the lands around Bozeman/Big Sky that are not Wilderness are being managed as defacto Wilderness because of the WSA designation.
As a Mountain Biker I have lost access to several hundred miles of trails. I am greatly pissed off about that FACT.
I don't like ATVs and what they do to the land but I now support their right to access because of the environmental extremism of the groups in this area. The Wilderness Society is one of the main culprits.
anything to do with any area not already dotted with houses, extraction industries and that still, for the most part have clean water and air and where some wild animals (non human) can make their homes. Not names, really, but pseudonyms because it's easier to hide behind a mask and speak out or yell out or sometimes call someone else a "name" behind a mask.
That being said, I think I would agree that mountain bikes of the non motorized variety do have a place in wilderness and probably don't mess things up most days any more than a horse hoof.
Just f.y.i. - in Utah there are 220,000 miles of ATV routes now open - which, if travelled, would equate to many trips from N.Y.
to L.A.
With all the noise and air pollution in cities, I think it's important to have places to go without that noise and pollution and any degradation of water sources. Also, there is nothing wrong with considering the future of all the plants, animals, and all other organisms that depend on a natural environment. Since no human created any of those beings and cannot ever create any, is that reason to degrade or destroy them? No.
Humans can wreck the world around them so fast without consideration to long term effects that it continues to be scary.
Why is this necessary?
HB 1581 is a mistake.
Share trails with other hikers, mountain bikers, horses, fishermen, walkers, runners, and any other quiet form of recreation. That is mixed use. Noise belongs in the city.
Why should we accept this extreme multiple use legislation that some of our politicians want. It is just a step toward putting everything in the US into private hands so the few can control the many. This Oligarchy that they envision is going to limit our rights and make us less free in the long run. When someone uses the word freedom, we should immediately ask ourselves for who and for what do they want this freedom? The 'American Dream' is just a national lottery where <1% will win and rest of us will be on food stamps, if they let us have them. It's just a dream - time to wake-up and smell the roses.
There is a big difference between belief in a religion that states you will be happy after you die and wanting to preserve the environment for the future and our kids. We think we can control nature because we believe we are godlike. This removes us from the ecosystem and is a recipe for disaster. It's just wishful thinking - time to wake-up and smell the roses.
I agree with you about deseases that humans can carry. When people hike into the back country, they should have a small shovel or something to dig a hole and cover it with. Make sure it's far enough from the camp, so flies and smells won't bother you.