Wilderness Deflected
NREPA: New York Times Praises Wilderness Act, Unfortunately?
A Times editorial urges passage of the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act and calls it a noble idea. Oy.By Amy Linn, 7-07-09
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| Beaverhead mountains. Photo by Bitterroot. | |
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A New York Times editorial today calls for the passage of the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act, saying it’s a “truly enlightened environmental policy” that would balance “the needs of both nature and local economies.” So what’s the problem?
Foes already complain the bill is an elite Easterner’s idea being foisted on the West. And no matter how misguided it might be, the “you ain’t from aroun’ here, are ya?” backlash can be fierce.
An anti-NREPA Facebook group by today’s count has 3,090 members. (Not pulling any punches, it’s called Don’t Mess With the West: Oppose Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act.)
In a similar vein, Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Montana, a staunch NREPA foe, wrote in a recent NewWest.net guest column that one of the problems with NREPA is that it’s being peddled by “sophisticated New Yorkers” who perhaps think folks in the Northern Rockies are “ignorant rednecks.”
In short, New Yorkers campaigning for NREPA have about as much chance of winning local converts as vegans at a cattle ranch. This isn’t just a wilderness issue—it’s become a class issue, a spin issue, a them-versus-us issue. It’s “rednecks” versus “Washington, D.C. bureaucrats”; it’s “top-down” (as foes describe it) versus “bottom-up” (the lingo used by fans). It’s preserving wilderness and boosting local economies versus logging and drilling the land. (Bill Schneider’s It’s the Wilderness, Stupid gives a fine overview of the controversy; Outside magazine also hits the mark in As A Matter of Fact, Money Does Grow on Trees by Bruce Barcott.)
This is not to say that the Times shouldn’t post an editorial supporting a worthy wilderness bill. It’s just to say that NREPA opponents will likely see the article as yet one more piece of evidence that know-nothing big-city types are trying to strip Westerners of our rights to moto-recreation, guns, private property and so on. The bureaucrats from thousands of miles away are trying to “tell us how to manage public lands,” as Rehberg puts it.
And so the NREPA battle is bogged down, as always. If only there weren’t so many words getting in the way.
Here are a few paragraphs from the Times:
“One of the most ambitious environmental bills in years, the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act, is awaiting action in Congress. It could be waiting a while. A version was first introduced in 1991, and while the bill has become a perennial focus of great hopes and fierce objections, it has never come up for a vote.
The bill, sponsored in the House by Representatives Carolyn Maloney of New York and Raúl Grijalva of Arizona, would designate more than 20 million acres of federal public land — mostly in Idaho and Montana, with parts of eastern Washington, eastern Oregon and western Wyoming — as wilderness, the law’s highest protection.
The great strength of the bill lies in the breadth of its vision. Recognizing that animals and plants thrive best within intact ecosystems, not governmental borders, it would reach across state lines to secure biological corridors where animals can roam freely. Yet while the bill has more than 90 co-sponsors, none are from the districts affected ... The bill’s conspicuous lack of local lawmakers’ support — and in many cases resistance — is evidence of the passions it arouses from hunters, fishermen, skiers, snowmobilers. ... But that is no reason for Ms. Maloney or Mr. Grijalva or the bill’s co-sponsors to give up on this bill or on the noble idea of preserving large, connected, intact ecosystems.”
Click here to read the entire bill.
For more articles on the wilderness debate, click here.
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Comments
Ironically, much of that truth about NREPA's origins can be found at previous posts here at NewWest.
For example, this recent NewWest.net post is from Paul Richards, a Boulder, Montana, area businessman and a former member of the Montana House of Representatives and a former newsman with The Associated Press. http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/northern_rockies_protection_act_preserves_land_saves_money_creates_jobs/C37/L37/
SNIP:
"After consulting with numerous Montana conservation organizations and wildlife biologists, I wrote the first draft of what-was-to-become the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act in 1986. After involving about a dozen more regional conservation groups, I wrote the text of the second draft of what-was-to-become NREPA in 1987.
I am hardly a fire-breathing radical. I am a former member (voluntarily retired) of the Montana House of Representatives. I have served as a member of the Montana Advisory Council on Children and Youth; the Montana Youth Justice Advisory Council; the Montana Drug Education Consortium; the Martin Luther King, Jr. Birthday Celebration Committee; and the Technical Advisory Committee of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forests.
For over 40 years now, I have served with distinction on the boards of directors of numerous community and statewide organizations. I am proud of my record of public service and I will not let a land developer and spokesman for big oil like Rehberg impugn that record, simply because I believe in leaving future generations a public lands legacy."
Is it simply that you reporters are too damn lazy to go and ask real people about it?
RH
While there's no doubt many Westerners who support NREPA and can see the benefits, their voices haven't been loud enough to overcome extremely vocal opposition. It would be nice to see a member of Congress from an affected district be courageous enough to support this bill. Right now, it's probably viewed by all of them as political suicide.
And nobody can deny that NREPA is nuts.
Nor can anyone deny that the New York Times editorial board exemplifies flyover elitism at its worst. How about Bob Semple winning a Pulitzer for his ranting about Crown Butte, and only post-Prize being FLOWN over the park and site for the first time by Lighthawk after being feted by GYC?
Just goes to show the tawdry state of our press "elite"....
NREPA is a bent bill, kind of like anti-gun legislation written by people so screwed up they don't even realize how far gone they are.
The Wilderness Act was never intended to lead to an endless process. It was supposed to establish, fairly, this and no more lines of demarcation for wilderness and multiple use land. I wonder what Aldo Leopold and Bob Marshall would say today.
Also, I'm pretty sure that if Aldo Leopold and Bob Marshall were alive today and took a good, hard look at public lands management, they would wholeheartedly support protecting the remaining roadless wildlands in the northern Rockies as Wilderness. Do you honestly think that given the environmental and economic realities of 2009 that these Wilderness heros would actually support opening up these wildlands to roads, logging equipment and oil and gas wells? I mean, get serious dude.
Amy, could you point me to some of this reporting?
Thanks for the update on NREPA, also known as "the deadest bill on the hill". You did well in reporting on the editorial, but not so well when you tried to explain why the bill is forever bogged down.
The NYT editorial stated that the bill has only 90 sponsors. The U.S. house currently has 435 members with 255 Democrats who you might theorize would be more open to this type of bill (I'm guessing at least 90% of the co-sponsors are Democrats?). For a bill that has been around for so long you might think that it might gather a little more support. But the reality is that it has gone nowhere (21% support?).
The problem with the bill is that it simply is not worthy of serious consideration. Publicly elected Representatives from the states were NREPA lands lay have realized this as well as hundreds of other Representatives from around the country. It's seems obvious that not only "rednecks" oppose this bill (although you offer no evidence to this point) but also a large majority of the "big city types" (where the majority of our representatives come from)..(see 21% above).
It would probably be most accurate to say that this bill has very little public support, why else would it be floundering around so badly?
The enviros got yet another hearing with this new Congress which spurred all the local papers to once more put in a single token article about the bill..........and then pretty much silence (except for NewWest which seems to be trying really hard to keep it alive). The masses are speaking......by simply ignoring NREPA.
Also, real mike, you can count me in as one easterner who thinks that NREPA is a bad bill.
The only natives in the West are the Indians who were slaughtered, imprisoned on reservations, and callously exploited. I get a little tired hearing white people talk about being native. They're nothing of the sort. We're all interlopers. And this one, and lot like me, want to see more wilderness.
As for the achievements of local management, well, look at the disease-ridden elk feedgrounds, which we have thanks to local ranchers. Local stewardship? That's garbage.
RH
If she wants wilderness put it where she is. Do you have any idea how much fuel is burned by hikers and climbers driving across the country ? I'm sure it is far more than the young couple both working with kids who have a few hours off and want to drive to a fishing or picnicing spot. On top of that how about the extra taxes they pay for "public land" that they are not allowed to use?
And Matt, it's the "fire breathing radical" part Paul hides. Who precisely were the dozen groups? AWR is one for sure, and don't let me hold my break if the four EF co-founders were in on this.
Finally, Mike, I don't want to "end" the Wilderness Act. I'm cool with preserving outstanding wildernesses like those we already have. It's the distortions of original intent in its name I find tiresome, especially the distortions implicit in garbage legislation like NREPA.
One man's garbage is another man's treasure. Channeling Leopold and Marshall, now that's good humor. What's next? Any truth to the rumour you're starting a local Earth First! chapter in Kalispell this summer? I'll bring the buffalo hot dogs.
As for channeling Bob and Aldo, apparently a lot of that was done. Marshall died in 1933 and Leopold in 47 or 48, and the Act wasn't passed for another 15 or so years.
I understand fully that Marshall was a socialist trust-funder, I suppose he'd be just as radical today as he was then. And I understand the temptation to quote Almanac when it suits...I sort of enjoyed it, but Leopold also discusses the use side of the equation, and that's never brought up.
Nonetheless, Congress did in fact have a this-and-no-more intent with the 1964 Act. The concept of unroading to "de-trammel" lands and "re-wild" them is a creature of "your" imagination. You may want those concepts codified. Fine.
If they are, however, to me it's just another indicator of how far our nation has declined.
Maybe we should add a wolf-hunt provision to it. That's where I disagree with the rest of the "radical environmental community." I'm a fourth generation Montanan from a ranching family. We had a picture in our family photo album of the last wolf pelts from the Highwoods hung up on a log cabin wall to dry. I would like to shoot any and all wolves in my vicinity, even though I'm no longer a rancher. They breed like crazy, and the only way you can get rid of them completely is by poisoning.
The announcement of a hunting season is a good indication that there is some sanity left in Montana. Don't save the wolves. Save the wilderness. The wolves will do very well on their own.
It already BELONGS to the people. Nobody is being "locked out" except those who want to destroy it.
Do insurance and pharmaceutical companies have a "property right" to our healthcare dollars? Sen. Baucus believes so. He also seems to believe that mining and logging corporations have a "right" to our public lands.
"Natural" forest fires that enviros seem to love do far more harm to watersheds, to the forests and to the wildlife that live there than any other use, including timbering.
The word "public" is key, and the public should be able to use it for lumber, grazing, fishing, drilling, not for the exclusive use of hikers.
We need more researchers sucking up our tax dollars to prove what they want it to prove like we need another tax for breathing, (which I am sure is coming).
i have driven for more than 2 years. And I've been opposed to the private, internal combustion-powered automobile since the 1970's - long before Al Gore. Henry Ford was a fascist.
I'm a free-market libertarian, and a Green Party activist. Unfortunately, most people think the two are mutually exclusive.
What we have now is corporate fascism/finance, monopoly capitalism, or something like that. Large corporations control the government. We don't have "government regulation of business." We have "business owning and controlling the government." If you're a businessman, you might think that's a good thing, but look at what it has led to - total bankruptcy and control by the "globalization" lobby - which now means India, China, Russia, and OPEC. Is this what you mean by "freedom" and "the American Way of Life?"
In theory, I should be aligned with the PERC people. But so far as I can tell, there's no longer any environmentalists OR libertarians, there. Of course, they're all financed by the same corporations and tax-exempt foundations which caused the problems in the first place.
"Author's in the Park" await me saturday in Sidney<..
Giddup
Your hatred of business surprises me since environmentalism is one of the biggest businesses on earth. On top of that they not only do not pay any tax money they get to take tax money from the rest of us. No worry though, President O is taking them over at a breath taking pace, time will tell how good that is for us.
I'll elaborate more in a coming article, but to remind all of you folks that the West opposed Yellowstone NP. The West opposed the creation of the first national forests. The West opposed the creation of Glacier NP. Wyoming opposed Grand Teton NP and even went so far as to introduce legislation to unauthorize the park.
I challenge any of you so called locals to tell me that you think it was a mistake to create national forests and national parks in the West.
But if it had been left to locals, Glacier Park would be studded with oil wells, Yellowstone would have been carved up as ranchland and mini private hot springs resorts, and the national forests--well they would have been sold off to the highest bidders and a lot more of the West would be like Texas where there is virtually no public land.
Think up another story.
I'm writing an essay now that will be on New West in a week or less with some of those quotes and references.
Geo.
Back when NREPA was first introduced, a western paper, the Arizona Star, said western politicians were silly to try and make it an eastern idea. Westerners who were first to support NREPA only took it to eastern politicians, the Star editorial said, because western politicians somehow couldn't see what a good idea it is, and couldn't see it because they were blinded by, ahem, out of state corporations who want to mine, log, and drill.
Somehow, this out-of-state thing never gets reported in all the forms it really takes. I heard no politicans warning Montanans what would happen to the state's logging economy if Plum Creek came to the state in the 1980s. But Montana's senior senator, Max Baucus, waved the warning flag about NREPA by saying, in October 1992, that "Out of state groups are increasingly gaining control and influence over our state."
It fell to the Wall Street Journal to report on the consequences of out-of-state logging companies coming to Montana. In a page one article in late 1984 to early 1985, the Journal said big logging companies would make a move into the Northwest, cut hard, then leave. And sure enough, we had a short-lived boom, with consequences that continue even today. Also sure enough, there were as many Montanans cheering that ill-fated boom as there were who warned that it wasn't sustainable.
Wilderness is the least-cost land use alternative. We have too little of it, and too much land devoted to has-been boomonomics.