A LOCAL COLLABORATION, MOSTLY
The Other Green Group Behind Tester’s Wilderness Bill
A little-known, behind-the-scenes force in the environmental business, a band of very experienced, politically savvy environmentalists, prefers to give the spotlight to local groups and keep their involvement subtle, if not invisible, but that isn't working for them today.By Bill Schneider, 8-06-09
 |
|
 | |
|
Most of us have mistyped URLs, using .com instead of .net or .org instead of .gov. So, when you want to go to the website of the Montana Wood Productions Association, be sure to key in montanaforests.com. If you inadvertently type montanaforests.org, you go a promotional website for Senator Jon Tester’s (D-MT) new Forest Jobs and Recreation Act of 2009, S.1470.
Shortly after the website went up last month, I received a couple of emails claiming this was just another example of the heavy hand of the Campaign for America’s Wilderness (CAW) had in crafting Tester’s wilderness bill. And sure enough, it turns out the domain name was registered by David Chott, CAW online coordinator.
This factoid further fueled paranoia among wilderness advocates opposed to the so-called quid pro quo proposals such S. 1470, a concept promoted successfully by CAW in recent years. In fact, most if not all of recent wilderness successes have followed the same path--i.e. local stakeholders getting together, getting cozy, coming up with a compromise “wilderness bill” they all support because it contains concessions to logging, energy, mining, real estate and motorized recreation lobbies.
Unless you’re an insider working for or against wilderness, you probably haven’t even heard of the Campaign for America’s Wilderness, which is by design. CAW has a small profile but swings a big bat. It works the background advising, facilitating and, in some cases, funding local campaigns like the one that blossomed into S. 1470. (I know the word “wilderness” isn’t in the title of this legislation, but as I’ve already noted, click here, I choose to call it like I see it.)
CAW doesn’t seek out the spotlight because nowadays most wilderness proposals come from western states where liberal eastern environmentalists are about as popular as gun registration. CAW is based in Washington, D.C. and also has office in 12 states, four in western states--Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.
Any mention of the group usually stimulates some heated discussion and fear mongering from both sides of the wilderness debate. Ironically, both edges i.e. those wanting large Wilderness bills like the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act and those wanting no Wilderness both criticize CAW’s involvement--and, it seems, exaggerate it.
It’s about money, of course. It always is. Pew Charitable Trusts, founded by the two daughters and two sons of Joseph N. Pew, founder of Sun Oil Company, and his wife, Mary Anderson Pew, has been a major contributor of CAW, which re-distributes money to local green groups through contracts.
It’s widely believed that the three main state groups behind the drafting of Tester’s bill--Montana Wilderness Association (MWA), Montana Trout Unlimited (TU) and the Northern Rockies office of National Wildlife Federation (NWF)--are flush with Pew money, which has subsequently led to another CAW-branded quid pro quo bill.
But that’s only marginally true.
CAW executive director Mike Matz told NewWest.Net, Pew has changed its tax status into an advocacy group and is no longer “a granting organization,” so the three green groups received no money, at least recently, from Pew Charitable Trusts. CAW, on the other hand, does receive significant funding from Pew and other foundations, some of which is re-directed to local campaigns.
Matz acknowledged that MWA has a “contract,” but not NWF or Montana TU.
On MontanaForests.org, click on “About Us” tab, and here is what you get: “Montana business owners, loggers, sportsmen and conservationists created this site as a way to inform and involve the public in innovative solutions to forest use,” followed by a list of coalition members.
But when local greens opposed to Tester’s bill did a WHOIS search and found that CAW had registered the domain name, they assumed, with some justification, that CAW was behind the website but wanted to keep its role secret. (As this is written, you won’t see anything on the website about CAW, but during a few phone conversations with CAW reps this week, I was told that could change soon.)
The truth is, CAW merely registered the domain name. The coalition of groups listed under the “About Us” tab, the same stakeholders behind the three collaborative efforts forming the basis for Tester’s bill, provided the content for Montanaforests.org and paid to have it designed and put up. They hired Partners Creative, a Missoula advertising firm, to do the actual work, MWA handled the contract, payments and other logistics on behalf of the coalition.
CAW didn’t pay for anything except the small registration fee, according to communications director Susan Whitmore. Concerning the domain name, she said, “It’s just easier for us to register it. We have an IT guy who does that type of thing.”
There’s no conspiracy here,” Matz assures. “We’re not trying to hide our involvement.”
CAW doesn’t’ have a Montana office, he notes, so instead, they contract with local groups like MWA and help them with technical, political and communications advice.
Matz freely acknowledges that CAW was involved in the drafting of Tester’s bill. He and his cohorts worked closely with the coalition, and “Yes, we worked with Tester’s staff and advised them,” he said. “We have a lot of experience with this bill and other bills like it.”
Critics often accuse CAW of being an invisible puppet master, but Matz disagrees. “Were not pulling the strings. It’s the other way around. The local conservationists are the ones who drive the process. We just try to make it (proposed legislation) as viable as possible so it has the best chance of success.”
In an act of openness, Matz sent me a copy of the standard contract they use when giving money to groups like MWA. It requires progress reports, audits, and gives guidelines on how money can be spent, such as conducting “community and town meetings to promote wilderness protection” and “to develop and implement a communications plan to promote wilderness.”
The contract also offers logistical, technical, and political assistance such as representing the local group in Washington, D.C., developing a political strategy, and planning media campaigns.
Mostly pretty harmless stuff compared to what I frequently hear i.e. CAW forcing local groups to toe the line and do it the “Pew Way.”
The contract doesn’t require a quid pro quo approach, but based on what has been possible, politically, in other states, the process naturally leads into these “collaborative bills.”
My conclusion? We have a lot to hurdles and roadblocks in the Wilderness biz, and I wouldn’t put CAW on the list. I’m sure the experience and expertise local groups receive from CAW promotes the quid pro quo approach, but probably not as much as our gunshy western senators and representatives who don’t even dare say the word “wilderness.” They want political lay-ups and demand this type of legislation.
Also, some criticism of CAW could be considered self-inflicted wounds. Trying to shun the limelight can easily be misinterpreted as striving for secrecy. It seems to me that CAW could strengthen its position by being more visible and admitting that a few of those evil Beltway and Left Coast environmentalists are involved in charting the course of our local collaborations and advising our western politicians.
FOOTNOTE: For a chronology of four years of NewWest.Net’s extensive coverage of this issue, click here.
Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.
Comments
There seems to be a lot of "pay attention to what we say, not what we do" here. I think a little deeper digging into what's not written down and what actually is happening would be appropriate. Do you not find it interesting that none of the big, established, corporate groups support Wilderness? It's always the the quid pro quo "let's work with the locals and protect only rock and ice and drop roadless/wilderness study areas from consideration" with a lot of mealy-mouthed talk about collaboration and working together, such as we got from Tom France's recent guest editorial on Tester's logging bill. Who'd have known France is a comic; I laughed all the way through the piece.
The trouble is, people like me are local too, but we're deliberately excluded from any decision-making process because, unlike the big groups, we are thinking ecologically. The big groups quite frankly have nothing but contempt for the grass roots, having abandoned it long ago for corporate support. Company men and women in birkenstocks.
Here in Wyoming, the Wildlife Federation, the Audubon Society, and the Wilderness Society all fell over themselves denying that they supported NREPA. Look it up in the Pinedale Roundup.
Certainly, what we end up with in Tester-clone quid pro quo bills is nothing of ecological value. We're long past the belief that protecting rock and ice equals conservation. Further, the science is becoming clear, as George Wuerthner is making clear in his articles for New West, that logging, especially salvage logging, doesn't improve forest health, but more likely damages it.
We can also ask a couple of questions: is logging ecologically sustainable at any level in the Rocky Mountains, and further, is it even economically sustainable? Logging has declined in the Rockies primarily because the logging companies cut through the available timber too quickly and ran out of timber in areas generally suited for logging, which aren't that extensive anyway. This isn't Georgia or North Carolina with its heavily managed tree farms.
Logging advocates are trying to point to beetle killed trees as a new source of wood, such as for biomass energy production, but the vast majority of these dead trees are in Wilderness and Inventoried Roadless Areas, which, by any operational standard, aren't part of the suitable timber base, as the Forest Service calls it. Unfortunately, we all know where the chainsaws are pointed--into areas that are absolutely unsuitable for logging.
There is a determination--actually a pipe dream--to rebuild the logging infrastructure in the West, when it has properly declined to local small time loggers and local markets that are relatively sustainable. But that won't do. The ideology is, return to the glory days of a century ago. But what happens when, due to political pressure and deliberate ecological ignorance, that rebuilt logging infrastructure runs out of wood again in a decade or two, and falls into decline--again?
I don't call that progress in forest management. It's certainly not an example of clear thinking. It's just greed and politics, dusted with a false ideology of wise use.
Don't believe me? Go to Greece. It's a country whose mountains were once covered with forests, thousands of years ago, but the ancient Greeks cut the forests down for the navy and commerce. Now the mountains are largely covered with goats. Not a good exchange.
In short, Tester and his logging bill are bull. Figures for Montana and the West.
RH
Those participating representatives of "environmental" interests ignore peer reviewed science and are simply sell-outs to the practice of devolution of the public process. They are well-paid, wearing the mantle of "collaboration". They are also unprincipled, charlatans steeped in conflicts of interest.
Sooner or later this QPQ process will be widely regarded by the public for what it really is: ransacking the national treasures of ecosystem integrity, and denying future generations of Americans their rights to ownership of the commons.
db
Go to Guidestar, download both CAW's and Pew Trust's Form 990's, and report on that. Or, can I write something?
Subsequent Wilderness legislation included designated Wilderness areas that allow airplanes to land in them and allow science equipment and state game managers to do their job. All quid pro quo. Even some Wilderness areas included rivers that were designated under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act because it's "less restrictive" than the Wilderness Act.
I therefore don't understand these latter-day Wilderness advocates who criticize a proposed Wilderness bill as Quid Pro Quo when that's no different than how this thing got started 45 years ago.
Then there are those skulking around in the night to commit arson and blowing up stuff, releasing mink to destroy the local ecosystem, and being cowardly criminals. That would be you ELF and ALF folks. The BaaderMeinhof Red Brigade ecoNazis arm of environmentalism. You do have to have your secret police, your enforcers, in the environmental wars. Those people quite adequately fit the "lowlife" brand.
And now I wonder about you. Are you a ne'er do well? Or just marginal?
What we have learned from those quid-pro-quo arrangements is the reason a more sensible approach is being advocated today. Compare the states that passed "omnibus" bills in the 1980s, states like Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming, to Idaho and Montana, where statewide bills never passed. Where is there better fishing, hunting, camping, water, etc.? Where are grizzlies, wolves, and old growth species surviving? Which states have the most true wild country? There's no good reason to make the same mistake over and over again.
isn't impoverishing our grandchildren enough without turning over their legacy of montana's wild lands to hucksters for some quick profits?