Dear HCN,
It is with much amusement
that I read the letters about my defeats, moral decay and
capitulation to the forces of the dark side. Is the environmental
movement so rigid and dogmatic that it would assault character in
order to quash dissent? (HCN, 9/11/00: Wilderness is the
key).
To start with, who said anything about
“losing one too many a battle,” let alone giving up the good fight?
Under my tenure, the Western Slope Environmental Resource Council
twice defeated 404 permits for the AB Lateral project on the
Gunnison River; we blocked two major coal leases; we shot down a
proposal to reopen 100 miles of roads on the Grand Mesa National
Forest; we forced the Forest Service to close 48 miles of road in
Stevens Gulch; we wrote an analysis for the recent statewide appeal
that torpedoed the Uncompahgre Travel Plan; and when no other
environmental group in the state would help, we independently sued
the Colorado Department of Corrections in federal court for
building prisons in state wildlife areas purchased with federal
grants – and won an important national
precedent.
I belabor the point not out of honor,
but to refute the notion that consensus is a philosophy of defeat.
In fact, WSERC had few, if any, major defeats during this time,
although as everywhere, we continued to suffer piecemeal erosion of
habitat, undeveloped terrain and general environmental quality.
Yet, even here, we were able to minimize that trend, largely
through negotiated consensus with the alleged enemy. For example,
we won major grazing reforms in the West Elk Wilderness, which then
led to similar improvements in surrounding
allotments.
Wilderness designation, even if we
got all we are currently asking for in Colorado, will not meet the
movement’s expressed goal of maintaining intact ecosystems and
sustainable wildlife populations. More importantly, this obsession
with wilderness is greatly eroding our chances. The reasons are
spelled out in the interview (HCN, 7/31/00).
What
I hoped for in taking this seemingly radical stand was not for the
movement’s leaders to repudiate wilderness, but to anticipate these
problems and to adjust. I am calling for a more visionary and
comprehensive approach – e.g., “The Wildlife Habitat Security Act
of 2004′ – that can incorporate combined strategies of wilderness,
buffer zones, migration corridors, private-land easements, seasonal
use restrictions, limits on hunting license sales, etc. Such a
strategy places the emphasis not on our anthropocentric concepts of
wilderness (solitude, wildness, viewsheds and recreational
experience) as Susan Tixier so eloquently pleads (HCN, 8/28/00),
but rather on species requirements. These requirements are often
rather different, and in many cases may adequately protect wildlife
yet not safeguard at all our concepts of
wildness.
Such a major revision of strategy,
however, takes courage. It will require admitting that in many ways
the opposition is also right, and that many of their goals deserve
equal consideration.
I think the sacrifice people
find so hard to make is to give up the moral high ground, of
“speaking for the wolf.” The Great Old Broads for Wilderness have
done the environment and our society a fantastic service through
their decades of perseverance and up-hill advocacy. But they don’t
speak for the wolf. The wolf only wants adequate forage, cover and
water to survive. Witness Minnesota – the wolf can survive and even
expand in a fairly well used and impacted
environment.
Be honest, we speak only for
ourselves. Wildness is not an essential component of habitat
protection; it’s merely us anthropomorphizing the wolf, cloaking
our selfish desires and goals in a veil of
sanctity.
That said, there are many situations
where fighting to protect our last remnants of wilderness is indeed
the right and just thing. But take a look at the map of the Central
Rockies. We are talking tiny, isolated and disconnected
pieces.
It is time to replace wilderness as our
organizing concept with something bigger and more inclusive of both
landscapes and communities. It’s also time to recognize that so
many people in the rural West feel the loss of our once bountiful
environment just as painfully as we – and that they are ripe to
join together to find common and workable
solutions.
Steve
Hinchman
Randolph,
Vermont
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Be honest, environmentalists.
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