Dear HCN:
Your Aug. 22 editorial is
right: “The West has internalized much of what environmentalists
fought for (in the Reagan-Bush years)”; it is time for
environmentalists to enter the “twin tents of ecosystem management
and consensus.” But the “generation of environmentalists that
stopped the Reagan-Bush lawlessness may not have the skills or
temperament to solve on-the-ground
problems.”
Unfortunately, gridlock has come to
the environmental movement. Many of our savvy political operators
went to work for the Clinton administration, leaving temporary
voids in important organizations. Some environmentalists became
hypnotized by naively optimistic expectations of the Clinton
administration, and quit doing the basic grass-roots organizing and
tireless congressional legwork that is essential for initiatives
like grazing reform to have a prayer of getting through the U.S.
Senate.
Simultaneously, the self-proclaimed
“grass-roots” environmental movement went radical, announced its
opposition to all loggers and ranchers, and began attacking
environmental infidels who attempt to get something done in the
real world of American government. In addition, the cultivation of
foundation grants seems to have displaced membership recruitment,
public education, and constituency-building for many conservation
groups, be they “grassroots” or “national.”
We
are spending too much time competing with each other and attacking
the government officials, like Bruce Babbitt, who are most
sympathetic to wildland conservation and public land management
reform.
We must make a realistic assessment of
our own conservation efforts. During the Reagan-Watt-Bush years it
was essential to “just say no” with our appeals, our lawsuits, our
protests and our bodies. Those tactics should never be abandoned as
tools in the kit. But today the door is thrown open to
environmentalists to demonstrate that we can roll up our sleeves,
use new tools in addition to old, and help design democratic
solutions to the problems we decry so effectively. If we do this,
from the watershed to the White House, we’ll be able to look at the
Clinton years and point to tangible, real ways in which we made
things better for the wild, and better for the West. Your editorial
is a much needed wake-up call to pragmatic
environmentalists.
John B.
Risk
Juneau,
Alaska
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Wake up, pragmatists.
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