Volume 11, Number 1
Winter 1998

Is It Really East vs. West?

A well-worn refrain which continues to be heard throughout our region is that we in the West are tired of "Easterners" dictating to us as to how "our" (read local) federal lands should be managed. One newspaper went so far as to suggest we must urge our local congressional delegation to hurry up and pass a statewide wilderness bill so that we can "protect" our roadless areas from the greedy grasp of those in the east who know nothing about how our federal lands are managed and how important they are to the local region.

At least we agree on something: these roadless wilderness areas are vitally important to our region as wildlife habitat, healthy watersheds for native species, for hunting and fishing, and yes, even recreation, and not as despoiled landscapes littered with clearcuts, cows, oil rigs, and open-pit mines.

Of course, the role of downtrodden locals, bereft of any opportunity to feed and clothe themselves and their families, is played for purely political benefit without any credibility or factual basis. In actuality, the campaign to protect our roadless wilderness areas and critical fish and wildlife habitat is a homegrown effort, put forth by those who know the most about these areas and the role they play in sustaining our unique ecosystems. It was only when the intuitive logic of protecting these special places fell on the deaf ears of local Congressional representatives that local wilderness advocates recruited members of Congress with a broader national interest perspective to lend their support to efforts to protect the U.S. northern Rockies.

This ongoing conundrum is largely the creation of the U.S. Forest Service, the dominant public lands management agency in our region. They encouraged the building of numerous sawmills throughout the region, promising a vision of never-ending timber supply from public lands and single-dimension management, devoid of considerations of the national interest and native biodiversity. In the end, they successfully created a network of economic dependents who were left holding the bag for the failed policies of unsustainable management.

Local politicians also benefit from fear-mongering which has prolonged outdated management philiosophies well past their time. It is these operators who sing the "easterners" song the loudest. Missing from their array of "facts" is the important truth that these federal lands belong equally to all Americans. We all pay the taxes that fund the Forest Service, we all lose the taxpayer monies that are squandered in direct subsidies to the timber industry, and we all bear the burden of degraded landscapes and the ever growing lists of threatened, endangered, and extinct species. Also missing from their rhetoric is the fact that numerous opinion polls over the past several years have shown repeatedly that citizens in our region strongly support roadless area protection. A Forest Service poll in 1993 found over 70% of residents in the northern rockies are opposed to logging and roadbuilding in roadless areas. A 1994 Lee Newspapers poll found the most popular approach to wilderness designation among Montana residents is the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act.

It's time to declare the "us vs. them" approach for what it is: a pitiful fraud. I personally don't care which of the 50 states that Congressional wilderness advocates are from, except that ultimately it would be ideal if they came from all 50. Unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world, and wilderness advocates are happy to associate themselves with any member of Congress courageous enough to advance this cause.

Is it really east vs. west? I don't think so, and let's say so.

Mike Bader
AWR Executive Director