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Show NYS wi RN a. IVS TIME TO Cool oe. Let's move LOOK IN THE cti MIR ROR Are “environmentalists" ready to acknowledge our own contribution to the destruction of the very wildlands we claim to love and are pledged to protect? Are we ready to share the blame? By Jim Stiles In the spring of 1990, environmentalists squared off against the Bureau of Land honest heart, continue to insist that the environmental movement represents the knights on Management on a high mesa near Moab called Amasa’s Back. The BLM proposed to chain more than a thousand acres of old growth pinion-juniper forest for "range and habitat improvement,” but many saw the project as just another government agency catering to the ignorant at best, downright evil at worst. needs of a local rancher. There to defend the BLM and the rancher was an assortment of men and women from Moab--the old timers you might call them--miners and cowmen who had lived in the West for generations, and who saw the environmentalists’ efforts to stop Maintaining the Rural Stereotype We are now contributing our own kind of destruction to the last remnants of the Wild the chaining as so much obstructionism. As Caterpillar D9 bulldozers moved into the trees and their heavy anchor chain ripped and wrenched the old pj forest out by the roots, the rhetoric between the two sides became _ intense as well. Television cameras from two Salt Lake television stations caught the shouting and the screaming for the evening news. Later that evening we saw ourselves in living color, pointing and poking fingers and barely able to discern any coherent conversation coming out of the confrontation. But after the cameras were shut down and the news sharks went home, I lingered a while at the site; so did a few of my adversaries. We were all hot and tired and kicking at the dust with our boots. I looked at the devastation caused by the D9s and shook my head. I turned to one of the miners and said, "You know, I’m sure there are a lot of issues that we'll never agree on, but I’ll be damned if I can understand why you guys would support this chaining." He looked at the fallen trees, and then at the ground and said softly, "Well...I don’t like it much either." Eh what? I was stunned. "What are you talking about? I asked. "We were just out there ready to pop each other's lights out and now you say you agree with me?” ( , the miner said slowly, "mostly I don’t agree with you on just about everything. But sometimes we do have some things in common...but I’ll be damned if I’m going to be called an ‘environmentalist. That happened more than a decade ago, but I never forgot it. Here was a diverse group of rural Utahns, from diverse backgrounds and political philosophies fighting over an issue for which we shared the same opinion! What a waste of energy, I thought. And what a the white horse, here to save our wilderness from the Rural Americans who we portray as. West. Our recreation, our money, and our sheer numbers are poised to do the kind of longterm damage that should be setting alarms off in our heads. The changes we're making may be harder to detect and more insidious. But in the next 50 years, we are nee to recreate the Western landscape in ways our cowboy cousins could never ima Certainly environmentalists can always find ignoble adversaries out there in ee Rural West that will lend credibility to the myth we have created for them. The San Juan and Garfield County Commissioners rarely let us down when it comes to Dark Ages-style, extreme rhetoric. Some of them still think nuclear waste is edible and still call young people with long hair hippies (Oh...for a real hippie in the 21st Century. We need you.) And we don’t have to wander far to find the reckless damage caused by a small minority of rural yahoos (not to be confused with urban yahoos) who love to show what they can do to pristine desert with an ATV. One determined idiot can paint a broad and ugly stroke for - We are now contributing our own kind of destruction to the last remnants of the Wild West. Our recreation, our money, and our sheer numbers are poised to do the kind of long-term damage that should be setting alarms off in our head. a lot of his friends. And often does. But it’s just not fair to paint all or even most rural Westerners with such a broad stroke. waste of a golden opportunity. I like these guys--or at least many of them. I enjoy the diversity and the opportunity to see and learn a new perspective, even if 1 vehemently disagree with it. Ultimately the greatest Fast forward a decade. Last autumn, some of my enviro friends and I were discussing the recent confrontation between ranchers and the BLM on the Kaiparowits Plateau. Drought conditions had forced the BLM to restrict the use of its cattle allotments and many ranchers were having a tough time getting their cattle out. Some were trying harder than others. The truth is, the high desert on the Colorado Plateau is a terribly inhospitable place to raise cattle. It’s dry and unforgiving and ranchers at the outset know they're taking a gamble trying to make a go of it there. As the drought worsened, a few of the ranchers openly defied the order and you'll find failing of the environmental movement may prove to be its self-imposed isolation from everyone else, and its inability to listen to a different opinion with an open mind. Its vision is so specific that it cannot see the bigger picture. Both sides have become victims of their own rhetoric and their own ideology. They are so entrenched because they have no contact with each other. If professional environmentalists only talk to other environmentalists, and cowboys only talk to cowboys, what chance is there for anyone to learn something? Its a self-inflicted stalemate on both sides. no sympathy for those people here. But many of the ranchers could see the damage that - was being done and were trying to comply. My friend noted that a complicating factor was the recent closure of a dirt road by the BLM that the ranchers used regularly to access the area. "Was it a road that you guys wanted closed?” i aches: "Not really,” he replied. "It wasn’t even near the top of our list." I encouraged him to pass that information along to thie BLM ahd maybe even to the ranchers. "Do you realize how much goodwill this could generate between the two sides?" I implored. "It could have a remarkable effect." He nodded but I knew his candor would never get out of that room. And it didn’t. Now in the spring of 2001, the polarization between the Rural West and the New West could not be more profound. Or more counterproductive. If it gets much worse, the consequences for the land--the wild country that both sides claim to cherish and revere--is destined to be the true and everlasting loser of this hopeless fight. And it’s about time that BOTH sides come to grips with their own culpability, and their own contribution to the ongoing degradation of wildlands in the West. And yes...I’m talking about US. Environmentalists. Eco-Warriors. Non-motorized recreationists. It’s time we take a long hard look into the looking glass and acknowledge our own sins. This is no longer the black and white, "us versus them" moral war that we have attempted to promote for the last 20 years. We cannot, with a straight face and an As the Old West becomes the New West, many of us have come to regard the rural lifestyle with contempt and ridicule, content to see it vanish from the American Landscape. Someone could make the argument that it’s a case of justice and retribution. More than a century ago, White Americans came West and encountered the Native American culture and could detect no value to it all..none. And so we set out to obliterate that culture until now, a hundred years later, Native Americans across the country struggle to maintain their identity and integrity. It was a form of cultural genocide. Now in the 21st Century, many urban newcomers to the Rural West-New Westerners, if you want--éexpress the same derogatory opinion of the descendants of those first white settlers. Many of us can see nothing in the rural culture worth saving. It's not that I haven’t had some awful experiences with the Rural West over the years. I learned early on that identifying myself as an ‘environmentalist’ in San Juan County, for instance, would not win mea lot of new pals at the local hardware store. But when we can all get past the labels, I have also been impressed and moved by the generosity and kindness of those same individuals. Simple acts of kindness must count for something out there and I certainly cannot ignore them, Some will argue that I’ve just been lucky. Or delusional. Or that it doesn’t matter. I shared some of my experiences with one of my favorite environmentalists and he called me continued on next page - |