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Show THE ZEPHYR/ APRIL-MAY 2004 It's Time for M.A.H.B.U!!! Mormons And Heathens for a Betfer Ufah? It's time for something ‘entirely different." By Jim Stiles lam terminally sick of hypocrisy. My own and everyone else’s. I don’t care which direction the entrenched ideological contradictions are coming from-left or right, above or below-I long for honesty and all things genuine and sincere, even if they are wrong-headed. If you’re wrong-headed, or I am, then let’s be truthful about . it. That’s the beauty of honesty. Boneheads talking to boneheads can reduce bone mass. As a self-confessed bonehead, I’m searching for a different and better way to reduce the thickness of my own skull, as well as yours. I admit, Life was much easier when I viewed the world through a black & white lens. And easier is the critical word to note here; it’s much easier to condemn everyone else’s perspective when we're unwilling to honestly scrutinize our own. And it is easier to attack our adversaries when we don’t know them. I have agonized over this for years now. I have shared my feelings with my friends and with strangers. Those feelings have been met in a variety of ways-blank stares, outrage, ridicule, silence and sometimes...sometimes with the look ofasharedepiphany. “YES...I know exactly what you mean!” As if someone with a secret had just found a kindred spirit. “amenities economy ”---tourism mostly in all its forms--- is a clean and viable alternative to mining and ranching and timber. They are convinced it can allow the rural West to prosper and prevail, without further degradation to the resource. To deny that this kind of transformation of the rural West has bleak and destructive consequences of its own is equally absurd. The amenities economy is just another extractive industry and should be regarded by environmentalists with the same concern. But they don’t. And so it’s a standoff. Nobody wants to be honest for 30 minutes. And that is why MAHBU must step into the wide and yawning breach of credibility. We are about to be painfully honest. Let us begin... NOW: Most Old Westerners oppose wilderness, since they believe it will limit their access to public lands. Sometimes their physical abuse of the land itself is dramatic and the damage is long-term. On the other hand, Old Westerners understand one key component of wilderness far better than their adversaries. They understand solitude. Quiet. Serenity. The emptiness of the rural West. They like the emptiness. Each side of the conflict has so savagely misrepresented each other, so excessively caricatured their opponents, that they have, in the process, turned themselves into pretty iaughable characters as well. New West versus Old West (Left side) Rim Village Condos (Right side) Alfalfa Field Those moments have given me some comfort. Not much, but a little. And s0, it is truly, at long last, perhaps in the nick of time, and perhaps too late to nick anything...it is time for M.A.H.B.U. Mormons & Heathens for a Better Utah. New Westerners are individually more sensitive to the resource but are terrified of solitude. They'll walk around cryptobiotic crust but leave most of them alone in the canyons without a cell phone and a group of companions and they'd be lost, both physically and metaphysically. And since they need to travel in packs, the collective resource damage is far more than they might realize. First, about the name. Not everyone on one side of the mythical ideological fence is a member of the LDS Church. Not all people on the opposite side are heathens. I was looking for an acronym, to begin with, and one that might best suit Utahns. When I stumbled upon MAHBU it sounded as if I’d morphed Nauvoo, the site of the original Mormon temple in Illinois, with SUWA, Utah’s most prominent environmental group-surely a frightening prospect for everyone involved regardless of their affiliation. But then, that’s the point. To force everyone to be uncomfortable with their proximity to each other, instead of exchanging pot shots from the relative safety of across the fence. At the heart of this war in the American West—and that’s what we should call it—is a fundamental conflict of cultures over the future of its landscape. The vast majority of Old Westerners like their jeeps and their ATVs. Among these thousands of motorized recreationists are a minority of reckless and thoughtless idiots who cause a disproportionate share of the resource damage. Many of their peers know this and don’t like it, but don’t apply peer pressure because the one thing they’d rather NOT do is be seen agreeing with an environmentalist. New Westerners drive hundreds or thousands of miles in gas-consuming vehicles so they can peddle their bicycles for ten and say they’re non-motorized recreationists. Bicyclists gather for rallies and races just like their motorized cousins and cause extraordinary damage when the numbers are high enough; yet environmentalists refuse to acknowledge that Americans who call themselves environmentalists, 78% in one survey, live in urban areas. many, many bicycles can sometimes cause as much damage as ATVs. They are the “New Westerners.” Their connection to the land is mostly as observers, recreationists, and infrequent visitors. Most of those who oppose the environmental movement actually live and work in the small rural communities of the West and many of them make their living from the land itself. They still represent the Old West. For the urban Old Westerners like cows. Millions of cattle still graze on public lands and some ranchers who hold federal grazing allotments are terrible stewards of that land. They allow overgrazing, destroy valuable and rare riparian habitat and turn some public lands into enviros, there’s the rub. barren wastelands. What has ensued in the last three decades has been increasingly painful to watch. Each side of the conflict has so savagely misrepresented the other, so excessively caricatured their opponents, that they have, in the process, turned themselves into pretty laughable cartoon characters as well. There is nothing like bloated self-righteousness to make anyone seem ridiculous; to me everybody looks goofy these days. So what are the contentious issues driving this debate. Basically it’s this: Rural Americans live in small towns and the core of their economies is extractive-ranching, mining, timber. To deny that the extractive industries have wreaked stunning and long-term destruction upon the Western landscape and its ecology is absurd. Urban Americans want to eliminate these industries, or at least curtail them to a large New Westerners hate cows. They think all ranchers are bad stewards. They want to eliminate all public lands grazing. But when they buy a condo in a New West town, they love the view of the adjacent alfalfa field from their picture window and complain bitterly when yet another es wipes out the pastoral scene. Cows eat alfalfa. extent. They believe that another kind of economy, what environmentalists have called the | : A few Old Westerners like to hunt. Mostly deer and elk. Each year a few hundred hunters in Utah get a permit to kill a cougar. They chase the big cat with their dogs, run it up a tree and shoot it. Sounds pretty barbaric to me. Most New Westerners hate to hunt. And they would never kill a cougar. But when thousands of cougar-loving recreationists invade once empty public lands that are habitat PAGE 12 |
