Wise-Use
Movement
Wise-Use Movement The wise-use
movement is a general term relating to an approach to the management
of federal lands in the United States that
encompasses many themes, but emphasizes a preference for extractive (e.g., mining, oil
drilling) or utilitarian (e.g., grazing) uses over ecological, scenic, wildlife, or
aesthetic values. The movement was founded in 1988 by Ron Arnold and Alan
Gottlieb, who run the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise based in Seattle,
Washington. The movement is a loose coalition of individuals and organizations that
initially advocated increased access to and development of federal
lands and resources. Although the movement has enlisted some support
nationwide, its appeal has existed primarily in the West, where the percentage
of land owned by the federal government is the highest. The federal
government owns approximately one-third of U.S. lands, but the percentage is
much higher in many western states, a fact that has engendered considerable
resentment among corporations and individuals who want to
use or develop the resources on those lands. The movement had its ideological
origins in the Sagebrush Rebellion of the late 1970s and 1980s that focused on
eliminating federal ownership of many lands in the West.
However, the wise-use movement focuses less on ownership issues and more on
changing public and corporate access to and uses of federal lands, and encompasses
other issues as well. "Wise use" was a phrase
originally used by Gifford Pinchot, an early conservationist and the first head
of the Forest Service in the early 1900s, who advocated the use of federally
owned natural resources for the greatest good of the greatest
number. However, the phrase is used by the wise-use movement to encompass a
wide range of issues, from eliminating environmental controls, to defense of
private property rights with compensation for all
environmental regulation, to local control of federal lands in order to permit
unrestricted logging, grazing, drilling, and mineral development even in
national parks and wilderness areas. The movement is largely sustained by
corporate funding and contributions from other organizations. The movement
deliberately adopted the grassroots techniques and terminology of the
environmental movement to create a proworker and community
image for policies that actually furthered corporate and industrial goals
(i.e., mining). Many of the positions advocated by the wise-use movement
continue to be influential. Anti-big-government policies in general,
greater nonfederal control of federal lands, self-audits by corporations to
determine environmental compliance, increased emphasis on commodity
development, and the weakening of environmental laws are but a few
examples.