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.