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Our Hand in Public Lands: Civil Discourse Trumps Discord
(Editor's Note I think it's appropriate to place this speech here at this time. This talk was delivered by Gloria Flora, a US Forest Service Supervisor who managed the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest in Nevada, a difficult job since this are lies in the heart of Wise Use Movement country. She offered this talk at the 2001 Ikes National Convention.)
Conflicts over public land management are escalating in the West, challenging even the most innovative land stewards and community members. When values collide, the first touchstone — and frequently one of the only common denominators — is the ability to communicate our views with civility and respect. Failure to do so exacerbates the problems and shifts focus to extremism instead of to the real issues. Rather than solving problems, we spend our time calling one another names and setting blame.
We must set aside this growing emotional rage — not just for our communities, but also for the future of the West and the national treasure chest that we call public lands. We owe it to ourselves and to future generations to uphold civil discourse as the norm when discussing public land management.
At the end of 1999, I resigned my position as Forest Supervisor of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest in Nevada in protest of pervasive and escalating intimidation and harassment of Forest Service employees. I did not allege that there were prosecutable threats of direct violence. However, within the last six years, there have been bombings and other serious threats. My resignation was a protest of both these actions and the behavior of many public officials at all levels who either turn their backs on or openly condone such behavior.
Some have said that I over-reacted. Yet in an atmosphere of hostility, how was I to decide when my employees were truly at risk? How could I calculate how many insults, personal attacks in the media, and refusal of service in public establishments were “acceptable,” and how many added up to a precursor to violence? When actively hostile citizens threatened to break the law — using “remember Waco” as a rallying cry — and the local sheriff, the FBI, and the Department of Justice told me and my employees to stay 100 miles away instead of doing our jobs, was that the warning salvo that violence was just around the corner? (Remember, the last time someone “remembered Waco” in a very visible manner, 168 people lost their lives in Oklahoma City. None of them reported a “prosecutable threat” prior to dying in that bomb blast.)
The much-publicized Western angst originates with those who have lost or are in fear of losing their jobs because of legislation and politics. Politicians — regardless of what you think of them — are going to do what their constituents want.
Contributions from environmental groups pale by comparison with those of business groups and corporations. Yet, despite apparently widespread opposition to the Endangered Species Act, a Republican congress failed to come up with a revision to the law that could make it to the floor for a vote. The simple truth is the American public cares very much about environmental quality and is not going to tolerate a lowering of standards. Vitriolic rhetoric and threats from a disgruntled minority does nothing but strengthen resolve and prove that indeed stricter measures must be implemented.
The chasm is widening between the majority of American and the groups fighting for status quo in resource extraction through local control.
For example, despite a number of people in the West being opposed to any further protection for roadless areas, they are in a shrinking minority. Last year, a front-page article in the Wall Street Journal reported, “Clinton wins broad support for his plan to protect more than 60 million acres of national forest from logging and commercial development. In a poll the GOP firm American Viewpoint conducted for the Heritage Forests Campaign, 76 percent of Americans said they favored the plan, including 62 percent of Republicans.”
Granted, many of those polled may have had limited understanding of the effects of such decisions. That’s why, rather than politicians wasting energy on fighting the majority who favor roadless area protection, they should educate people about the needs and concerns of the rural West. It might be more productive to devise transitional measures for displaced activities, ensure that forest workers can use their skills for the benefit of forest health, and demonstrate to the American majority that maintaining the existing network of roads and trails is essential to providing a spectrum of recreation opportunities and access.
Local control will continue to be a pipe dream if the majority of Americans see groups in the West promising armed insurrection if they don’t get their way. To be taken seriously, one needs to act in a manner that commands respect.
The advocates for decreasing environmental regulation are outnumbered in this democracy. However, we are responsible for the fabric of our communities. We cannot disenfranchise part of our population — our neighbors — just because they disagree with the majority of Americans. We must work together to find a way to ensure that all citizens are given the opportunity to develop sustainable prosperity and make a decent living in industries insulated from the typical boom-and-bust extractive cycles.
Constructive dialogue means maintaining perspective. An elected official in Montana likened a Forest Service manager to a Nazi for not openly rebelling against the roadless initiative. Similarly, a chairman of a county public land use advisory committee in Nevada wrote a lengthy diatribe likening the Forest Service to the Vichy government in Nazi-occupied France. Along with false accusations against specific employees, he included thinly veiled threats against “collaborators.”
To compare contemporary public land management in America to fascism is at best delusional and at worst a disgrace to the memories of those who suffered unimaginable terror at the hands of the Nazi regime. Try to convince the relatives of millions of people who lost their lives in the Holocaust that the situations we face in the rural West are comparable. Exaggeration and incendiary language do nothing to clarify the issues.
Fed-bashing is the dark side of incivility, and it’s not much different than other forms of discrimination. You pick a group of people, you decide they are the source of your problems, and then you proceed to systematically make them unwelcome in your community. I don’t begrudge anyone for being upset with certain federal laws or policies, but how we handle that dislike is a measure of our own personal integrity and, ultimately, the yardstick of a community.
Consider the following example. The cattle industry’s use of public lands produces a very small percentage of American’s beef. In many areas, the land can’t sustain traditional levels of grazing. Plant species disappear and riparian areas shrink. Once the landscapes have been degraded, people get alarmed and ask land managers to enforce basic stewardship. In response, the Forest Service re-evaluates ranchers’ allotment management plans and reduces the number of cattle that may graze in some places.
Ah-ha! The Forest Service range conservationist and district ranger are villains attacking custom and culture. Right?
Wrong. The real story is economic and social. The market for beef doesn’t keep pace with inflation. Production costs rise and middlemen profit while on-the-hoof prices plummet. As inter-national trade policies loosen, cheap, subsidized beef from other countries floods across the borders.
Moreover, people have grown concerned about their health: They don’t trust chemicals; they want less fat in their diet; and, although they buy significantly less red meat, they’ll pay more for chemical-free, low-fat beef.
In short, ranchers need to understand that public values, market forces, and international trade agreements affect their livelihood far more than Forest Service policies.
Some ranchers get it. They don’t attack the Forest Service, but rather figure out how they can use the research capabilities of the government and universities to help determine better techniques to graze cattle, improving weight gain while maintaining habitat diversity. They switch to lower-fat breeds and stop using chemicals. They find a niche market for the product in demand, sell directly to the retailer, and get twice the price. These folks work with the agencies and organizations to develop a certification program for beef raised using environmentally sustainable methods, creating a cache for concerned consumers and thus a higher demand for their products. They sell conservation easements on their ranches and keep them intact and in the family. They thrive, the community thrives, and so do their cattle and the wildlife.
Some of their neighbors try a different approach. They make sure everyone in the community knows what those Forest Service bastards have done to them. They over graze the land — violating the commitments they made when they obtained grazing permits — and their cattle do not thrive.
They mortgage the ranch to sue the Forest Service based on what they believe is a constitutional right to run as many cattle as they want, wherever they want, on public land because their grandfathers did. They refuse to change, they lose the suits, and their ranches are subdivided. They suffer. The community suffers. Whose fault is it?
Well, my grandfather made a living selling ice from a horse-drawn wagon. If I were in the family business today, I’d be selling stainless steel Frigidaires with ice-makers over the Internet. Same business; updated product and delivery. Survival requires change.
It’s time for a paradigm shift. Specifically, we need to begin accounting for the worth of natural capital — the real dollar value or replacement value for the goods and services that we get from the land. Frequently, the cost of restoring degraded landscapes far exceeds the value of what has been extracted. Although it may sound shocking to some,
I suggest it would be a better value for the public to subsidize extractive industries to not operate on some public lands, especially during these tough times of transition.
We cannot lose site of our responsibility to leave a quality environment for the future. The Superfund sites and abandoned mines on which we spend billions of dollars to stabilize and prevent further damage are perfect examples of waiting until the damage is done to face the issue, and then shifting the higher cost to the taxpayer.
We must begin managing public land as a long-term trust, ensuring we’re living off the interest and not depleting the capital. This will be possible only with the willing, civil part-icipation of all interested parties. We need to collaborate on solutions rather than fight. We must accept the fact that we don’t know everything. We have a golden opportunity to learn from our neighbors and to share with them our experience and knowledge.
Aldo Leopold summed it up in A Sand County Almanac, which I quoted on the back of my business card: “There are two things that interest me, the relationship of people to their landscape and of people to each other.” How we treat each other is reflected in how we treat the land.
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