The Emerging Environmental Majority

By Christina Larson, Washington Monthly. Posted April 21, 2006.

Today's GOP-controlled Congress has shown itself to be no friend of the environment, but even by conservatives' own standards, last October's surprise was a standout. An amendment inserted at the last minute into a budget reconciliation bill would have opened up millions of acres of public lands, including tracts in national monuments and wilderness areas, to purchase by mining companies and other commercial interests.

It was to be the biggest divestiture of public lands in almost a century, and it was happening completely under the radar, with no floor vote, no public hearings, and no debate. Washington's environmental community was the first to notice the amendment and sound the alarm. Staffers at Earthworks, the Wilderness Society, and other green advocacy groups identified lands in the crosshairs and called allies in the Senate, where the measure could still be defeated. It didn't take much prodding before western Democrats were united against the provision.

But to stop the land sales, Republican senators would also need to speak out. That was a harder sell. Many conservatives accept large campaign contributions from mining, oil, and gas companies, and they tend to favor more industry access to public lands and resources. In addition, western Republicans don't take advice from national environmental groups, whose members tend to be urban and suburban liberals -- not exactly their voters.

But there are outdoor organizations whose members include voters who can draw conservatives' attention. After an Earthworks staffer tipped off a counterpart at Trout Unlimited, the sportsmen's group (whose membership is two to one Republican) emailed its roughly 100,000 members and contacted regional editorial boards to spotlight the fight.

News spread like wildfire -- western sportsmen were outraged that public lands where they hunt and fish might be put on the auction block. Once they knew the stakes, local hook-and-bullet organizations held phone-bank days, organized letter-writing campaigns, and scheduled visits to regional Senate offices. A petition signed by 758 sportsmen's clubs affiliated with National Wildlife Federation, from the Great Falls Bowhunters Association to the Custer Rod and Gun Club, landed on elected officials' desks in Washington just weeks later. "These lands, so important to sportsmen and women, are open to every American, rich and poor alike," the letter read. "We believe it is wrong to put them up for mining companies and other commercial interests to buy at cut-rate prices."

The outcry from rural and exurban voters achieved what no amount of lobbying from environmentalists in Washington alone could have. Within weeks, western Republican senators renounced the measure on the Senate floor and to their hometown newspapers. As Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) told the Billings Gazette, "The local folks most impacted by a sale have to be on board." The measure was then effectively dead -- within weeks the language was withdrawn from the House bill. This victory marked a telling moment of cooperation between hunters and environmentalists, a working partnership once as unlikely as Madeleine Albright and Jesse Helms.

Environmental policies have become increasingly popular over the past few years. Seventy-five percent of Americans in a 2005 Harris poll agreed with the statement, "Protecting the environment is so important that requirements and standards cannot be too high, and continuing environmental improvements must be made regardless of cost." Yet a shrinking minority of voters are willing to associate themselves with the loaded term "environmentalist." In the same poll, only 12 percent claimed that label. Americans like green, but they are less fond of greens. And that has been doubly true for outdoorsmen.

Over the past five years, though, Bush administration policies in the west -- accelerating drilling on public lands and waiving protections on water quality and wildlife -- have given this odd couple a common enemy. "The White House's pillaging of public lands has driven hunters and ranchers into the trenches with environmentalists," says David Alberswerth of the Wilderness Society. "There's absolutely no question about what's brought us closer together," agrees Oregon hunter and prominent outdoor columnist Pat Wray. "It's the Bush administration." This is particularly true in western states like Montana, where the Wilderness Society worked alongside local hunters and outfitters in 2004 to overturn plans to allow drilling in the Rocky Mountain Front, a unique big-game habitat known as "America's Serengeti."

Similar coalitions have formed around New Mexico's Valle Vidal, Colorado's Roan Plateau, Wyoming's Powder River Basin, and elsewhere -- uniting the environmentalists' policy, legal, and media expertise with sportsmen's deep knowledge of a particular place and ability to speak a language that resonates locally. These struggles may pale in comparison to the brewing battle over global warming.

As more red-state farmers find their crops affected by rising temperatures, more ice fishermen notice lakes that no longer freeze in the winter, and more hunters see wetlands where ducks breed begin to evaporate, concern about climate change is crossing old political boundaries. Although they may have diverse starting points and dramatically different reactions to labels like "environmentalist," liberal and conservative outdoor activists are discovering that on a range of issues, their concerns about the earth overlap.

Christina Larson is managing editor of The Washington Monthly.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »