Public Lands, Public Debates: A Century of Controversy

Peace Out

147 Peace Out no one stood up and shouted. none of the questions cut like razor-edged barbed wire. no reply was laced with acrimony. Heck, even the few sharp exchanges were delivered with civility. Where was the discord and rancor? Where were the flared nostrils and bruised egos? What happened to the high-blown rhetoric and the low blows? Was this really a conference about the Forest service and its land-management practices? Or had i, in my usual befuddled way, wandered into the wrong auditorium? it turns out i was in the right place (and even made it at the right time). but i was not alone in my initial, puzzled reaction to the character of the discussions that emerged at a 2006 symposium on the future of the Forest service, held at the university of Montana that november. sponsored by the cinnabar Foundation and the university’s O’connor center for the Rocky Mountain West, the conference drew more than a hundred participants from local, state, and federal agencies and regional grassroots organizations, along with a healthy representation of academics, activists, and engaged students. The roster’s range was impressive in its own right, and although the organizers surely would have loved to have doubled attendance, given the frigid temperatures outdoors, their hearts were no doubt warmed by the generous—and inclusive—dialogue that took place indoors. no one embodied these dramatic changes in temper and tone more than MitchFriedman.nowexecutivedirectorofconservationnorthwest,which he founded in 1988 as the Greater ecosystem alliance, Friedman gained early notoriety for leading confrontational protests against harvesting of old-growth forests and in defense of the endangered spotted owl. in pursuit of these objectives, he had helped pioneer a new form of environmental civil disobedience, putting his body on the line or, rather, in the trees. back in the day, had he shown up at a conference on the Forest service’s management practices, his ideological gibes, and the attendees’ less-thangenteel responses to them, would have brought down the house. not so at the 2006 Missoula confab. That was in part because Friedman preempted any potential (or residual) hostility by complicating his biography and that of his listeners: “We have come together here to discuss the Forest service, a massive institution with a vast and complex mission,” he said in his opening remarks. “each of us brings to this challenging discussion our own complex perspective.” as did he: 148 public lands, public debates it might be convenient to consider me as a West coast liberal green, which as one of the first tree-sitters, i surely must be. but i’m also a deer hunter, a failed pole vaulter for the bobcats of Montana state, and have a work history ranging from driving a forklift in chicago to driving cattle in southeastern Wyoming to monitoring foreign fishing vessels in the bering sea. Which me showed up today? Which you showed up today? Those rhetorical queries were reflective of the very paradigmatic shift that Friedman then explored. The capacity of timber beasts and tree huggers to challenge one another’s suppositions while acknowledging the on-the-ground realities that have led them to their assumptions had moved Friedman (and others) to accept that the demand for ecosystemic health did not, because it could not, preclude job creation. in the process, they started advocating the pursuit of the triple bottom line, in which economic profit, environmental sustainability, and social justice are inextricably linked, believing that this complicated calculation offered the only way out of what once appeared to be an intractable conflict. not all agreed that land-management perspectives had matured to such an extent that we can achieve these goals on the public lands. One such contemporary skeptic was environmental historian samuel P. Hays. He was not in Missoula in body, but was so in mind, if only because while there i was reading his just released book, Wars in the Woods.1 in probing the manifold sources of enmity that had roiled environmental politics since the mid-1970s, Hays doubted that these tensions had run their course. indicators “of partisan politics,” he concluded, “might well tell the tale as to the changing fate of ecological or commodity forest objectives.” The Republican Party’s anti-environmental platform and forest-policy dictates, he wrote, ”have been and will continue to be a decisive factor in the evolution of this contest.” Reaching a similar conclusion, albeit from a different vantage point, was formerForestservicechiefJackWardThomas.“Manyoftheenvironmental persuasion...