The public lands of America are under attack by every conceivable assault. Whenever you see the terms multi-use, multiple use, or wise use in relation to public lands, it includes commercial extraction or injury of some kind.
The multiple use principle has become an anti-conservation term. Multi-use on public lands means keeping the land open to strip-mining, cattle grazing, oil and gas production, clear-cutting as well as destructive forms of recreation. This principle is the most dangerous element in the management of the public lands of America. This is the reason we simply cannot leave it alone and do nothing. There are ravenous corporate interests waiting to devour every natural resource on earth. Only laws can halt industrial assault.
Every wilderness activist should learn to recognize the Red Flags of Industrial Assault:
* Multiple Use — The list of low-impact sustainable uses (hunting, fishing, camping) is poisoned by the inclusion of industrial extraction such as commercial timber production, mining, grazing or high-impact recreation.
* Locking up forests — In reality, only destruction is locked out. Is wildlife locked out? Are hunting, fishing, camping locked out? No! Draglines, chainsaws, fellerbunchers, and roller-drum-choppers are locked out.
* Wise Use — Always means Multiple Use.
* United Nations Control — The fearmongers love this one. They go to great lengths to prove that wilderness is a conspiracy to give up American sovereignty to the United Nations.
* Shutting down forests — What they really mean is... industrial extraction and rampant off-road-vehicles are not allowed.
* Closing roads — Go Dave Foreman! America needs to learn to walk again. Tail-gate hunters get up off your tails.
* Wilderness is elitist — I concede! We are the few, the proud, the brave.
* Radical Environmentalists — Don’t ever let the opposition portray you as “radical.” Preservationists are not radical. We are conservative. “Radicals” are those who do radical things like bulldoze mountains away, strip mine the earth, destroy forests by clearcutting and conversion, pump poisons into the air and water. Radicals are responsible for extinction, cancer, and misery—and the destruction of wilderness.
Lamar Marshall, Executive Director of Wild Alabama (www.wildalabama.org), delivered the keynote speech from which this article was taken at The Wilderness Society’s conference in Denver in September, 2000.
Lamar also spoke at REP annual meeting in October 2001. We are proud to count this respected forest activist as a REP member and grateful for his participation in our meeting and for the opportunity to adapt his speech for The Green Elephant.
Read more of Lamar’s wit and wisdom on our site at...
* Lamar Marshall: In his own words
* Wilderness in the Deep South: Alabama Theology and Political Incorrectness
