"Wise Use Coalition"

    In 1992, The lush landscape around the Ringwood, New Jersey reservoir looked as it always did to a local environmentalist as he surveyed the scene one early morning last spring. Then he spotted them, dozens of green glow-in-the-dark signs stapled to trees and utility polls, all carrying a cryptic message in bold, black letters: "WISE USE COALITION is coming" As he continued driving, the signs, too, kept coming, hundreds of them posted in this heavily wooded town fifty miles west of New York City.
    Just what was the "Wise Use Coalition", and what did it want? He had heard of the populist anti-green wise use movement rooted in the Pacific Northwest, where it reportedly championed the cause of mining and timber interests, and he was concerned for the local environmental group, Skylands CLEAN. What he could not know was that less than ninety days later, his town's first environmentalist mayor would be forced out of office by an anonymous smear campaign, which coincided with the appearance of the green signs. By summer 1992, there would be inflammatory letters to the newspaper referring to environmentalists as "eco-terrorists"; a letter from "Wise Use Coalition, Inc." to the town characterizing New Jersey's development strategy to zone Ringwood as a "conservation" community, as "a thinly veiled socialist attempt to take away private property rights and prevent economic development"; and flyers that read: "Have you ever taken notice how similar these ecoterrorists are to a PAGAN RELIGION? They worship trees, animals and even swamps while they sacrifice people."
    In the end, the focus of debate in Ringwood no longer centered on land-use issues; the town was mired in intrigue over allegations that the town's mayor, who ran a woodworking shop, was running an industrial operation in a residential zone, among other charges (these charges were anonymously made by a local developer through a third party). State agencies called in to investigate found no violations. But by then the campaign to discredit the mayor was in motion. Local media had already received anonymous letters reporting what was technically true: that the mayor was being ''investigated" for innumerable charges, including dumping hazardous waste- all of which proved groundless.
    The vindictive campaign in 1992 against him was, the former mayor believes, inspired by a local offshoot of the so-called "wise use" movement, the loosely confederated network of private property advocates, ranchers, loggers, off-road vehicle users, and lobby groups for the timber, mining, livestock grazing, and oil industries that has sprung up during the last few years. Portraying themselves as righteous patriots, and environmentalists as radicals out to take land away from its rightful owners, they campaign in local rural communities with the message that people are losing control and being locked out of public lands. Using letter-writing campaigns, protests, petitions, news-letters, and a variety of other grassroots organizing techniques, honed ironically enough by environmentalists over the last two decades, they are united in their devotion to an anti-government, "don't tread on me" philosophy and their opposition to environmentalism.
    A February 1992 newsletter from People for the West!, one particularly well-heeled organization based in New Mexico, contains rhetoric that is fairly representative of the movement: "Who's endangered? Everyone who lives in the West. It's all part of a plan to list more and more plants and animals endangered, add more wilderness, and pass federal laws that make it impossible to mine, harvest, graze livestock, and even recreate on public lands. It's a scheme to remove people from public lands in America!"
    In a number of places, these groups have been exposed as phony "citizens" organizations fronting for powerful industries. People for the West!, for example, which calls itself a "grassroots campaign in support of Western communities," was cited in a July, 1991 High Country News article as being heavily tied to industry: "twelve of thirteen [on the group's board of directors] are industry executives. Each represents a company or association that has contributed at least $15,000 to the campaign. The board-level companies include Homestake Mining Co., Energy Fuels Corp., Band Gold Corp., Hecla Mining Co., Cyprus Minerals, Nerco Minerals, and Chevron. Also sitting on the board are the industry lobbyists Northwest Mining Association and the American Mining Congress." Interestingly, the Northwest Mining Association Bulletin of October 1991 gives "enthusiastic praise" to the group for "helping the mining industry defeat the proposed moratorium on mining patents and [continuing] to oppose a repeal of the 1872 Mining Laws," as well as for preventing a proposed increase in grazing fees.
    In 1992, two hundred groups listed themselves as members of the Wise Use Coalition, which was formed after a meeting in Reno, Nevada in 1988 that attracted 300 conferees from a wide range of organizations. Convened by the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise based in Bellevue, Washington, the meeting was attended by timber companies, the National Rifle Association, Exxon, and dozens of pro-development groups. But many groups came from small towns whose residents had come to believe that environmental laws were responsible for local economic hardships.
    "Deceptively calling itself 'wise use', the movement is the latest incarnation of the anti-environmental backlashes that have hovered at the fringe of the preservation movement since John Muir and Gifford Pinchot disagreed over how to manage this country's natural resources - Muir favoring conservation and Pinchot advocating the 'multiple' or 'wise' use (essentially the exploitation) of the resources in our national parks and reserves," reads an editorial from the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund (SCLDF).
     They take their name from Pinchot's utilitarian philosophy, but environmentalists insist that's a misnomer. Their mild-sounding title belies a rather fanatical mission: according to Ron Arnold, director of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, and founder of the Wise Use Coalition, the goal of wise-users is "to destroy, to eradicate the environmental movement."
    Many of the groups, which, like People for the West, have cropped up in the western states around areas of protected public lands, are successors to groups formed as part of former Interior Secretary James Watt's Sagebrush Rebellion. But a growing number of groups affiliated with the movement have surfaced in the East-notably in the Adirondacks and the Catskills, for example. A number of groups take credit for defeating New York State's environmental bond act, designed to acquire open space.
    In the case of Ringwood, New Jersey's wise use group, founder Jack Wood, then a local businessman, said he was not officially affiliated with the "wise use" movement itself, but was inspired to adopt its motto and strategies by a "Nightline" broadcast that profiled the movement. Wood's view of environmentalists is typical of other affiliates, however. "Their scare tactics imply that everybody is going to die and the planet is going away. I don't think people can destroy the planet. It always bounces back" Wood said.
    Arnold says that anyone can join up. "We don't even care what version of Wise Use people believe in, as long as it protects private property, free markets, and limits government." In 1992, Arnold led what was then a growing national backlash against environmentalism. Among the Wise Use Coalition's member groups were the National Inholders, an association of disaffected property owners who live in and around large state and federal land holdings; trade groups composed of workers from logging and mining industries; recreational vehicle users who want to expand access to federal lands for motorized vehicles; natural resource and energy companies; and farmers and ranchers who want to limit government's role in how they manage their lands.
    Watt's "Sagebrush Rebellion" died away as Watt was eventually ridiculed by the media. The wise use movement recast its agenda with a new theme: that preservation of wetlands, coastal lands, and other ecologically sensitive lands amounts to an illegal taking of private property by the state.
    The political impact of the antigreen movement cannot be denied. At a Wise Use convention in Nevada, one of then Vice President Dan Quayle's top assistants, David McIntosh, attended. Some observers charged that the federal Council on Competitiveness, headed by Quayle, adopted the "wise use" agenda and used it as an ideological blueprint for dismantling and undermining major environmental laws that have been on the books for years. Then- Senator Robert Dole's wife attended another convention. "Wise Use" advocates twice tried to secure passage of the Private Property Act . The act would have required all federal agencies to examine whether their rule makings can be construed as "takings" of private property. If compelled to pay off property owners of fragile lands, the federal government would likely find environmental protection just too expensive to undertake.
    Arnold, architect of the movement, is the biographer of James Watt and the author of a 1987 book, The Ecology Wars: Environmentalism As if People Mattered, published by the Free Enterprise Press. Arnold's subtitle, "as if people mattered," underlines his belief that the environmental movement does not think people do matter. This is the wise use constituency's strongest political weapon: small town supporters who appear as Americans with no vested interest.
    Arnold, 62, who lives in Washington State, was executive vice-president in 1992 of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, which was founded in 1976 and claimed 125,000 members in the early 1990's. Since the late seventies, Arnold has been actively promoting a pro-industry approach on logging, mining, pesticide, and herbicide use. Arnold would like to see federal lands opened up for energy and mineral exploration, curtailment of government land set aside for conservation, and the striking of all environmental laws from the books.
    Arnold's stump speech leaves audiences charged. He strikes at stereotypes of environmentalists and tells his largely conservative audiences that those who oppose the spraying of pesticides are most often marijuana users. It is "us" and "them" all the way. Arnold is a experienced tactician: "The pro-industry citizen activist group ... can evoke powerful archetypes such as the sanctity of the family, the virtues of the close-knit community, the natural wisdom of the rural dweller," he explained.
    Until the late 1970s, Arnold worked as an illustrator/graphic artist for Boeing. In the early eighties he became active in the Alpine Lake Wilderness issue in the Cascade Mountains. He put together a slide show for local environmentalists and created a map of the Alpine Lake region of Washington that helped sway members of Congress, who voted to preserve 400,000 acres of the area. At one time, Arnold was a member of the Sierra Club, and he cites this as evidence that he knows the environmental movement from the inside out. Arnold eventually became disenchanted with the Sierra Club, he says, because it abandoned its image as a "backpacking group" and put nature before what he sees as man's rights and needs. Arnold has conceded receipt of industry and pro-industry foundation support and personally seeks contracts from Fortune 500 corporations for his expertise in media and communications.
    When challenged about his industry support, Arnold countered that, "John Muir [the naturalist] was a lobbyist for E.H. Harriman for the Southern Pacific Railroad. Muir went on the floor of the Senate to ask for the granting of a monopoly for Harriman on the railroad to Yosemite." He also claims many mainstream environmental groups take money from industries whose activities they purport to monitor.
 Arnold and his partner Allen Gottlieb, head of the Citizens' Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, have been affiliated with the American Freedom Coalition, which has been widely reported in both the Canadian and U.S. press to have been established by Reverend Moon's Unification Church. The American Freedom Coalition was responsible for organizing the pro Oliver North drive during and immediately after the Iran-Contra Congressional hearings.
    Gottlieb ran into trouble with the law in 1984 when he was convicted for filing false income tax returns in 1977. But his conviction as a tax felon has apparently had no impact on his ability to attract funds and influential friends to his cause. His book, entitled The Wise Use Agenda: The citizen's policy guide to environmental resource issues, features a photo of himself and then President Bush locked in a solid embrace. "I commend your efforts to help address the challenge of managing these resources for the benefit of all Americans. With your help, we will meet that challenge," Bush wrote one wise use group in January 1989.
    Although the movement has an admitted pro-industry mission, it has authentic appeal for many rural Americans who oppose big government and are zealously protective of their private property rights.
    But the wise use movement has its Achilles heels. The movement's links to Reverend Moon's church have been damaging to its credibility, as have its ties to the U.S. far right fringe. Wise use attempts to organize labor unions to oppose environmental groups and conservation efforts were fruitless because of these links. James Murray, executive secretary of the Montana State AFLCIO, turned down an invitation to join the movement in 1989, saying, "The Wise Use movement includes several corporate and right wing activist groups whose agendas include a heavy dose of opposition to organized labor."
    Wise use guru Ron Arnold's extremism and flair for the dramatic may alienate more supporters than it attracts. In the early 1990's, Herb Manig of the American Farm Bureau, which represents 4 million ranchers and farmers, said that while his organization could identify with much of what wise users have to say, the bureau is "not out to destroy the environmental movement. There are classic examples where local farmers, environmentalists, and state officials can build a consensus on land management. It does not have to be confrontational, and the confrontation does grab money and support from people who are at loose ends."
    The National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is on the movement's hit list. The NRDC Executive Director responded, "The so-called wise use' outfit's slash-and-burn fantasy for America 5 resources can only lead to environmental and economic disaster."
    Future plans of the wise use movement include the creation of "Wise use industrial areas and wise use awards," said Arnold in the early 1990's. "We hope within five years to have an armory of five wise use laws and two U.S. Supreme Court cases that will revolve around three issues; private property, over-regulation, and commodity use." In the Summer of 1992, the Supreme Court decided one land-use case in a way that supported the wise use agenda.
   Television coverage of the wise use movement gave it credibility faster than anyone would have expected. This caught environmentalists off guard; they found themselves on the defensive. To regain the offensive, some environmental groups began out-flanking the wise use movement by opening dialogues with rural communities, those who say they are feeling the impacts of environmental regulation, to work out alternative economic development strategies.
    "If [people living in rural areas] could flush out a means of living that was economically viable and that did not stand the landscape on its head, the points of conflicts with the environmental movement would be minimized," said William Neil, the Assistant Director of Conservation for the New Jersey Audubon Society. "In many cases, the economic development that local residents are pursuing is part of the process of suburbanization; [this kind of development] will not preserve the landscape they love." Neil believes that environmentalists should help develop economic alternatives to typically destructive land use policies.
    This strategy is already underway. In the Pacific Northwest, the Wilderness Society sat down with timber- and logging-dependent communities to work out economic development alternatives. 'At first, when we went in, we thought we would be lynched," said Jeff Olsen of the Society. "The idea of sitting down and talking economic development was unthinkable to many. In Sweet Home, Oregon one resident described it as similar to inviting the thief that robbed you to come to dinner."
    What the Wilderness Society discovered was that the timber industry was well on its way to abandoning the Northwest region long before the spotted owl controversy exploded-not a point wise users highlight. "The timber industry shifted its investments to the South," Olsen said. The Pacific Northwest was actually one of the few regions of the country to escape the ravages of the recession, even though the timber mills were falling silent. "For every job lost nine new ones were created........when every other region was in recession the Pacific Northwest created 57,000 new jobs," he asserted.
    Back in Ringwood, local environmentalists were caught off guard by the "wise-use" invasion. Here in the Ramapo Mountains, at the juncture of two major regional reservoirs belonging to the North Jersey Water District, two state parks, and four private lakes, the land has stayed greener than most other surrounding areas. Because of the region's reservoirs, the state has set considerable amounts of land aside and buffered it, dedicating thousands of acres as park land.
    This preservationism contrasts sharply with the region's rather sordid environmental past. At one time Ringwood's rich deposits of iron ore were mined to meet war materiel requirements for the Revolutionary and Civil Wars; later, the mine shafts were used as a dump for hazardous wastes.
    Over the years, Ringwood's environmentalists have had some impressive victories. The community successfully fended off Exxon's plan to mine for uranium. And it stopped a plan to build a major power plant with a petition signed by 2,500 residents. "That's more signatures than the number of votes most people who win for office get in town," CLEAN states.
    And until the arrival of "wise-use" , local environmentalists could take pride in the election of their pro-environment mayor. "For the first time we had a mayor and council in office that we did not have to fight along with the developers," said CLEAN co-founder, Jeffery Tittel, who sat on the Borough's Environmental Commission and Planning Board but whose terms were not renewed by the subsequent Mayor.
    The conservationist character of Ringwood clearly made the area a prime target for the wise-users. But, whether or not this lovely green spot of the Garden State will one day look more like neighboring New Jersey towns like legendary Paramus, with its shopping malls and highway interchanges, remains to be seen. For now, it will not be the same.
    And how was the "wise-use" movement faring in Ringwood in 1992? "The phone is ringing off the hook. I can't tell you how many people are calling me from other towns to say they want to join wise use. I am going to refer them to Mr. Arnold," Wood said. Wood has since moved out of State.

(Based on a Fall, 1992 article by Robert Hennelly. Used with permission of the author)

The personal attacks and the extreme nature of the "Wise-Use" campaign begun in 1992 - typical of such groups - were not well received by most Ringwood residents. Skylands CLEAN received more contributions from residents during the period of the "Wise-Use" campaign than they ever had before.

When a sewering issue heated up in 1994 (the sewers were needed by local developers to bring in high-density development), the "Wise Use" strategy resurfaced briefly under a new name. Howard Van Natta, a local and county political leader and former Ringwood Mayor, formed "F.A.C.T." (Focus Against CLEAN's Tactics) which put out several borough-wide mailings. These mailings employed the same themes, rhetoric, and tactics as the earlier Wise Use Coalition mailings.  After a public referendum in November 1994 went against sewers by a ratio of 3.5 to 1, "F.A.C.T". disappeared from public view.

Unable to win over the public in their vision of what's "good" for the community and the region, the special interests always seem to resort to campaigns designed to intimidate and discredit. We anticipate that as land use issues heat up again, with some of the same politicians and special interests seeking to bring intense development into Ringwood, some new or old variant of "Wise Use" may well again surface.

7/98 UPDATE:  Some residents, already quite concerned about the current impact of the controversial quarry in Ringwood, became active in opposing a proposed "Class B" recycling facility which would greatly increase the noise, dust and truck traffic (see "Quarry" page).  As part of their efforts, several took photographs and videotapes of the large dump trucks and tractor-trailers trying to negotiate the narrow roads to and from the quarry.

On July 13th, 1998, as had happened many times before, thirty-year Ringwood resident Doug Faconi was awoken at 5:30 a.m. by quarry trucks rumbling past his home.  After he got up, he took his video camera, drove over to the quarry, and parked in the driveway of a residence across the road from the quarry entrance.  The homeowners had given Faconi permission to come at any time.  He arrived before 7 a.m., the hour at which the quarry is allowed to begin operating, and yet he noted that the quarry gates were open and trucks had already entered.  At 7 a.m. sharp, he was videotaping filled trucks, which were already leaving the quarry.  He saw one driver talking on his two-way radio.  A few minutes later, a Ringwood police officer arrived and asked Faconi if he was taping and if he had permission to be there, but was satisfied when Faconi explained his arrangement with the Bannons.  Then Sam Braen, III arrived, and told Faconi that Faconi was "harassing" him by videotaping.  Braen said "Don't live in a glass house and throw rocks at me, Pal.  That's my road".  Braen then challenged Faconi about a small pond Faconi had built by his house: "You were screwing around when you made your little lake there.  Did you have permission to do that?"  Apparently referring to the quarry entrance, Braen continued "Well, that's my property, too, and that doesn't mean you have the right to do that either.  Maybe we should call DEP and see if you have permission."  Faconi responded by saying that he was just taking a videotape and that's not harassing anybody.  "Oh yeah it is", Braen said, "You're harassing me.  You can play the game both ways.  Don't forget, the knife cuts both ways."  Faconi answered that Braen could come and videotape him anytime, to which Braen replied "I'm gonna do better than that", adding "Don't, don't even speed", and then left.  The Ringwood police officer, who was present during this encounter, asked for the spelling of Faconi's name, and his address, then left.