Bucking the Tide of Ecological CorrectnessBy Russell Shaw

The environmental organization Greenpeace recently released a list of groups it calls "antienvironmentalBut the leaders of most of these claim the label is unfair — they just want to see land used wisely and preserve their rights of ownership and fair access.

R ick Sieman, an off-road motor­cycle racer for the last 27 years, recalls the moment in 1990 when he knocked on the door of

an Areata, Calif., building occupied by members of the extremist environ­mental organization Earth First!

“I brought a couple of logger friends with me, and one of them told me I shouldn’t go in there. But I went in any­way with a camera. While I started tak­ing pictures, a couple of maggoty-look­ing people moved aside,” recalls Sieman contemptuously. “There were dirty mattresses just like in a com­mune, little kids were running around naked and a couple of people were smoking joints.”

A few days later, Sieman says, he decided to play what he calls a practi­cal joke on Earth First! He ran off leaflets containing an offer to pay $3 each for used tires — and listed the address of the Areata building. “So all of a sudden one morning at 9, people started banging on their door, and the Earth Firsters didn’t have a clue what was going on,” he says.

Now living on the Baja California coast just south of the border, Sieman heads the .Sahara Club, perhaps the most flamboyant of 54 alleged nature- hating groups described in the recent­ly released G ree n p ea c e G uide to A n ti- E n v iro n m e n ta l O rg a n iza tio n s . This 112-page guide published by Wash­ington-based Greenpeace US. anno­tates organizations including Defend­ers of Property Rights, the National Inholders Association. California Desert Coalition andlhe BlueRihhon Coalition. Many of these are affiliated with the “Wise Use” 'movement, an

alliance mostly of Western-based groups that seek to balance environ­mentalism with economic and human concerns.

Formed in 1989 and devoted to “fighting eco-freaks and keeping pub­lic land free,” Sieman’s Sahara Club is

singled out by Greenpeace for special wrath. Noting that the Sahara Club, which boasts about 5,000 affiliate mem­bers, is composed largely of motorcy­cle enthusiasts, Greenpeace says that the club “encourages physical violence against environmental activists.” Sie­man denies the charge but allows that members of the “Sahara Clubbers,” a division charged with underscoring the group’s point of view, have spoken with Earth First! activists suspected of placing hazardous obstacles in the paths of riders.

Sieman: E n v iro n m e n ta lis ts w ith a tti tu d e s w an t to stop h is fu n .

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The National Inholders Association also is on Greenpeace’s blacklist. (The term i n h o l d e r refers to someone who owns land inside or bordering a nation­al park.) The association’s executive director, Chuck Cushman, has said ihai "Parks are like aspirin. TVvo can be helpful, but a hundred will put you in the hospital.”

Although Greenpeace paints these groups with a contemptuous brush, what do these “antienvironmentalists" say? Are members really looking for 50 ways to pave the earth, or have their views been misrepresented and under­reported?

Despite ideological differences, most of the groups tagged with the antienvironmental designation deny the charge. Most simply believe that when it comes down to facts, the eco­nomic livelihood and recreational desires of people are equal to or more important than, for example, the preservation of obscure species

Furtherm ore, many members believe that far from being antienvi­ronmental, they are the t r u e environ­mentalists. Since private landowners usually want to preserve or increase their equity, and property almost always raises estate values, it’s in the economic and aesthetic interest of landowners to care about the environ­ment, they say. Many of these groups also point to the National Park Service's estimate of deferred maintenance costs on public land — reportedly S6 billion plus — as an indictment on the feder­al government’s ability to manage its own property.

"That makes sense to us," says Nan- cie Marzulla, president and chief legal counsel of Defenders.of Property Rights "If you look down a neighbor­hood street, you usually can tell which houses are occupied by owners and

| which is the rental house." Marzulla's j group, which bills itself as “the nation's | only legal defense foundation devoted j exclusively to protecting private-prop­

erty rights," frequently produces press releases protesting what members J claim is governmental regulatory and fiscal usurpation of landowners' rights Environmental regulations and puni-

j live developmental prohibitions are j two common targets.

Last November, Defenders of Prop- j erty Rights hailed the Pennsylvania i Supreme Court’s reversal of a Phila- j delphia City Historical Commission j decision deeming the city's Boyd The-

| ater a historic landmark “What the j court decision did was restore some j j balance to an area which has left many j ( property owners, such as this theater I ! owner, forced to pay the upkeep of a I

Marzulla: H i s t o r i c p r e s e r v a t i o n c a n d e s t r o y i n v e s t m e n t s '

‘white elephant,'" says Marzulla. His­toric preservation too often destroys the reasonable in­vestment expecta­tions of the proper­ty owner and the reasonable uses of private property"

Marzulla's group also is supporting the position of Flo­rence Dolan, who owns A-Boy Plumb­ing in Tigard, Ore., a suburb of Port­land. Dolan is seek­ing a municipal per­mit to enlarge her store, but Tigard city officials insist that she first donate enough property to form a bicycle path and public green­way through her land. Marzulla says that since Tigard has offered no com­pensation, the mu­nicipality's action would be tan ta ­mount to taking the property without paying for it

The case was argued in March before the U.S Su­preme Court. In previous administra­tions, the Justice Department has maintained that such actions may vio­late the Fifth Amendment's just-com­pensation clause, but the fact that Solicitor General Drew S. Days III argued Tigard's side in a friend of the court brief bothers Marzulla.

"This switch in policy is especially- disturbing given the extensive regula­tion of land the federal government already lords over private property — such as wetlands, endangered species and landmark preservation." she says. "If the Supreme Court adopts the gov­ernment's argument, the regulatory explosion will expand to cover states and localities as well. It will be a crip­pling blow to private-property rights as we know them."

Pat Davidson, coordinator of the Riverside-based California Desert Coalition, presents an allied argument that cuts to the core of the deep resent­ment "antienvironmentalists" feel toward most self-declared environ­mental groups who are viewed as power-hungry, scientifically naive, big- city interlopers lacking the true pas­

sion for and understanding of the land "Some of our members come from !

ranching communities where five gen­erations have worked." says Davidson. ; "The idea that we are destroying the ! land is ridiculous This land is our i livelihood." ■

A more direct attack on environ- | mentalists motives is leveled by | Clark Collins, executive director ;

! of the Idaho-based BlueRibbon Coali- ; i lion, a .1,000-member grbup'primarily i ! comprising off-highway vehicle recre- j I ationists as well as employees of lim- 1 ! her. oil and mining companies. Collins j I favors drilling for oil in the Arctic i j National Wildlife Refuge. Relaxation of j ! prohibitions against access to public | lands is the BlueRibbon Coalitions \ | most defined goal, j "The so-called environmental j groups see no middle ground." says ;

Collins. "The bottom line is. they think ! | they are the only ones with the know1- j edge to make the rules. They are try- I mg to represent themselves as the envi- j ronmental conscience of the country. ! I hut they are not They are about polit- I

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ical power and are nothing more than hatemongers who inspire hatred for folks who do things they disapprove of.”

Accentuating the claims of these “true environmentalists,” some asso­ciations such as the BlueRibbon Coali­tion actually become involved in envi­ronment-friendly causes such as trail maintenance, litter cleanup and envi­ronmental restoration projects. A chief passion is the securing of funds for improved trails in U.S. Forest Service areas. Collins says he believes that where appropriate, trails for motorcy­clists should be part of the recreation­al mix. "We do, however, actively oppose ‘Wilderness’ designation of areas presently used by mechanized

recreationists, because that designa­tion disallows our continued use of those areas," said Collins in testimony fora February 1994 House hearing on U.S Forest Service Reform held by the Natural Resources committee's National Parks, Forests and Public Lands subcommittee. “'Wilderness' designation is not necessary to protect our backcountry areas."

If most of the key property-rights groups have a common legislative enemy these days, it is a congression­al proposal to shut off nearly 8.5 mil­lion acres of California desert to most recreational uses. “In these budgetary

times, that’s extremely excessive,” says Davidson. “We can’t support that much land being locked up. We say that not because we are 'antiwilderness,' but because we are 'anti-excessive wilder­ness”’

The Sahara Club’s Sieman is far more blunt about the issue. “Those groups want to eliminate all off-road recreational activity. That comes from a snotty attitude," he snarls. "Those sanctimonious SOBs think they are smarter than we are. What it really boils down to is they think they are the saviors of the world.”

Tb cut off public-land access to avid enthusiasts like Sieman is to go far deeper than marshaling his political

resentment. It s messing with the very essence of his outdoors-loving soul — a fact most antienvironmentalists say the pro-environmentalists don't under­stand about them.

“1 go out there because the scenery and the grandeur takes my breath away," says Sieman, who has off-road- ed extensively in several Californian and Mexican deserts. "You get sort of humbled by it all 1 know that if I took some of these mean-spirited folks on a drive to some of these places, they would come back with a totally differ­ent attitude"

Not that Sieman likes all nature. In

the Sahara Club’s bimonthly newslet­ter, for example, he frequently argues against excessive wetlands regulations. “Why not call wetlands what they are — breeding grounds for mosquitoes and places where diseases flourish?” he asks. “Mankind has fought this very tough uphill battle to get rid of these miserable places. They are just not healthy for human beings. I don’t want any stagnant water sitting near my home."

As a writer for outdoors and motor­cycling-industry publications, Sieman sees liberal media sympathy for “envi­ronmental" causes fanning the flames of misunderstanding. Frequently, his resentment is translated into invec­

tive. He says that the name S a h a r a C l u b is Y a dig at the Sierra ! Club. He calls the international organi­zation Greenpeace “a bunch of lying, evil, cretinous, scum­sucking, larcenous, vile, money-grubbing bastards." A recent J issue of his newslet- j ter refers to environ- j mentalists as "New j Age nuts, militant j vegetarians, antigun i pukes, animal-rights goofballs, tree wor­shipers, new-world- / order pushers, hu - ! man haters, pro-, socialists, doomsay-; ers, homosexual-! rights activists, radi-j cal eco-Nazis, slob- ; bering political-cor- j rectness advocates, j militant feminists 1

$ and land- closure fas- ; cists."

Such posturing has compelled some property-rights and access-rights groups

to distance themselves from the Sahara Club — not that they disagree with its aims. However, the Sahara Club is per­ceived in many moderate-rhetoric quarters as somewhat uncouth. In the view of more than one such body, the Sahara Club's benefits to the move­ment largely stem from the perception that their extremism makes the more measured arguments of the Wise Use groups that much more mainstream.

“They are being a lot more in-your- I face with the so-called environmen- j talist groups," says the BlueRibhor , Coalition's Collins. “We are a bit mere moderate, while they are kind of like

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