| "They're developing a roadmap for
conservation," he adds, and that saves ranchers a lot of guesswork.
"You never know when an environmental group is going to protest
something."
But then Winder is no ordinary rancher. He supported reintroducing wolves in the Southwest, and now sells "Wolf Country Beef" for a premium in specialty stores. Now, he's reintroducing endangered fish in a stream on one of his ranches, and he's started a small eco-tourism business. It's all in the name of survival, he says, in a time when ranchers are selling out and hanging up the saddle for good. "I've gotta be out there kicking some a _ _," he says. "I want to see ranchers get rich as hell off of healing the land. We got rich s _ _ _ _ _ _ _ it up." There are also signs that Wildlands Project thinking has permeated the thick walls of land management agencies. The Yellowstone to Yukon initiative, for example, has garnered the support of both the U.S. and Canadian national park services. Even some skeptics admit that the science behind the Wildlands Project is making waves in the agencies. "The Wildlands Project is a little beyond political and social reality. It can't deal with the tide of humanity," says Hal Salwasser, director of the Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station in Berkeley, Calif. "But conservation biology is not a pipe dream. We use the concepts and tools that came out of conservation biology pretty regularly. They're in the regular toolbox." In the Northern Rockies, for example, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been working to connect grizzly bear habitat in Yellowstone, Idaho and Montana, according to agency bear biologist Chris Servheen. Montana's Swan Valley is an important passageway for grizzly bears traveling between the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area and the Mission Mountains. Servheen's agency has helped show that bears will steer clear of residents' homes as long as they don't grow apple trees, raise chickens or keep dog food outside. "The local people live in these areas because they have space; there're no streetlights, barking dogs or cars racing around," he says. "Bears need the same things." But Servheen is quick to draw a line between the kind of conservation biology he practices and the kind that appears in the academic journals. "Who reads Soul's books? Is it the people who live in these areas? Absolutely not," he says. "The future of these animals rides on public support, not on these grand concepts." Unless conservation biologists can find a way to convince common people that their ideas are legitimate, adds Servheen, they will only make battles over public lands and private property worse. "We (agency officials) end up picking up the pieces of poorly sold ideas," he says. "And the ones that really suffer are the animals." Here comes the Wildlands Project Wildlands proponents understand that they'll never get a second chance with a first impression. If they blow it, it could take a long time to recover. They're gearing up for the big debut, which should hit the pages of The New York Times this fall in the form of a two-page ad with maps. By the end of the year, they expect to release a string of reserve maps, including plans for the Sky Island region of Arizona and New Mexico, the Southern Rockies, the Klamath Siskiyou region of Oregon, the central coast of British Columbia and the northern Yukon territory. "We're looking very hard at how to make the Wildlands Project immediately relevant and how to make it have an impact right now," says Foreman. "Otherwise, it's not worth the paper it's printed on. It'll do nothing but collect dust." Making the project relevant, he says, starts with the grassroots wilderness proposals that are popping up like wildflowers around the West. Many are modeled after the Utah Wilderness Coalition's proposal that seems to be making some headway in Congress, thanks to a national constituency (HCN, 8/3/98). The New Mexico Wilderness Alliance wants to protect 2.5 million acres of Bureau of Land Management land as wilderness. A similar proposal for Arizona is in the works. Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette has introduced a bill in Congress that would designate 1.5 million acres of wilderness in her state. California activists are pushing for up to 6 million acres of new wilderness. Nevada environmentalists want approximately 16 million acres. In Oregon, it's 4.5 million acres. And in Washington, conservationists are asking for 3.1 million acres. Some activists contemplate a national or West-wide wilderness bill, according to Jack Humphrey of the Sky Island Alliance. "The national wilderness movement is really kicking in," he says. "A national bill would take it out of the hands of Western senators and make it a national debate." Some activists contemplate a national or West-wide wilderness bill, according to Jack Humphrey of the Sky Island Alliance. "The national wilderness movement is really kicking in," he says. "A national bill would take it out of the hands of Western senators and make it a national debate." Also in the works on the national level is a "Native Ecosystem Protection Act," sort of an Endangered Species Act for whole landscapes. This "new NEPA" would outlaw the "taking" or destruction of protected ecosystems on public lands, says Reed Noss, a former Earth First!er who is now the president of the Society for Conservation Biology. The act, which has not yet been written up as legislation, would also set up a fund to buy wildlife habitat on private land. "Instead of addressing species one by one, we need to focus on ecosystems and slow down the cascade of species warranting listing under the Endangered Species Act," says Noss. "The idea is not to wait until things are virtually impossible to fix." He admits that a national law is not a panacea, and that conservation plans will vary from place to place. "It's a little foggy. No one knows what's going to work." To make the Wildlands Project work, Foreman admits he needs to step out of the wilderness and into the messy private lands and human communities in between. He has taken the lead in presenting the new Sky Island-Greater Gila reserve design in the Southwest. Once the environmental movement's chief agitator, he now finds himself struggling to become its head peacemaker. "In the past, the conservation movement's greatest weakness has been that private-lands conservation has been divorced from public-lands conservation, wilderness protection has been divorced from endangered species protection, economic practices have been divorced from ecosystem recovery," says Foreman. "What we're saying is, let's look at all of it and see how it fits together." Foreman has also been meeting with sympathetic ranchers like Jim Winder and Drum Hadley, who runs the Gray Ranch in the New Mexico boot heel. "Big private ranches that are managed for their ecologic values are in many ways the best places to restore sensitive species," he says. Land trusts, conservation easements, and raising money to simply buy up land are all part of the picture, he says. He also supports efforts to make conservation make sense to people's pocketbooks. In the Southwest, for example, environmentalists are working to convince ranchers to sell predator-friendly meat and retire grazing allotments on public lands in exchange for trophy elk-hunting permits. Barbara Dugelby, now the Wildlands Project's ecologist, says she's seen Foreman change his tack in recent years. "He's become a little softer, more focused and analytical," she says. Still, the old eco-warrior acknowledges that he's walking into a fight with many rural Westerners. "We're not going to throw all economic uses off the land. That's realism," he says. "On the same token, we're going to have wolves back throughout the West. That's a reality they're going to have to live with." www.hcn.org/1999/apr26/dir/Feature_Visionarie.html Photo of Dave Foreman (likely taken in early to mid 1990s) http://www.hcn.org/allimages/1999/apr26/graphics/990426.001.jpg Photo of Michael Soule: http://www.hcn.org/allimages/1999/apr26/graphics/990426.002.jpg Photo of Barbara Dugelby: http://www.hcn.org/allimages/1999/apr26/graphics/990426.022.jpg Photo of Steve Hinchman: http://www.hcn.org/allimages/1999/apr26/graphics/990426.023.jpg Additional recommended reading: |
