Neither wise nor well - wise-use movement

Sierra, Nov-Dec, 1992 by William Poole

ON THE LAST MORNING OF THE WISE USE Leadership Conference, Chuck Cushman takes the microphone for an unscheduled speech. The founder and executive director of the National Inholders Association, a group representing private property interests in and around public lands, Cushman calls himself the "field commander" of the wise-use movement. He is burly, bearded, and Charismatic; happiest in action, in theatrical confrontation, in squaring off against "radical environmentalists" and their governmental coconspirators. Cushman is a park-stopper, a wild-and-scenic-river-arrester, proud to shout down the policies environmentalists love.. But this morning Cushman squares himself almost reluctantly to the rostrum. In the Ponderosa Room of John Ascauga's Nugget--a 1,000-room casino/hotel in Reno, Nevada--150 conferees sip their coffee and balance muffms on their laps. Cushman begins by alluding to "certain events" at the conference. Strident voices have been raised from the fringe, he says; strong opinions have been expressed. He is worried that the journalists present will make too much of these opinions. "It is not appropriate to label any of us as espousing all or even any of the views of any of the other people here," Cushman says. "I would hope the press would be re- sponsible and fairly characterize this meeting." Having interviewed Cushman the day before, I could feel his eyes on me. Cushman's problem is real. The wise-use movement is hungry these days for the kind of press that might win it the ear of Middle America--particularly stories about "wise-use heroes," victims of environmentalism run amok. It is less amdous to spotlight the immoderate ravings of some of its members--their shrill insistence that environmentalism is a communist plot against the economy and the food supply, a deliberate conspiracy to create chaos and so pave the way for a one-world socialist government.

For me, the issue had come to a head the evening before at a session on "Debunking the Environmental Myths." Among the phenomena examined: the Myth of Global Warming, the Myth of Ozone Depletion, and the Myth of Biodiversity- (I never did grasp the implausibility ofbiodiversity, but the arguments against global warming and ozone depletion seemed plain enough--to wit, that there is no acceptable evidence for either, and that scientists who say otherwise are either desperately deluded or engaged in some ideological quest.)

The meeting was supposed to have been under the leadership of R. J. Smith of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. Earlier in the conference, the professorial Smith, once an advisor to President Reagan's Council on Environmental Quality, had raised thoughtful questions about the Endangered Species Act's effect on private property. But Smith was late for the mythbuster meeting, so it fell under the more colorful influence of one Walter "Bud" Houston, a retired purveyor of lawn chemicals.

Houston's conversation kept circling back to mosquitoes. He saw the banning of DDT and other pesticides as an environmentalist scheme to reduce world population by ruining food supplies and encouraging mosquito-borne disease.(1) "The only way for them to reduce the population is through starvation and disease," Houston said. "Wars don't work-- they kill the wrong breeding partner. The Audubon Society made a lot of money banning DDT. That's the rich elite that are members there. The Sierra Club is the same way"

Of the perhaps 25 people on hand, Houston and two or three others did most of the talking. Someone decried the "planned disintegration of the U.S. economy." When Houston began to preach that environmentalists attack religion because religion is the backbone of the country, several conventioneers shifted uncomfortably in their seats. At about this time, Chuck Cushman lumbered into the room and took a seat at one of the tables. He noted my dutiful jotting of notes, and his brow wrinkled above his snowy beard. By now Houston was talking about how EPA Administrator William Reilly was President Bush's worst appointment, and how Reilly is a friend of Britain's Prince Charles, who, according to Houston, once said that when he died he would like to come back to earth as a virus to reduce the world's population.

Cushman had heard enough. "Where's R.J. Smith?" he asked. Then he turned to the group. "How do people feel about what they've been hearing?" One woman ventured that she hadn't liked the religious talk much. Another man suggested that "We have too many fights to fight to get down on everyone else."

"Liberties were taken here," Cushman said. "If you're not comfortable with what people say, you've got to speak up." When Smith arrived a few minutes later, Cushman gratefully turned the meeting over to him. Then he tapped Houston on the shoulder and led him out of the room.

This morning, standing before the convention, Cushman wants to be sure his message is understood. The convention is open to all, he says, and not everyone agrees on every issue. Cushman polls the audience: "How many agree with everything I say? How many agree with everything the John Birch Society says?" (This granddaddy of right-wing ideologue groups has set up a booth at the rear of the hall.) The conventioneers seem a little perplexed, but of course they are not the primary target of his questions. "Members of the press have been sent here by the folks in the preservation movement to try to cast us in a bad light," Cushman announces. I glance over at the camera crew from CBS News, but I've already guessed he's not talking about them.