Overview - Property Rights and 'Wise Use'

The Sagebrush Rebellion waned during the twilight years of the Reagan Administration, but the rage and paranoia that gave rise to it did not. In 1988 Alan Gottlieb (president) and Ron Arnold (vice-president) of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise CDFE helped organize a Multiple Use Strategy Conference in Reno, Nevada. There, Gottlieb and Arnold (who describes himself as an advocate of "the right to own property and use nature's resources for the benefit of mankind") brought together a loose-knit coalition of Property Rights groups, timber and extraction industries, ranchers, agribusiness, offroad vehicle use advocates, and other predominately rural Far-Right interests.

The conference produced a 25-point “Wise Use” Agenda which included initiatives that sought to ban commercial use of public lands for timber, mining, and oil, and open recreational wilderness areas for unrestricted access and use by the general public. Among other things the agenda called for,

• Clear cutting old growth on national forest lands (Wise Use advocates characterize old-growth as ”decaying and oxygen using forest growth” which contributes to global warming).
• Rewriting the Endangered Species Act to remove protection for such “non-adaptive” species as the California condor.
• Immediate oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
• Opening all public lands—including national parks and wilderness areas to mineral and energy production, under wise use technologies in the interest of domestic economies and in the interest of national security.
• Development of national parks under the direction of private firms with expertise in people-moving, such as Walt Disney.
• Civil penalties against anyone who legally challenges economic action or development on federal lands.
  
  (Canadian Library of Parliament, 1992)

The term Wise Use was co-opted from Gifford Pinchot, who first coined the term in 1910 to describe the very sustainable forestry practices the movement wages war against. The name stuck and was eventually adopted as its formal title. Pinchot, who first headed the U.S. Forest Service under Grover Cleveland was a strong advocate of conservation and would turn over in his grave if he knew how the Far-Right was abusing his name and the Wise Use moniker.

Gottlieb and Arnold continue to be the driving force behind the Wise Use Movement, which has since grown to include over 1000 Far-Right interests. Gottlieb has also been active in the pro-gun movement and is director of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA). Both are prolific writes with numerous books and contributions to Far-Right periodicals as well as mainstream news and print outlets. Among their many books are Undue Influence: Wealthy Foundations, Grant Driven Environmental Groups and Zealous Bureaucrats That Control Your Future, Ecology Wars: Environmentalism As If People Mattered, Ecoterror: The Violent Agenda to Save Nature, The World of the Unabomber(Arnold), The Wise Use Agenda, Politically Correct Guns: Please Don't Rob or Kill Me, The Gun Grabbers: Who They Are, How They Operate Where They Get Their Money (Gottlieb), and books they have co-authored like Politically Correct Environment and Trashing the Economy: How Runaway Environmentalism Is Wrecking America.