Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Fall 2010
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly 30:4 (Fall 2010).
Abstract
In January 1979 Dave Foreman loosened his tie, propped his cowboy boots up on his desk, and brooded awhile on RARE II. In a second try at Roadless Area Review and Evaluation (RARE), the u.s. Forest Service had just spent two years deciding once and for all how much of its undeveloped land should be designated Wilderness. To Foreman, a Washington executive of the Wilderness Society, RARE II tasted of bitter defeat, and he lonesomely "popped the top on another Stroh's" as he brooded. The Forest Service had just recommended increasing its Wilderness acres from 18 million to 33 million, or about a sixth of its 190 million acres. Foreman wished for much more, and he regretted that conservationists like himself had been moderate in their demands and tactics. By 1980 a disgusted Foreman had "loosened his tie" all the way back to New Mexico, out of the Wilderness Society, and into Earth First!, a radical new environmental group that was best known for advocating sabotage of logging and construction projects. As Foreman told this story in his autobiography, Confessions of an Eco-Warrior, RARE II was the last straw.1
Comments
Copyright © 2010 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska.