The Pew Wilderness Center, one of the GAG biggies, recently released a 43 page report on the history of the Wilderness Act called "A Wilderness Forever Future-A Short History of the National Wilderness Preservation System". Even thought this is written by the GAGs, it is very informational, and often times fairly nonpartisan, it is absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in how this Act devoloped and how it has evolved since the late 50s. It is a pdf file, can be downloaded at:
.www.pewwildernesscenter.org/reports/talk.pdf (http://www.pewwildernesscenter.org/reports/talk.pdf)
(Note: you have to have Adobe Acrobat Reader to access the document.)
And if any of you have access to "Wild Earth, The Journal of the Wildlands Project" (yes I have a subscription, given to me by a GAG aquaintance)there is an article in the new Fall/Winter 2001-2002 issue written by the author of the Pew report, it summarizes the report in several pages

Originally posted by landuseorc
And if any of you have access to "Wild Earth, The Journal of the Wildlands Project" (yes I have a subscription, given to me by a GAG aquaintance)there is an article in the new Fall/Winter 2001-2002 issue written by the author of the Pew report, it summarizes the report in several pages

How about using that thar subscription thinghy of yours and get us the condensed summary? :D

Crowdog

I'll try scanning it tonite.

After reading that very interesting history of the
wilderness movement from Pew that I posted a couple
days ago it was more obvious than ever why we
generally have problems battling the GAGs. I didn't
realize that the organized enviro movement started
back in the 20s, and by the 40s into the mid 50s it
was very strong and organized. The passage of the
Wilderness Act actually was the culmination of years
of hard work by many zealots, with a core group that
worked day and night for years.

So, by the time the 70s rolled around and OHV
recreation started to get organized (UFWDA is ONLY 25
years old) the GAGs had DECADES of organization under
their belts. Contrary to popular belief, the enviro
movement didn't start with the first Earth Day in
1970, it had already been around for 40 some years,
and in an organized fashion for 30 years, The
Wilderness Society started back in the 40s!

The first real GAG victory goes back to 1955, that was
the Echo Park dam that was shot down by an organized
enviro movement. Back then, all they had to fight was
a few logging and mining organizations, and those
organizations had a head start, but not the passion
that the early enviros had. So guys like Aldo
Leopold, Howard Zahnizer, and Bob Marshall devoted all
their energy to starting a movement that has had 75
years or so to gain momentum.

My point here is that many of us often get
discouraged, our victories seem to be few and far
between sometimes, but then you just have to realize
that we've been at this battle for only 20 years or so
in any sort of organized fashion. With that in mind I
guess you would have to say that we in fact have made
great progress. We just have to somehow instill the
passion in more OHVers, but every day I see more and
more of us starting to open their eyes and see what is
happening. My only concern is that for us to gain the
momentum we really need to be truly effective it will
still take more time. At first, when I got involved
with land use activism back in the late 80s, closures
were few and far between, I pretty much wheeled where
I wanted to without restriction. Then the closing of
the top of Mt. Graham in SE AZ in the late 80s all
because of a little squirrel opened up my eyes, but
events like that were still fortunately very few.
But, more and more often, at an ever accelerating
pace, closures are happening and people are seeing
their favorite riding areas taken away by a very
organized and zealous GAG movement.

Like I said, we have a lot of catching up to do if we
are to keep pace with the GAGs and their closures. I
hope that the OHVers that are becoming involved does
not continue to be at the trickling pace that it has
been, because time is running out for many of our
favorite places. The Rubicon recently dodged a
bullet, there are many places around Moab that are now
WSAs and at the top of the GAG hit list, the San
Rafael Swell is at the VERY TOP of the list of places
the GAGs want off limits, the list goes on.

The solution? Recruit, talk about this stuff until
people are sick of hearing it (my wife is!), open your
mouth when you are out in the hills and see an OHVer
doing something stupid/uninformed, attend everything
that your time and funds will allow you to (like the
UFWDA Land Use Conference, scoping meetings, etc.).
The key is the PASSION that most of the GAGs have that
we still seem to not have in many instances and
places. WE also need to be sure we join forces with
other interests, its starting to happen, but there is
still a lot of infighting. The ranchers, miners and
loggers have a lot of the same things and places at
stake that we do, and unfortunately we are often at
odds with each other. And that goes even within our
own ranks, I recently saw an item about a dispute
between ATVers and snowmobilers, the snowmobilers feel
that the ATVers are tearing things up. Come on, when
was the last time you heard about GAGs fighting
amongst themselves...you don't!

Off my soapbox for now. But, like I said, what
inspired this line of thought was reading that 40 page
history of the wilderness movement. If you need a
little push, I encourage you to take the couple hours
you will need to read it.