Recreation Industry, Environmentalists Join in Roadless Battle

By David Frey, 7-27-06

It’s not just environmentalists who are worried about the plight of roadless areas. The recreation industry has added its voice, too.

With a bunch of western Colorado roadless areas ready to be auctioned off for oil and gas drilling, some recreation industry heavy-hitters – including Black Diamond Equipment and the Outdoor Industry Association – have joined local outfitters and environmentalists in a legal battle to stop it. They’ve signed onto a formal protest to take the roadless areas off the list.

"They know that they are standing up for folks that use these wild places and their livelihoods that depend on them," said Sloan Shoemaker, director of the Wilderness Workshop, a Carbondale group that is among the environmental groups that filed the protest. "This is emblematic of a prairie fire sweeping the West. This administration's overreaching is driving new alliances where previously they were just not considered. All these new alliances are forming about the protection of wild places for our quality of life and our economies and for their intrinsic value."

http://www.newwest.net/index.php/topic/comment/10252/C74/L38

Let's hope so.

Good environmental activists have constructed all manner of effective alliances for many decades: go to the rich folk who don't want their view spoiled; go to the poor folk who don't wanna live next to a CAFO or multistate waste dump; talk to the ex-cops who think city kids need outdoor recreation opportunities; meet with sympathetic realtors who might be interested in effects of certain kinds of development on property values; get the hunters and fishermen involved &c&c&c ...

From a certain perspective, the issue isn't whether people learn so much as whether people burnout ...