I was born and grew up in Washington’s rural Ferry County, in the northeastern corner of the state.  In 2000, Republican Sen. Slade Gorton was narrowly defeated by ex-Democratic Congressman Maria Cantwell, who spent huge sums of money and yet carried only five urban counties in and around Seattle.  The remaining 34 counties went to Gorton.  While Bill Clinton carried the county narrowly in 1992 and 1996, George W. Bush carried it by an overwhelming margin in 2000.

This used to be Democratic country.  I can remember when Ferry County voted for Al Smith for president in 1928.  Later, it twice voted for Adlai Stevenson (1952 and 1956) against the popular hero Dwight D. Eisenhower.  It has generally voted for Democratic senators and governors.  Other counties in eastern Washington were not very different.  Things have changed, however.

Ferry County is part of the second largest congressional district in the state (the 5th).  For 25 years, it was represented by Democrat Tom Foley, who became speaker of the house.  In 1994, however, he was defeated by “giant killer” Republican George Nethercutt, another indication of the shift in the political map.  Nethercutt was reelected in 2002.

I write from Republic, the county seat, a town with a population of about 1,000.  The whole county has about 7,000 souls.  As I speculate on the results of recent elections, local voters tell me that environmentalists, whom the voters associate with the Democratic Party, were the main reason for these changes in the political landscape.

Ferry County has three main interest groups: loggers, miners, and farmers.  They see the actions of environmentalists, popularly referred to as “Greenies,” as inimical to their way of life, their well-being.

Take the matter of timber.  The Greenies do not want any of it harvested.  There is never a sufficient analysis of any timber or salvage sale that will satisfy them.  So they file appeals, resulting in court actions and injunctions, which often are enough to kill the proposed sales.

In 2001, after the Malo fire (officially called the “Leona Complex”), the U.S. Forest Service announced a salvage sale of the timber in the burned-over area.  Experts from the local San Poil Lumber Company estimated that between 45 and 50 million board feet would be harvested.  But the Greenies contested the Forest Service plan, and, ultimately, the trees dried up and were not suitable for producing freshly cut lumber.  The Greenies’ delay meant that the U.S. government lost about $11 million in revenue.  Lumber workers were the real losers.  

The Greenies drive steel spikes in stand-ing trees, which result in broken saws as well as injuries to lumberjacks.  Such acts have caused numerous delays and even the cancellation of proposed cutting, resulting in the loss of jobs for loggers.

Some radical environmentalists have also set fire to U.S. Forest Service properties and to private holdings, and they never seem to be caught or punished.  The Portland Oregonian listed over 100 major acts of arson, sabotage, and bombing from 1980 to September 1999 in Western states alone, with damages estimated at over $55 million.  In December 1999, a Boise Cascade facility was burned down, causing about one million dollars in damage.

In August 2002, a U.S. Forest Service official told a gathering of loggers in Montana that some out-of-state environmental activists are terrorists trained in arson, vandalism, and bombmaking.  In earlier times, he said, protesters were mainly college students engaging in civil disobedience, but today’s protesters are “better organized and better trained,” with “laptops and cell phones.”

For the most part, the Greenies have frustrated the U.S. Forest Service’s programs to reduce the chance of fires by clearing underbrush.  The fires in the summer of 2002 in Arizona and Colorado gave the Forest Service a boost.  Even Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle slipped an amendment into a spending bill that made it tougher for environmentalists to appeal Forest Service projects—but only in his home state of South Dakota.

Subsequently, President Bush asked Congress to amend existing laws to grant the Forest Service authority to implement measures that would make forests less susceptible to fire.  The proposal would also allow the cutting of larger trees.  Environmentalists immediately condemned the President’s recommendations.  When Congress failed to act, President Bush began the process of promulgating administrative rules aimed at reducing legal and administrative barriers to thinning underbrush and small trees, as well as commercially attractive old-growth trees.  His action applies to ten national forests (mostly in Western states).  The environmentalists were not happy.

President Bush’s action was somewhat dampened the next day by a ruling by a federal appeals court in California that reinstated a Clinton-administration rule protecting 60 million acres of national forest land from logging and road construction.  (That ruling may be appealed.)

The Greenies write letters to newspapers, organize and participate in demonstrations, create organizations (World Resources Institute, Earth First, Earth Liberation Front, Wild Washington Campaign, Resources for the Future, the Rocky Mountain Institute, etc.), and yet have no visible source of income, which has led some local residents to conclude that “the government” pays them.  Locals who have witnessed their businesses, homes, or equipment going up in smoke may believe that their only option is vigilante action.

The Greenies and their friends have succeeded in passing a number of state laws that have allowed urban counties to impose regulations that make rural life difficult.  Private property is no longer sacred.  For example, a man who owns a piece of land through which a peaceful creek runs will discover that he cannot build a cabin on it.  As a matter of fact, landowners may not do anything within 250 feet of a creek.

Similarly, the Greenies have created difficulties for cattle ranchers by denying them grazing lands in order to protect some endangered species.  For example, some employees of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) planted lynx fur on rubbing posts in two national forests in Washington in order to force the closure of those forests.  The FWS investigated and discovered the fraud, but the Greenies attacked the investigation as a “witch hunt.”

The case of Lin Drake, who wanted to develop land in Enoch, Utah, had a less pleasant outcome.  Employees of FWS charged him with violating the Endangered Species Act, claiming that there were prairie dogs on his property.  Drake had been told that there were prairie dogs in the area and had hired an engineer to survey his property; the engineer found no evidence of prairie dogs.  After Drake recorded his subdivision, an “anonymous tip” sent state and federal employees to his property.  Although they found no prairie dogs and no mounds or holes—active or inactive—they notified Drake that prairie dogs were on his property and that he would be fined $200,000 and imprisoned for a year.  The next day, an FWS employee visited Drake’s property; again, he saw no prairie dogs.

Over the next several months, Drake beseeched FWS employees to visit his property so they could learn what he already knew.  After several visits, the FWS still could not find any prairie dogs or prairie-dog mounds or holes.  No films of prairie dogs on his property were ever produced.  Nevertheless, he was fined $15,000 two years later for disturbing the habitat of prairie dogs.  Drake lost his appeals because, in the words of a judge, federal employees had no reason to lie and must, therefore, be believed.