THE NATIONAL AUDUBON SOCIETY
DELETED EMBARRASSING INFORMATION ABOUT PEW CHARITABLE TRUSTS GRANTS FROM
THEIR WEBSITE AFTER RON ARNOLD REVEALED IT IN CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY.
Go to the National Audubon Society (NAS) webpage
containing the Minutes
of the Board Meeting of September 17-18, 1999. The URL says the page is about the
Heritage Forest Campaign. But something is missing: any mention of the Heritage Forest
Campaign. There is an entry for a "Forests Campaign" but nothing about the
separate program well-known as the Heritage Forest Campaign.
There's a good reason. Ron Arnold publicized the undue
influence exerted by Audubon executive Dan Beard, who served as Clinton administration
head of the Bureau of Reclamation, and exposed the millions of dollars NAS obtained from
the Pew Charitable Trusts and its Heritage Forest Campaign to cut off all motorized
transportation in 50 to 60 million acres of Forest Service land.
During the week of March 20, 2000, NAS "had
problems" with their website and the Heritage Forest Campaign page was not available.
When it reappeared, the segment below, which had previously been on the page, no longer
appeared. Numerous witnesses, including a noted Virginia attorney, saw the original,
downloaded its contents, and affirm that the segment below was in the original posting and
has subsequently been removed.
National Audubon Society has a perfect right to hide
embarrassing facts. You have a perfect right to know about it.
This is the missing segment, exactly as it appeared in the
original:
Conservation Update from Dan Beard:
Heritage Forest Campaign:
There are 60 million acres of 1000 acre-plus plots in our National Forests that are
still roadless. There is no hope of congressional action to preserve them as wilderness.
Administrative protection is possible. We have raised the issue’s visibility
in the White House, but it’s not enough. So we did a poll, using the president’s
pollster. He sent results to White House chief of staff. The poll shows that Americans,
strongly, care about wilderness to the extent of favoring it over jobs. Even Republican
men in intermountain states support it at the 50% level. The administration has said they
will take some kind of action. We hope for an announcement from the president of some kind
of administrative protection. We probably won’t get all 60 million acres, but if we
did it would represent the biggest chunk of land protection since the Alaska Lands Act.
The Pew Trust is pleased with the campaign so far. 2nd year funding will
take it to January 2001: $2.2 million for about 12 organizations under our supervision.
Outside Magazine this month has a good cover article. Our visibility and credibility among
fellow forest protection organizations has been raised. (comment from John Flicker - this
grant came to us because of Dan Beard’s reputation and good name.)
We had an email and letter writing campaign: there were about 200,000 responses; about
170K came from banners placed on services such as Juno; 25K came direct from environmental
groups; NAS sent in 3K.
On this issue there is a lot of looking for leadership: I like it but let someone else
go first. In Congress reaction we got a letter of support signed by 170 members; there is
some senate support [40?]. The leadership knows roadless vote would now win, so they
won’t bring it to a vote.
Why was this segment deleted? What is the National Audubon
Society afraid of? The truth?
If you care, you are free to ask them by email at dbeard@audubon.org. |
