Former activist exposes environmental agendas

'Wise Use' leader garnering national attention

By JEFF SELLE

North Idaho News Network

COEUR d'ALENE -. Ron Arnold's active participation in the Sierra Club during the early 1970s prompted members to elect him as a volunteer leader in the Alpine Lakes Protection Society - a spin-off environmental movement to preserve portions of the Cascade Mountain Range near Seattle.

The whole experience started out incredibly positive, Arnold said, but a progression of events ultimately left him with a negative perception of the "so-called grassroots environmental movement."

"I have to say, ..the Sierra Club is different from other environmental groups in its democratic approach toward leadership," he said, explaining the events that changed his opinion of the movement over the years. 'Members of that group actually elect their leaders into the leadership positions."

As an elected trustee in the Alpine Lakes project, Arnold said he was charged with mapping out and promoting the campaign to protect a pristine portion of public land in the Cascades.

When he started, Arnold said it truly felt like a "grassroots" movement led by concerned citizens who lived and worked in the area. Arnold said the group ultimately decided to establish a modest area of wilderness, surrounded by a larger transitional zone where recreation and limited natural resource extraction - such as "landscape logging" - would be allowed.

"I actually wouldn't mind these wilderness areas that are being proposed today if this was how they were put together," he said.

After his group completed the proposal and signed off on the concept, a delegation was formed to pitch the plan to a congressional committee in Washington, D.C.

Arnold was member of that delegation,

"We went down there-and presented the plan to committee members and everything went very well," he said.

"But as soon as we walked out of the committee meeting, some of the Sierra Club's national leaders walked in behind us and shut the door."

As a result of that meeting, the group's Alpine Lakes project made it through Congress, but the transitional zone that allowed for recreation and resource extraction was written out of the legislation.

"It became very clear to me that we were used as pawns to create an entire wilderness area in that spot," he said. "It was a major betrayal, and boy, did I ever learn something there."

At that point, Arnold disassociated himself with the organized environmental movement - which he now calls "vicious, ferocious and powerful" - and began advocating responsible conservation, which includes a variety of uses on national land.

He started a small consulting firm in the early '70s to help the "real grassroots community groups" combat the "extremely wealthy and powerful grant-driven environmental movement."

. In 1984, he also joined a non-profit group called the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise in Bellevue, Wash., which gained him national notoriety as "The Father of the Wise-Use Movement."

He eventually wrote a book called "EcoTerror: The Violent Agenda to Save Nature," which also got national media attention.

Arnold has, been interviewed by "Nightline," "60 Minutes," Time, People, U.S. News and World Report and Outside magazines, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe and the Chicago Tribune.

Some of the environmental tactics he describes in his most recent book, "Undue Influence," have already caught the attention of members of Congress. Congressional investigators are checking into the "undue influence" that national environmental groups may have had on President Clinton's recently announced Roadless Initiative.

The idea for "Undue Influence" stems from a report Arnold gave to Congress in 1998 entitled "Battered Communities," which made a case for how "supposedly charitable" environmental organizations were spending millions of dollars to exercise their agendas over the lives of rural Americans with public policy measures designed to cut off access to natural resources on public land.

His book describes the process as "an extraordinarily incestuous iron triangle of wealthy foundations, grant-driven green groups, and zealous bureaucrats."

Arnold said he will discuss how that movement is impacting North Idaho at two public meetings in Kellogg and Coeur d'Alene this week.

The meetings are sponsored by the Environmental Policy Interest Coalition, a Washington-Idaho non-profit corporation "dedicated to common sense environmentalism."

Arnold to spotlight local groups' influence

Author speaks today in Kellogg, Friday in Cd'A

By JEFF SELLE

North Idaho News Network

COEUR d'ALENE - Ron Arnold, author of the new book "Undue Influence," is speaking today in Kellogg about the grant-driven nature of the environmental movement.

He will speak on the same subject in Coeur d'Alene on Friday

Arnold plans to give an overview of the subject matter of his new book, which focuses on how "an extraordinarily incestuous iron triangle of wealthy foundations, grant-driven green groups and zealous bureaucrats" is changing the economic, fabric of rural America.

Arnold, a former member of the Sierra Club, will present information that illustrates how he believes the environmental movement is driven by multimillion-dollar foundations that want to restructure the rural economy of the West.

He will discuss how ordinary citizens can "follow the money," or an environmental group's grant trail to discover its true Agenda and who is paying them to perpetuate that agenda.

For example, he points to a Web site - www.guidestar.org - that provides information on various non-profit groups, including the Spokane-based Lands Council's 1998 tax return.

Information on that site indicates the Lands Council raised close to $329,000 in grants and other donations, most of which is designed to be spent on specific programs.

For instance, the Lands Council's tax return shows the group spent at least $78,400 in 1998 on its "Get the Lead Out" program, which is run by Michelle Nanni of Spokane to educate citizens about "the toxic legacy resulting from a century of mining in the Coeur d'Alene-Spokane watershed."

The group also spent $154,600 to train "forest-watch citizens on how to monitor and intervene in U.S. Forest Service activities in nine national forests in four states."

Nanni refused to discuss the group's grant-funding in detail when questioned about it Wednesday.

Ironically Nanni had just finished criticizing state officials for using federal funds to investigate the human health risks associated with lead in the Coeur d'Alene River Basin.

Arnold's book and web site - www.undueinfluence.com - shows how to further 'investigate the actual grants and determine exactly where the money came from or how it is supposed to be spent.

Arnold said he has found additional local information which he will discuss during the two local Rotary Club meetings.

He will speak at 5:45 p.m. today at the Broken Wheel Restaurant in Kellogg.

Arnold also will address the Coeur d'Alene Rotary club at noon Friday at The Coeur d'Alene Resort.