The Heartland Institute, a 15-year-old independent research institute, was slandered in a December 28 news release issued by the National Environmental Trust.
“Either the NET is run by 16-year-olds, or somebody forgot to run a press release by the nearest adult,” said Joseph Bast, president of The Heartland Institute.
The NET news release referred to Heartland as a “so-called institute,” an “industry front group,” and “a group that has spouted various types of anti-environmental rhetoric for years.” Even Heartland’s name is presented in quotation marks, as if it were fictitious.
The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based nonprofit organization, celebrates its fifteenth anniversary next year. State elected officials contact Heartland for research approximately 1,000 times each month. Heartland acts as a clearinghouse for the work of some 300 think tanks and advocacy groups, making available over 5,000 research documents. Nearly one hundred academics and 139 elected state officials serve on advisory boards.
Heartland raises and spends approximately $1 million a year. About one-third of that total is raised from individuals, one-third from corporations, and one-third from foundations. Heartland identifies its corporate and foundation donors on its web site.
While Heartland addresses a wide range of topics–from school reform and taxes to welfare policy and environmental issues–the publication that triggered NET’s temper tantrum was a policy study on wilderness preservation released on December 21. The study says “roughly one-third of the total land area of the United States is ‘wilderness’ by some definition of the term,” and chides radical environmentalists for pretending that only lands designated as wilderness preserves by the federal government qualify, either aesthetically or ecologically, as wilderness.
Contrary to the NET news release, the authors are not “industry-paid ‘experts,’” but instead a recently retired forester with the U.S. Forest Service and a private lumber importer. Heartland does not receive funding from any lumber companies or from the lumber industry’s trade association. (Recycled Paper Greetings Co., we freely admit, is a major donor.)
An executive summary and the complete text of the wilderness study can be found on Heartland’s web site.
Industry Mounts New Attack on Wilderness
Oil, Agricultural, and Chemical Interests Join Timber Lobbyists in Peddling Misstatements to Journalists
Washington, December 28– /E-Wire/–A fresh attack on wilderness has been mounted by a so-called institute sponsored by Amoco, Occidental Chemical, American Petroleum Institute, American Farm Bureau, Chlorine Chemical Council, Philip Morris Cos. and others.
Blatantly misstating the facts, the industry front group “the Heartland Institute” attempted a few days before Christmas to convince Americans that one-third of our country is wilderness. The reality is that just 4.4% of America’s land area is protected wilderness. In many areas, such as the southern Appalachian Mountains, it’s more like 1%.
In fact, even all the federal public lands in the United States don’t add up to one-third of the land area–including all the Forest Service land that has been completely stripped of timber, and the Bureau of Land Management land that have been grazed down to stubble.
The industry front group also claimed that a lack of timber is drying up jobs, when the real reason is the timber market is glutted and prices have plummeted. As USA Today reported Dec. 21: “A staggering downturn in timber sales in the Tongass National Forest has raised new doubts about the future of the Southeast Alaska timber industry . . . Sixteen of 22 sales attracted no bidders, and the six that sold were so small that the combined volume was less than 7.5 million board feet. Forest Service economists predict that much of the ‘99 timber also will go unsold.”
Heartland Institute’s industry-paid “experts” claim they are disseminating science instead of “uninformed emotion,” but then go on to peddle falsehoods about the threats to American’s last remaining wildlands.
This from a group that has spouted various types of anti-environmental rhetoric for years: that global warming does not exist, that clean air standards should not be strengthened, and that sprawl and livability issues are no concern to the public. These claims run headlong into most Americans’ interests and perceptions.
When people are better informed, their support for protecting wilderness increases dramatically. Most Americans start off with the misperception that National Forests are protected from logging, according to a recent series of focus groups conducted by Talmey-Drake. When shown pictures of clear-cut logging in wilderness areas of the National Forests, they are shocked and want it stopped. That applies to men and women, conservatives and liberals. Furthermore, a 1997 poll by Lake, Sosin, Snell and Perry found that almost two-thirds of Americans favor protecting roadless wild forests of over 1,000 acres from development.
Dr. Michael Soule, a preeminent, internationally recognized conservation biologist, argues that even if we were to protect 10% of the nation in a wilderness state, half the species alive today would still go extinct from loss of habitat. He proposes protection of wilderness just to maintain basic bio-diversity, not to mention growing demand for fish, wildlife, recreation, clean water, and open spaces.
Wilderness protection–particularly of forest wilderness–is hardly on a fast track in this Administration. President Clinton and Vice President Gore in nearly six years in office have protected 700,000 acres of forest wilderness (in 1993 in Colorado). President Reagan, in contrast, protected 5.97 million acres of forest wilderness in his eight years in office.
“Americans want more of our forest heritage protected as wilderness,” said Ken Rait, Director of the Heritage Forest Campaign. “The nation’s wilderness agenda is incomplete. The Clinton-Gore Administration must respond to the public’s interest in additional wilderness protection. And the Forest Service’s pending roadless area protection policy is the best place for them to start.”
Although President Clinton promised a science-based National Forest roadless area policy in November 1997, the Forest Service has not yet protected any of the 60 million acres of untouched forests it manages.
SOURCE National Environmental Trust
-0- 12/28/98
/CONTACT: peter Kelley for Heritage Forests Campaign, 202-887-8831, ext. 210/
