Is the BRC still a wise use member?
Understanding The Wise Use Movement
With the growth of the Wise Use movement in Minnesota, there is a need for a means of understanding what this movement is about. This page is an effort to provide information and links to stories and sites relating to Wise Use. The information provided by the sites, and the opinions and events related by the authors, are their own, and are provided here solely as information for you to judge.
Groups calling themselves members of the Wise Use movement represent landowners, loggers, off-road vehicle users, miners and other individuals who are often at odds with legislation enacted to protect and preserve public lands. The term "Wise Use" was co-opted from Gifford Pinchot, first chief of the Forest Service, who advocated the wise use of natural resources. Unfortunately, anti-environmental groups are committed to opening up public lands not only to harmful resource extraction, but to outright exploitation. They also seek to frighten people with paranoid stories about government take-overs, and similar delusional tales of United Nations usurpation of U.S. sovereignty.
Though their ideas are often wacky, these groups have become a thorn in the side of progressive conservation efforts. They've gained footholds in the political machine of Minnesota, particularly in the NE, NW, and SE, and they continue to organize. In general, the movement believes that the government should not own land, that private property rights need not recognize responsibilities to the common good or environment, that the authority of counties is equal to that of the state and federal governments, and that environmental laws, and those people that support them (and agencies that implement them), are the cause of all rural job insecurity. To that end, they prey upon the fears of non-unionized rural workers dependent upon natural resources, villainizing those in support of conservation and natural resource agency employees. They oppose all land use restrictions - thus wilderness designation is one of their favorite targets. But they also oppose even lesser levels of resource protection - travel restrictions on ATVs, OHVs, and personal watercraft, etc. Even the
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http://webpages.charter.net/duluthikes/wise_use/wiseuse.htm