Peradam Foundation

Wild Words, Wild Lands

by Brock Evans (from WILD EARTH, Spring 1999)

 

Words

are vital tools

that can and do

transform the

debate for us,

help us win or

lose our battle

to protect

Earth's natural

diversity.

 

For twenty years, I have performed a sacred ritual when I speak to an audience of forest activists‑‑especially if they are relatively new to that peculiar form of political combat known to us old‑timers as "the forest wars." "Everyone raise your right hands, now," I say. "Now slowly repeat after me these words...'I will never, ever use the word harvest again."'

 

Why? Because the conscious dissemination of the innocuous‑sounding word "harvest" is one of the most successful public relations gimmicks ever dreamed up by the timber industry. So successfully has it become incorporated into everyday use that even conservationists who hate the destruction they see happening in our forests‑use it just as normally and easily as any timber beast forester. But what's actually going on out there in the woods isn't really a "harvest" – is it? Maybe "cutting," or,'logging"‑that's the term we all used before 1968. Too much of the time, it's plain and simple mining, destroying what will never come back the way it was.

 

"Harvest" was a deliberately conceived term, adopted widely by the timber industry three decades ago after logging interests had suffered a series of defeats in the struggles over creating Redwood National Park and North Cascades National Park, and designating roughly a million acres of new Wilderness in the North Cascades. Top industry strategists mapped out a campaign, declared a counteroffensive against "conservationists" everywhere (we weren't called environmentalists yet), and repackaged "logging" into "harvesting," confusing forestry debates ever since.

 

Another industry‑coined phrase still in common use, especially in the Northeast, is "working forest" (as distinguished from the dire fate of forests unlucky enough to have been "locked up" by "preservationists"). Help! Does anyone really believe that a forest not being logged -‑ a wild forest -‑ is just sitting there, doing nothing? Too many of our own people, people who consider themselves forest advocates, carelessly use this disingenuous term, too.

 

These examples reinforce the idea that we must never forget the importance of words, phrases, verbal images -‑ language. Words are vital tools that can and do transform the debate for us, help us win or lose our battle to protect Earth's natural diversity.

 

Environmentalists understand the power of public relations. Our slogan during the Alaska Lands Campaign (1975‑80), "Alaska: Our Last Great First Chance," reinforced our successful legislative drive, which protected 100 million acres, against powerful political opposition. In most of the campaigns I have been involved in lately, there is a conscious search for "the right message."

 

But I fear that too often, we let ourselves become paralyzed by the contemporary style of media campaigns, i.e., that we can't hope to craft a good message unless we hire a communications professional to dream one up for us. And that can't be done until we've had lots of focus groups and even more polling, to "test" the new buzzwords and phrases. Sit back and let the pros fix it for us!

 

Polling and focus groups are good techniques, and conservationists should use them. But they aren't necessarily the only‑‑or best‑way to find our voice. Indeed, we should begin our search for compelling word‑images in the place where they exist already: inside our own hearts. Steve Trombulak's excellent essay "Wild Forests Are Working Forests" (Wild Earth fall 1998), which recalled our coinage of the term "ancient forests" as a turning point in the long struggle 'to protect Northwest forests, reminded me of this truth.

 

The story of how "ancient forests" became a part of our campaign vocabulary is worth retelling:

 

We selected those words at a time of great crisis in the battle. It was October 1988, four years after passage of the last round of Wilderness bills in Washington, Oregon, and California. While some wonderful places were protected by these bills, about 90% of the remaining "old‑growth" forestlands lay outside them, unprotected and subject to the Forest Service's accelerating logging program.

 

This was the intent of Big Timber's favorite Senator (Mark Hatfield, R‑Oregon) and Congressman (Les Aucoin, D‑Oregon). Both held powerful positions on the congressional Appropriations Committees, and they used that power to channel much largesse to their industry clientele. Nearly every lawsuit we won against logging in those years was overturned by an appropriations rider authored by Hatfield (who originated that sinister technique -‑ now the preferred legislative "strategy" of Republicans during the last two Congresses).

 

So after 1984, the chainsaws snarled and whined even louder across the National Forests; allowable cuts escalated to obscene levels, and every attempt we made to stem the flood was turned back. We thought that what was happening ‑‑ the destruction of these magnificent public forests, some undisturbed since the time of Sargon the Great (Mesopotamia, 2200 BC), and of individual trees in existence since Charlemagne's time‑‑ought to be a national issue. But we couldn't interest any politicians outside the Northwest. "Leave it to [the tender mercies of] Mark Hatfield," they said.

 

In desperation, we convened a conference in Portland that September, a high‑level gathering of folks I called "proven battle leaders." We didn't need scientists to tell us about the ecosystems, or artists to tell us how pretty it was -‑‑ we needed the region's best minds and gutsiest activists to lay out an action plan for how to fight better against such odds. After three days of intense debate, we made three crucial decisions: to treat the entire Northwest forest as a political, as well as biological, unity; to fight for protection of the region collectively, as opposed to each group's individual piece of it; and to wrench the issue out of the domain of regional politics (dominated by Hatfield & Co.), taking it to a better forum‑the whole country‑in a major national campaign, as we had done for Alaska, Grand Canyon, or the redwoods, in earlier times.

 

But how to begin? Those were very scary times, and the task seemed immense. The opposition was ferocious, wealthy, and in complete control of all the traditional levers of power (except the courts, thank God). I was obsessed by the idea that we had to find a better name for what we were trying to rescue -- one that would resonate with average Americans everywhere. Perhaps a dramatic new term would encapsulate and explain, in one stroke, the beauty and poetry of what was at stake for all of us, and arouse people to action.

 

Our opponents loved that term "old growth." Vaguely contemptuous, it expressed the forestry establishment's view of all "unmanaged" forests as ugly, something to be got rid of quickly. It well suited the industry's massive PR blitz of the times, which chanted an endless mantra across the Northwest: "Are you going to let a little [spotted] owl take your job because we can't 'harvest' that old growth?" Forest advocates had to find a better message, or we could not really hope to break through the Hatfield/industry/labor refrain that this was just a regional issue, to be "worked out locally."

 

Our steering committee met in Washington a few weeks later. Coining a new and improved name for "old growth" was a main item of business. We had asked many people for their views, but words like "primeval," "virgin," or "untouched" just didn't seem to grab anyone. At some point, I blurted out, "How about 'ancient forest?”

 

That was it! It had been in the air all the time, half‑formed in everyone's minds and hearts. When it was articulated, everyone seized it. Joyfully, the term became the banner of our cause at that moment, and‑as it has turned out‑‑of most other forest battles since then. The Northwest forest wars are certainly not over, but logging in the westside National Forests is down by over 90%, with millions of additional acres across the region mostly off limits -‑ a result we scarcely dared to dream of in those dark days ten years ago.

 

Those words, "ancient forest," had a magic and passion to them, and they reverberated loudly across the highly charged political landscape of the times. Some editors of timber country newspapers even forbade their reporters to use the phrase. But the national media, and through them, the American people (our real target) did pick it up. Saving ancient forests did become, at last and not too late, a national issue and that was the way we finally broke the power of the Hatfield/industry/labor axis over them.

 

A few weeks after we adopted the phrase, I was at a Party in Washington. I ran into a friend of mine who worked as a PR person for the timber industry. He practically shouted at me: "Jesus, Evans, where did you come up with that term, 'ancient forests'? ... As soon as we heard that, we knew we were dead!"

 

Oh yes: language has ‑‑ can have -- a magic and a power to it. It can stir human hearts and rouse people to action‑which is vital to a movement like ours, which so often has only the shield of public support to defend the places and the values we love against the destroyers.

 

It's all well and good to try to find compelling language by using the tools of our times‑focus groups and polling, "message testing." But, as the ancient forest experience shows, the place to begin that search is much closer. It is right there where the love that drives us on is also to be found -‑ in our hearts.