How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again! (Mark Twain)
Gabriel Furshong gets it
Clipped from a longer entry by Mathew Koehler over at 4&20: Identical entries from three different sources, all posted within one hour of each other. The third is from a most interesting source:
What public land managers and public land advocates have failed to understand for so many years is that public land is about partnership. Senator Tester gets it. He doesn’t take the myopic view that our forests are just about wilderness, or timber harvest, or recreation. He is working hard to reward partnerships that take a more integrated view of the forest – a forest where you can get a paycheck, ride your snowmobile, and hunt world class elk across vast tracks of roadless land. (June 18, 2010, 12:14 pm)
What public land managers and public land advocates have failed to understand for so many years is that public land is about partnership. Senator Tester gets it. He doesn’t take the myopic view that our forests are just about wilderness, or timber harvest, or recreation. He is working hard to reward partnerships that take a more integrated view of the forest – a forest where you can get a paycheck, ride your snowmobile, and hunt world class elk across vast tracks of roadless land. (June 18, 2010 12:17 PM)
Gabriel Furshong, MWA Forest Jobs and Recreation Act Campaign Director
gfurshong said:
What public land managers and public land advocates have failed to understand for so many years is that public land is about partnership. Senator Tester gets it. He doesn’t take the myopic view that our forests are just about wilderness, or timber harvest, or recreation. He is working hard to reward partnerships that take a more integrated view of the forest – a forest where you can get a paycheck, ride your snowmobile, and hunt world class elk across vast tracks of roadless land. (June 18, 2010, 1:12 pm)
The phrase “Senator Tester gets it” is a little troubling. It has that insipid, hollow PR ring about it, like a paid staffer brainstormed with others to come up with a three or four word phrase that encapsulates the essence of their campaign. Expect to see it elsewhere.
(Other phrases considered and rejected: “I’m lovin’ it”, “But wait! There’s more!,” “It’s all about you,” and “Where’s the beef?” They briefly considered “Keep it wild,” but decided it was trite, and even counter-message.)
He gets that people with the biggest paychecks write the biggest campaign checks? Brilliant. Paid “professionals” count more than anyone else to Tester, even if he’s the only reason they’re being paid. All roads lead back to Tester. It’s a closed pretzel system. People love pretzels.
I had to chuckle a little when I read the comments from Mr. Furshong, MWA’s FJRA organizer over at George Wuerthner’s excellent perspective piece on Tester’s bill over at NewWest.net titled “Tester’s Response Poor Strategy” available at: http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/testers_response_poor_strategy/C564/L564/
Mr. Furshong stated:
“Wilderness philosophers from other states can postulate all they want about Montana politics – such chatter will never result in actual legislation to protect 500,000 acres of ground in the largest National Forest in the lower 48 states and create new jobs at Montana mills that have a record of stewardship best practices.
You know what? Mr. Furshong’s dismissive comment is striking when compared with the fact that just this week the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved 26 bills establishing new Wilderness areas and dealing with other public lands issues. Those 26 bills were approved by the ENR Committee en bloc, by unanimous consent.
Reader’s will recall that Senator Tester’s FJRA is currently before this same Senate ENR Committee. Sometime in May, the ENR Committee sent Senator Tester a draft revision of this bill, which his office shared with the collaborators. Once the media questioned Senator Tester about the ENR’s draft he proclaimed it “Dead on arrival.”
So now, on June 20, the Senate ENR Committee approved 26 bills dealing with Wilderness and public lands issues
Something I’d encourage Wilderness supporters to consider is the very likely fact that if Senator Tester and the collaborators (Mr. Furshong and MWA included) would have accepted the ENR Committee’s draft revisions when they were shared about a month ago, it too would have been approved by the Committee this week.
So despite Mr. Furshong’s claim that “such chatter will never result in actual legislation” it sure seems to me that MWA and the other collaborator’s insistence on mandated logging and motors in Wilderness might have cost all of us the opportunity to designate over 660,000 acres as Wilderness and get some good restoration and fuel reduction work accomplished as proposed in the ENR Committee’s draft.
Some details of the ENR Committee’s draft:
* It would protect over 660,000 acres in Montana as Wilderness. However, it doesn’t undermine Wilderness by allowing military helicopters to land in Wilderness or ranchers to ride their ATV’s in Wilderness, as Senator Tester’s draft allows.
* It drops the controversial and unprecedented mandated logging levels on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge and Kootenai National Forests. It adds language requiring that any project carried out under the bill must fully maintain old growth forests and retain large trees, while focus any hazardous fuel reduction efforts on small diameter trees.
* It would also establish a “National Forest Jobs and Restoration Initiative” that would “preserve and create local jobs in rural communities…to sustain the local logging and restoration infrastructure and community capacity…to promote cooperation and collaboration…to restore or improve the ecological function of priority watersheds…to carry out collaborative projects to restore watersheds and reduce the risk of wildfires to communities.” Much of this work would be carried out through stewardship contracting.
Piece of Mindful 
He gets that people with the biggest paychecks write the biggest campaign checks? Brilliant. Paid “professionals” count more than anyone else to Tester, even if he’s the only reason they’re being paid. All roads lead back to Tester. It’s a closed pretzel system. People love pretzels.
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I have to admit it Mark. This slogan bit is pretty funny.
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I had to chuckle a little when I read the comments from Mr. Furshong, MWA’s FJRA organizer over at George Wuerthner’s excellent perspective piece on Tester’s bill over at NewWest.net titled “Tester’s Response Poor Strategy” available at: http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/testers_response_poor_strategy/C564/L564/
Mr. Furshong stated:
“Wilderness philosophers from other states can postulate all they want about Montana politics – such chatter will never result in actual legislation to protect 500,000 acres of ground in the largest National Forest in the lower 48 states and create new jobs at Montana mills that have a record of stewardship best practices.
You know what? Mr. Furshong’s dismissive comment is striking when compared with the fact that just this week the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved 26 bills establishing new Wilderness areas and dealing with other public lands issues. Those 26 bills were approved by the ENR Committee en bloc, by unanimous consent.
Reader’s will recall that Senator Tester’s FJRA is currently before this same Senate ENR Committee. Sometime in May, the ENR Committee sent Senator Tester a draft revision of this bill, which his office shared with the collaborators. Once the media questioned Senator Tester about the ENR’s draft he proclaimed it “Dead on arrival.”
So now, on June 20, the Senate ENR Committee approved 26 bills dealing with Wilderness and public lands issues
Something I’d encourage Wilderness supporters to consider is the very likely fact that if Senator Tester and the collaborators (Mr. Furshong and MWA included) would have accepted the ENR Committee’s draft revisions when they were shared about a month ago, it too would have been approved by the Committee this week.
So despite Mr. Furshong’s claim that “such chatter will never result in actual legislation” it sure seems to me that MWA and the other collaborator’s insistence on mandated logging and motors in Wilderness might have cost all of us the opportunity to designate over 660,000 acres as Wilderness and get some good restoration and fuel reduction work accomplished as proposed in the ENR Committee’s draft.
Some details of the ENR Committee’s draft:
* It would protect over 660,000 acres in Montana as Wilderness. However, it doesn’t undermine Wilderness by allowing military helicopters to land in Wilderness or ranchers to ride their ATV’s in Wilderness, as Senator Tester’s draft allows.
* It drops the controversial and unprecedented mandated logging levels on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge and Kootenai National Forests. It adds language requiring that any project carried out under the bill must fully maintain old growth forests and retain large trees, while focus any hazardous fuel reduction efforts on small diameter trees.
* It would also establish a “National Forest Jobs and Restoration Initiative” that would “preserve and create local jobs in rural communities…to sustain the local logging and restoration infrastructure and community capacity…to promote cooperation and collaboration…to restore or improve the ecological function of priority watersheds…to carry out collaborative projects to restore watersheds and reduce the risk of wildfires to communities.” Much of this work would be carried out through stewardship contracting.
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