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Since 1988 a loose coalition of organizations, known as the "wise use" coalition, has been lobbying for changes
in public land policies. For example, the coalition wants to increase and expand logging in publicly owned old-growth forests and livestock grazing on public lands. The coalition also wants
to open national parks, such as Yellowstone, to mining and oil drilling. Barring the federal government from acquiring any additional private land for parks or wildlife habitat has also been
advocated by the wise use coalition.
Though the wise use movement originated in the northwestern United States (88 percent of federal lands are in
11 Western states), some of its sentiments were expressed in the 1994 Texas Republican Party platform: "The Party understands that government ownership of land is an ideal of socialism. We
affirm our belief in the fundamental constitutional concept of a person's right to own property without government interference. We decry the vast acquisition of Texas land by conservancy
groups and government agencies. We call on our State Legislature to reclaim lands under federal control and return them to the people of Texas." *
Today's wise use coalition has appropriated a nineteenth-century term but not the underlying conservation
philosophy. According to historian Douglas McCleery, the idea of "conservation as wise use" of natural resources began with conservation leader Gifford Pinchot in the late nineteenth century.
The original wise use movement was a product of the progressive era and included the concept of multiple use—public land can be used simultaneously for recreation, for timber, for mining, and
for wildlife habitat. The multiple-use and wise use concepts advocated by Pinchot reflected the view that nature's resources should be scientifically managed so as "to protect the basic
productivity of the land and its ability to serve future generations."*
The wise use movement of today advocates not only selling off federal lands, but no more buying of land by the
federal government. This modern-day cause also might be more concerned with short-term private gain over Pinchot's advocacy of long-term productivity of nature's resources. On the other hand,
there are also natural resource leaders who advocate that some lands be set aside as undisturbed ecosystems with no use made of their resources.
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