Going Against the Green : Snapshots from the front lines of the land-use confrontation : THE WAR AGAINST THE GREENS: The “Wise Use” Movement, the New Right, and Anti-Environmental Violence, <i> By David Helvarg (Sierra Club Books: $25; 512 pp.)</i>

As environmentalists and pro-logging demonstrators at a 1990 Northwest timber rally shouted gibes and insults, the “enviros” struck up a chorus of “America the Beautiful,” and the timber faction, which had been chanting “trees grow back,” flattened and fell silent. Other rallies in the region that same summer inspired a hail of eggs and rocks, the beating of several activists on back roads, and the head-shaving of four longhairs who had sat down in front of a logging truck.

This is just one of the snapshots from the front lines of the land-use confrontation that journalist David Helvarg brings together in his timely portrait of the anti-environmental movement, “The War Against the Greens.” Helvarg has reported from war zones in Central America and Northern Ireland; in this book he goes to the battlegrounds of a new and little-publicized American war, one that is being waged throughout the country in national parks, national forests, in the courts, in Congress and in the press.

The modern environmental movement’s gains since the ‘70s include passage of powerful legislation such as the Clean Air and Water acts, the Endangered Species Act, as well as a new consciousness among Americans about the vulnerability of the Earth to human activity. An environmental ethic has taken root and is still held dear by most of us. But with the close of the Cold War, the New Right sought new foes and found, among them, environmentalists. The anti-enviros have not even bothered to coin new epithets for their enemies, relying, instead, on McCarthy-era slurs.

Anti-environmentalists, or “Wise-Users,” have come together in a loose coalition of constituents--individuals, groups and corporations--who each, for the most part, have their own, single anti-environmental issue to press. But their accumulated agenda includes unrestricted mining, drilling and logging on public lands; abolitions of the Endangered Species Act; the reversal of clean air and water legislation; government compensation to property owners and corporations who are prevented from filling wetlands or grazing livestock on public land; and “a holy war against the new pagans who worship trees and sacrifice people.”

These disparate interests might have remained just that, had not “a handful of rearview visionaries” found each other and discovered this small, like-minded constituency. Among the visionaries are Ron Arnold, whose primary goal is “to destroy environmentalism once and for all,” Alan Gottlieb, a liberal Jew converted to conservatism by Barry Goldwater’s writings, and Chuck (Rent-a-Riot) Cushman. These three have orchestrated conferences, rallies and Congressional phone- and fax-ins, and spurred their clients on with venom and invective.

Whether through directives or not, their rhetoric has led anti-enviros to use hate mail, harassing phone calls, physical threats, arson and in at least one case, a car bomb to get their message across. Helvarg writes: “The defining political division within the movement . . . appears to be . . . between those who believe they can achieve their goals working through the established political process and those who see intimidation and violence as legitimate tools in their war against the preservationists.”

Lest we forget that violence has always been a part of America’s short history, Helvarg recounts the story of the early mining companies tearing up the West today. The government also used war to do away with some of the West’s native species--the buffalo and the native people--to open up the land for cattle. Helvarg sees comparisons in the new environmental war with the convulsions of the Civil Rights movement and the emotional and deadly abortion issue. In many of these instances, violence has achieved its users ends--at least for a time.

Environmentalists, on the other hand, are too strait-laced to return fire, Dick Beamish, the Audubon Society’s representative in New York’s Adirondacks Park, tells Helvarg. “Conservationists tend to be too meek and subdued in responding to pro-development forces. We don’t like confrontation. We think it’s in bad taste. . . . So [in the Adirondacks], a few hundred people are setting the agenda for 130,000.”

Wise Users go in for more subtle tactics, too, and imitation, “the sincerest form of flattery,” is near the top of the list. The term “Wise Use” itself is borrowed from Gifford Pinchot, a 19th-Century conservationist who fought against the stock-raisers, loggers and Western land developers who set fire to the nation’s new forest reserves to protest restrictions on grazing and mining. “Pinchot advocated the ‘wise use’ of resources, believing they should be carefully utilized to meet people’s needs.”

Wise Users now masquerade behind confusing, green-sounding titles like Alliance for Environment and Resources, Citizens for the Environment, Environmental Conservation Organization, Public Lands Council and National Wetlands Coalition Organization, and National Wetlands Coalition. But their sentiments are best summed up by the Adirondacker who confided to Helvarg: “I don’t think there’s anything to indicate that some subsequent generation is any more deserving than this generation. So when people talk about preserving the Adirondacks, preserve it for what? Save it for what?”

Behind another mask, that of the grass-roots, “little-guy” movement, Wise Users hide their financial links with funders like the National Rifle Assn., mining, logging and oil companies, resource trade associations, Japanese off-road vehicle manufacturers and the Rev. Sun Yung Moon, the Korean billionaire.

Helvarg was obviously dedicated to the story, and his research yielded a great deal of heretofore unreported information about the Wise Use movement. His reportage from meetings and conferences where Wise Users strategize is fascinating and often amusing--a refreshing break in an otherwise depressing story. Unfortunately, his copious information is not terribly well organized, and the overall shape of the book feels somewhat amorphous. As a result, one of his main points--that the movement is vocal and nasty but generally, and perhaps increasingly, ineffective--isn’t made as clearly as it should be.

As Congress changes hands for the first time in 40 years, Wise Users could find their agenda reinforced by the Republicans’ anti-regulatory “Contract with America.” Reading Helvarg’s inside track on the movement, “The War Against the Greens,” environmentalists may find some of the intellectual ammunition they’re more accustomed to deploying in their struggle to preserve our resources for all Americans.