What They Really Mean: "Any extractive use of natural products, especially if the extraction makes lots of noise, uses motors, or goes 'moo'."
"Lock up of our natural resources": Reliance on nature's way; use of the natural environment without obvious human modification or degradation.
"Decadent, over-mature forest": An old-growth forest with a balance of young, old and dead trees.
"Healthy and thrifty forest": A tree farm.
"We need ATV and dirt bike trails everywhere so that women, children and senior citizens can enjoy the outdoors": I'm a 30 year-old man and out of shape.
"The rangelands of the West are in better shape today than in my grandpa's time": Things are better than during the Dust Bowl days.
"The 'local' people" (as in "the Federal bureaucrats won't listen to the local people"): The nearest anti-environmentalists.
"Eastern environmentalists": Any environmentalists.
"Easterners": Anyone, anywhere, in the U.S. who lives in a town with more than a couple of thousand people.
"The war against the West": The battle within the West over reform of public land use.
"Socialists and Communists": People who want to reduce government subsidies to Western mining, logging and grazing industries.
"Hippies on food stamps who don't know what it means to work": Environmentalists.
"Rich newcomers who don't have to work for a living": Environmentalists.
"Washington bureaucrats who don't understand local conditions": The folks who work in the ranger station down the street.
"Radical environmentalists": Any environmentalist.
"Environmental terrorism": Lawful appeal of a timber sale or filing a lawsuit.
"Those people who think animals are more important than people": Those who think that people who like animals other than livestock should have their wishes considered, too.
"Playground for Easterners": Any place in the Western U.S. used for recreation by folks from outside the county.
"My grazing rights": A rancher's grazing privileges associated with holding a grazing lease on public land.
"A working river": A river with its entire flow committed to irrigation. Or alternatively, a stream that has been rendered fishless due to pollution.
"Maybe, like the dinosaurs, it's a species that just can't adapt": The species in question can't leap over dams, thrive on freeways, or make a living in cow pastures.
"Species that can adapt": Livestock.
"They're trying to take my property": I have a scheme that will harm your (neighboring) property and I don't want any government regulations to stop me.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1995