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The so-called "Wise Use" movement is an industry-front anti-environmentalist organization founded by [[Ron Arnold]] in the late 1980s, primarily dealing with timber and mining issues in the western US. It inspired a number of spin-off groups, including the "[[Share]]" groups in the Canadian province of British Columbia (B.C.), which give the appearance of being grass-roots community organizations, but are in fact organized and funded by major corporations. (For example, the "[[B.C. Forest Alliance]]" was chaired for its initial period by an executive of [[Burson-Marsteller]].) This type of "fake grass-roots" group led to their description of the advocacy as being an [[astroturf]] campaign. "Wise Use groups are often funded by timber, mining, and chemical companies. In return, they claim, loudly, that the well-documented hole in the ozone layer doesn't exist, that carcinogenic chemicals in the air and water don't harm anyone, and that trees won't grow properly unless forests are clear-cut, with government subsidies. Wise Use proponents were buffeted by Bush's defeat and by media exposure of the movement's founders' connections to the Rev. [[Sun Myung Moon]]'s [[Unification Church]] network (tainted by charges of cultism and theocratic neo-fascism), but the movement has quickly rebounded. In every state of the US, relentless Wise Use disinformation campaigns about the purpose and meaning of environmental laws are building a grassroots constituency. To Wise Users, environmentalists are pagans, eco-nazis, and communists who must be fought with shouts and threats."[http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v07n2/wiseuse.html] ==Case studies== *[[Wise Use Movement/Behind the Wise Use Movement's victory in Klamath]] *[[The Militia Movement and Klamath Falls]] ==Other SourceWatch resources== *[http://www.SourceWatch.org/upload/6/6c/WiseUse93.pdf 1993 Wise Use Leadership conference agenda - download 140k file] == Books about the Wise Use movement ==