8-31-1999 for Range Magazine

When I was cutting my teeth in the rangelands of the Southwest, my elders always cautioned me about being fooled by mirages, those shimmering reflections of some place far and away. They seldom represent the real thing.

Well, recently there was a mirage that I just had to look at because several us were puzzled by what we saw. A recent article by the Associated Press proclaimed that “Westerners want more wilderness”. The article read as if the poll is some scientific study of public opinion. Being a bit curious, I located a copy of the poll and resume of the polling company to see how the real thing looked rather than the reflection.

It turns out that three environmental groups hired a campaign strategy company to help design their new national wilderness campaign. The polling company, the Mellman Group, conducts structured polls to determine the most effective phrases to use on a targeted group during a campaign. Their own words read, “we help clients develop effective communication strategies that lead people to join our clients’ organization, buy their product or vote as we would like”. In short, “We help our client build mirages”. This does not mean they gage public opinion, rather, they find the best word phrase to sell your product or idea.

The poll itself is a phone poll that reads like a script from a bad play. It begins by saying they are conducting a public opinion survey and ask to speak with the person with the most recent birthday. They then ask if you are currently registered to vote and if you are likely to vote in 2000. If your answer is no, they hang up. This left them with 800 registered voters that were predominantly middle age Anglo urban dwellers without kids and incomes (not tied to resource industries) above 30 thousand. Less than 200 were from the West.  So much for objective cross-sectional representation.

You are then lead down one of two paths of subtle inquiry to gage the response to staged questions. The questions all ask the same thing but they alternate the words “wilderness” with “roadless areas”. The main question asked at the end is would you “favor or oppose a proposal that permanently protects all roadless areas of 1,000 acres and larger on all National Forest lands”. They don’t ask if you want more wilderness. The environmentals interpret it that way, thus the mirage.

But more important than what the survey did or did not say is this was done for an upcoming national campaign to push for more restricted wilderness (prohibitive access to public lands) with less ranchers, loggers, miners, hunters and recreationists. The Wilderness Society, the National Audubon Society and the Heritage Forest Campaign commissioned this study for their new war on the West, which is part of a renewed push for more wilderness lands. This is the real story behind the mirage of the news article and from what I’ve been watching, you folks ain’t seen nothing yet! Just know “something wicked this way comes”.