In West, Conservatives Emphasize the 'Conserve'

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 2, 2006; A01

SEATTLE -- Nearly a decade ago, historian Patricia Nelson Limerick set the modern American West to verse:

The West has been lucky, it's true.

It did not grow old -- it grew new.

As it grew older, it got fresher and bolder.

Don't you wish it could happen to you?

Limerick and others said in the 1990s that the New West was shedding its slavish reliance on mining, logging, ranching and dams. They prophesied that it would become a region where the economy, politics and popular culture were dominated by urban people who went outdoors not to chop down trees, punch cows or pour concrete but to recreate, appreciate and preserve.

That prophecy proved premature. Working-class indignation exploded in the Interior West against environmentalists, Democrats and outside agitators, stalling efforts by the Clinton administration to rewrite grazing, mining and forestry laws. Republicans shrewdly harnessed the populist anger and consolidated political control, and in 2000 they began an aggressive push for oil, gas and mineral extraction on public land.