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Guest Opinion: Environmental groups need to reach out to rural Oregon Sunday Jan 1, 2017 at 12:01 AM By Gabriel Howe I value Oregon's wood industry. My dad spent his career in wood products and made a good life for us. As a young man and a high school dropout, I maintained dignity and independence through decent-paying jobs in wood manufacturing. Before then, I had grown up in Sheridan, watching one-log loads fly down Highway 18. Even into my 30s, I sustain a boyish fascination with logging systems, equipment and methods, and still revel in the rush of watching a tree fall. I've spent countless hours laboring in Oregon's backwoods. It seems to be in my soul, and I just can't stay away for long. Needless to say, I'm a proud Oregon boy with a barrel chest, tough feet and callused hands. I'm also a bleeding-heart conservationist. I believe in big, wild places and that wilderness is an American birthright. Those places are still left uncut and undeveloped; I'm absolutely convinced that they should remain intact and untrammeled. So in my early 20s, I dabbled as a volunteer for a couple of Oregon's environmental groups. But it didn't take long for them to leave me feeling put down for who I am and where I come from. Disillusioned, I swiftly and deliberately unaffiliated with them. I am not alone. Through divisive tactics, inflammatory rhetoric, and by fostering a culture of exclusivity, Oregon's "wild" groups have left rural citizens out, turning swaths of potential advocates into ideological adversaries. Insulated by colorful jackets made of space-age materials, environmentalists have turned a cold shoulder to the flannel-clad Oregonians that once constituted a critical share of Oregon's conservation movement. The new guard seems to operate without reverence for America's great conservation legacy, seemingly uninformed by the Teddy Roosevelt ethos. And they've proven to be ineffective. We haven't seen a wilderness expansion since 2009, the longest such period since the 1964 Wilderness Act was passed. Other states, including conservative Idaho, have seen such expansions since 2009. How? Advocates there adopted inclusive, grassroots strategies that championed, rather than dismissed, America's rural way of life. Now is the time for Oregon's conservation movement follow suit. Regroup. Lace up your boots, and do the hard work of starting a real conversation with rural Oregon. Start it by listening. Do so without lifting your noses, and you will find warmhearted, hard-working citizens who value the environment. Develop meaningful relationships, search deep for points of agreement. Then respectfully take steps to sway public perception. It won't be easy. It will take motherly patience. At times it will be demoralizing and there will be many failures along the way (kind of like working in the woods). But you can do it, it must be done, and working for rural Oregon will prove meaningful and lasting. Please, don't wait. Act quickly, because we need public lands advocates now more than ever. — Gabriel Howe of Ashland enjoys hard work and play throughout Oregon, but carries a prejudice for the state's wild southwest corner.