Fed Up, Westerner
Seeks Rural Unity

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. —(AP)— A self-professed ombudsman for rural Americans says they must unite to protect their way of life from remote environmental lobbyists in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere seeking to create an "eco-utopia that doesn't exist."

Bruce Vincent of Libby, Mont., a fourth-generation logger, is founder of "Alliance for America," a grassroots organization with aims to empower rural Americans to chart their own future in environmental matters.

In his keynote speech Saturday to the annual Club 20 spring meeting, he compared radical environmentalists to the former Soviet Union, where centralized power was in Moscow and the power of the people was taken away.

"They're hoping to create this eco-utopia that doesn't exist. We really don't have a choice as to whether or not we're going to manipulate the environment for human needs. The question is who's going to, where are they going to, how are they going to, and that debate needs to take place here and not on the CBS News," Vincent said.

Club 20 is a lobbying group for Colorado's Western Slope region.

Vincent said there must be better options given to people than either preserving a piece of land or destroying it.

He said he became involved in protecting rural interests when a government official came to Libby and told the community that grizzly bears were going to be relocated in the area.

While discussing the program with officials, Vincent said they told him they were willing to stay out of communities with a potential for public outcry, and "were more willing to do it in a rural community where people could not fight back."

Long-range planners have told Vincent the Libby area's economy will be based on tourism within 50 years.

Vincent said it would take a million tourists a year to visit the area to make up for the job loss from logging and wreak more havoc on the land than logging has.

"Is that environmentally benign?" Vincent asked.