The anti-environmental movement is becoming more sophisiticated. Huge amounts of money are spent by the forest industry on public relations that claim it is the victim of environmental 'extremism'. The increasing use of 'dirty tricks' to compound this image has put forest activists on the back foot. A number of simple measures can be taken to avoid falling into these carefully constructed traps...

Dirty Tricks: Knowing and Avoiding the Worst

It is critical that people fighting for change realise that this is not 1970 when you are up against a corporation and its PR spokesperson. ... Typically a Fortune 500 firm will employ half a dozen PR firms at any one time. And the growing trend is one-stop shopping - lobbying, public relations, political consulting, a legal team and a counter activism grassroots campaign all under one roof".
John Stauber, editor, PR Watch.1

In recent years there have been a number of major changes in strategies and tactics used to counter the growing impact of forest conservation groups. The new elements of particular interest in the forests debate are the creation of industry "grass-roots" front groups and the rising level of dirty tricks and harassment of activists. Effective environmental activism in the 1990's requires a better understanding of the patterns of what is happening and adopting some simple preventative measures.

Born in the USA - the Anti-environment Movement

Mark Megalli and Andy Friedman in a study of corporate front groups in the US noted that: "the rise of corporate front groups in the US is a recent phenomenon, a direct response to the burgeoning consumer, citizen and environmental movements. Before these movements took hold in the late 1960's, major corporations delivered their messages through their lobbyists in Washington. The names of these traditional associations told the stories - National Coal Association, Chamber of Commerce, American Petroleum Institute. But as public-interest groups began to win widespread public support, it became clear that new mechanisms were needed to deliver the corporate message. If Burger King were to report that a Whopper is nutritious, consumers would probably roll their eyes in disbelief... But when the American Council on Science and Health and its panel of 200 expert scientists report that Whoppers are not so bad consumers might actually listen...Increasingly big business is creating front groups to influence legislators, the media and consumers. These corporate front groups advertise, hold conferences, publish newsletters and reports, write editorials and appear on talk shows in an effort to sway public opinion toward industry views".1

By the late 1980's the emerging anti-environment movement, initially focussing on pesticides, developed into broader areas such as mining, forestry and private landowners issues. It also encompasses anti-gay, religious and pro-gun groups. It is now a growing movement aimed at undermining environmental standards and laws that limit the activities of government agencies, individuals and corporations. Ron Arnold stated, "Our goal is to destroy, to eradicate the environmental movement. We're mad as hell. We're dead serious, we're going to destroy them".2 In 1988 a conference of such groups in Reno published a manifesto - The Wise Use Agenda - which reflects the flavour of the movement: against endangered species legislation, supporting mining in reserves and logging of old growth forests. The movement has already demonstrated its ability to build substantial support for legislative initiatives that would have major impacts on the environment.

PR's Bag of Tricks

In recent years governments and industries have adopted a new approach to public relations. "Crisis management" involves detailed planning for all sorts of scenarios with specific emphasis on specialised anti-activist strategies. The Chief Executive of Hill and Knowlton in Australia recently stated that good crisis management emphasised the importance of the following:

• having good relations with police, knowing police media relations and knowing their delegation and lines of responsibility;
• recognising that the most important court is the court of public opinion;
• having an early warning system to alert you to an emerging crisis;
• "controlling the crisis, controlling the agenda, controlling the timing, control of the environment in which you will put your crisis out there";
• the benefits of pre-emptive publicity;
• determining how you wish to position the company or the industry to improve its public standing in the future;
• making sure "that you are the victim and that you are clearly seen to be in the victim box not in the culprit box. It makes a big difference as to how you are perceived and reported in the short term and how you are ultimately viewed in the long term";
• making sure that all key players in managing a crisis speak with one voice;
• the importance of monitoring how the media reports the story and evaluating whether your story is getting through to target audiences3; and
• the adage 'the best defense is a good offense applies'4.

As a representative of Burson Marstellar stated:
"for the media and for the public, the corporation will be one of the least credible sources of information on its own product, environmental and safety risks ... developing third party support and validation for the basic risk messages of the corporation is essential. This support should ideally come from ... political leaders, union officials, relevant academics, fire and police officials, environmentalists, regulators".5

As one Australian forest industry leader said:
"our research tells us that the general public if they don't hear anything about forest issues they feel relatively comfortable, as soon as they hear forest issues on the news that's when they start to get concerned about it. So we really took the view that the key to the strategy was trying to keep it very low key".6

To give you a feel for the sort of issues that PR companies deal with, Burson Marstellar - the world's largest PR firm - has had as clients: the Nigerian Government - to put a different spin on stories of genocide during the Biafran war; the Argentinian dictatorship - to improve the image of Argentina during the late 1970's when 35,000 people "disappeared", and Union Carbide - in the wake of the Bhopal disaster.7 In Australia it does work for the National Association of Forest Industries and the Forest Protection Society. Some examples of PR attacks against environmentalist activities include:

• distribution by the PR firm Network Communications of the strategy meeting notes of the Forest Protection Society meeting dated 19/8/1988 which, under the item of "Long term program", recorded that:
  "Robyn Loydell discussed activities by her group which involved taking over local environmentalist meetings, with the result that they became distracted from their ongoing campaign. Robyn's group actually controls the voting on several groups and could therefore vote to have them join the Forest Protection Society"; 8
  
• calling talkback radio with fabricated claims to smear environmentalists;9 and
  
• in 1995 Boral Timber distributed a memo purporting to be an authoritative summary of events at The Wilderness Society's "Wild Agendas" conference; the memo contained outlandish claims designed to discredit environmentalists. "Stealth" memos are written with an element of plausibility to ensure that they are used unquestioningly by third parties such as under parliamentary privilege or by journalists. They are distributed for background use only to ensure the corporate source is concealed. Boral's memo is the first one to be leaked in Australia.

The Forest Protection Society - Timber Industry Front Group

By the early 1980's the Forest Industry in Australia was once more under sustained siege from conservation groups. In March 1987 the formation of the National Association of Forest Industries was announced. The founding president of the National Association of Forest Industries was Mr Dick Darnoc who was managing director of Weyerhauser Australia Pty Ltd, a US-based forestry firm with an annual turn-over of US 6 billion dollars.10 Weyerhauser have been involved in funding industry front groups in the US such as the Oregon Lands Coalition, Oregonians for Food and Shelter and the right wing legal group, the Pacific Legal Foundation.

When the Forest Protection Society was launched on November 23, 1987 it was announced that the network would be backed by the ACTU and the Forest Industry Campaign Association (FICA). FICA Executive Officer, Mr Paul Edwards, stated that the community group network would be independent of existing bodies but would be funded by the industry to get it off the ground.11 The Forest Protection Society's Annual Report for 1991-92 listed a $471,974 contribution from the Forest Industries Campaign Association. This represented 80% of its $588,942 budget.12 The 1992-93 Annual Report lists the "subsidy from related entity" (now the National Association of Forest Industries) as $637,914. This represented 78% of the total $819,845 budget.13

The FPS have also taken to emulating conservationists' use of direct action. While conservationists undertake non-violent direct action in the forests, the loggers come to town. Borrowing from the log truck blockade of Portland Oregon over the protection of the Spotted owl in the Pacific North West, the FPS have organised two log truck blockades of Canberra. They have also adopted the tactic of closing whole towns as a form of protest against government policy as a way of capturing media focus on the issues of rural communities.

When it comes to the world's rainforests the FPS argues that "...one of the best ways to ensure that the rainforests are not destroyed is to harvest the wood and sell it. This gives the forests a value, and will encourage countries to regenerate their forests and establish plantations instead of felling them for farming.... The best way for Australian's to help save the world's rainforests is to support positive and constructive policies that improve forest management in poor countries".14

In May 1994 Robyn Loydell and Barry Chipman, Directors of the Forest Protection Society, attended the People for the West conference in Glorieta Colorado.15 Mr Barry Chipman stated: "Obviously we share a lot of common ground with the US organisation and the conference is a great opportunity to exchange ideas and reinforce with the politicians present that the movement against excessive government pandering to minority groups is international and growing".16

Some of the campaigns the Forest Protection Society have been involved in are:

• unsuccessfully supporting the logging of Fraser Island forests.17;
• successfully spearheading the campaign to construct a "tourist" road through the heart of the Tarkine wilderness in North West Tasmania - which is now being assessed for timber values;
• campaigning for the logging of native forests for woodchips in WA, Tasmania, Victoria, NSW and Queensland;
• pressuring the ABC to remove lyrics from the cartoon character "Blinky Bill" theme song which referred to Blinky's forest being cut down and taken away by logging "bandits" to the woodchip mill18; and
• campaigned for the establishment of a Federal-State "terrorism" taskforce to investigate conservation groups in connection with damage to machinery in the South East of NSW.