responsibility. Their job is not just to report the sensational, not just to 

 sell magazines or newspapers--although I acknowledge that is an important 

 part o'f your job. But, your job is to participate in a national movement. 

 I lootParound the room and I don't see very many people that were here in 

 World War II. But in World War II, when we could identify the challenge 

 was the enemy, if you want to put it that way, the press rallied to the 

 cause. They helped convince Americans that the external threat was 

 serious enough that we had to pull together. Like a bunch of sibblings, 

 we can fight among ourselves, but when faced with an outside threat, 

 we've got to join arms and confront that outside threat together. I've 

 seen the press do this... I was here in World War II. 



And, I think we're facing the same kind of threat today only its a 

 threat to our natural resources. The tendency to overreact to the energy 

 crisis, the tendency to overreact to the declining economy in our country, 

 the tendency to take a short-term view like "I hope I can survive this 

 year", are running rampant and I think it's time for our country and for 

 our people--particurlarly the people in Montana--to say "Hey, wait a 

 minute, wait a minute. These are crises, but we can't sacrifice our 

 heritage, we can't sacrifice our way of life, we can't sacrifice the 

 character of Montana, we can't sacrifice the very things that cause us to 

 live in Montana because of a short-term crisis." 



Somebody has got to rally the people in Montana. . .somebody has got 

 to rally the people of the tJnited States to say "These resources are worth 

 protecting. The water, the timber, the hills, the pristine views, the 

 wildlife. We don't want to sell them down the stream for short-term exped- 

 iency. We've got to protect these things." 



And the only way we're going to do that, the only way to deal with 

 this problem is to form a coalition. We can't have wildlife advocates or 

 wilderness advocates fighting with foresters and fighting with 

 agriculturalists. We can't have agriculturalists fighting with the oil and 

 gas and mineral developers. The thing that we have in common is a 

 reverence for rural resources, for a rural way of life. We live in a state 

 that now, and in the foreseeable future, is going to survive--exist on the 

 primary resources that we produce. We are going to produce agricultural 

 crops, we're going to produce timber, we're going to produce minerals and 

 oil and gas. And if we don't form a coalition, if we don't coalesce, we're 

 going to lose the damn ball game. 



And if the press is listening, the point is that what we are facing is 

 an external threat of monumental proportions. The big cities, the voting 

 and the economic power that exists in the big cities, along the Potomac or 

 in Washington D.C., is a real threat to the West. Montana can't survive if 

 those of us who are conservationists are splintered, if we are divisive, if 

 we are feuding among ourselves. If we don't form a coalition among all 

 the groups that have a common interest in rural America, if we don't work 

 together, not only in the state of Montana, but with our colleagues 

 throughout the Rocky Mountains and other parts of the West, we're going 

 to lose. The people in Chicago and Los Angeles and Philadelphia and New 

 York are concerned about a completely different set of crises. They are 

 concerned about safety in the streets. They are concerned about 



