GENE DECKER : Bernie Shanks is going to give us a historical perspective 

 of this, situation. Bernie is a member of the faculty at Utah State 

 Univerai^y, specializing in public land policy. He did his under-graduate 

 and his masters work at Montana State University and he did his doctorate 

 at Michigan State. He has worked as a park ranger in Yellowstone, 



Grand Teton and several other parks and as a smoke jumper for five 

 seasons for the Forest Service and BLM. He is the author of numerous 

 publications, articles on conservation and public land policy and his first 

 book, "Wilderness Survival" is due this fall. 



..."the Sagebrush Rebellion is a regional political movement. It is 

 riding on mythology, intent on trampling and slandering public 

 servants under the guise of citizen activism. And under this veneer, 

 the movement has greed disguised as philosophy." 



BERNIE SHANKS : Let me say at the start, although I have lived in 

 Montana for ten years, my last eight years I've spent in Nevada and Utah, 

 which is-has been-the hotbed of the Sagebrush Rebellion. I bring that 

 perspective here today, and compared to those two states of course, the 

 politics of Montana are sort of what I call liberal compared to the politics 

 of Nevada and Utah. 



The Sagebrush Rebellion is called by some the second American 

 revolution, and certainly at stake is a vast heritage of land, a vast empire 

 of land. 174,000,000 acres of BLM land in the 11 western states, over 

 200,000,000 in Alaska and 150,000,000 of Forest Service lands in the 

 western states. While the movement of the Sagebrush Rebellion may be 

 called the second American revolution by some, and as a descendant of 

 somebody who fought in the first American revolution, I only wonder what 

 old Michael Shanks would have thought of this second American revolution. 

 If he could see in the future when he stood in formation when Cornwallis 

 surrendered 200 years ago, how would he have regarded it, this second 

 American revolution? And I wonder if you would agree with me that 

 there's something a little revolutionary about greed. And I start with that 

 perspective. That the people behind the Sagebrush Rebellion really intend 

 to transfer the lands to private ownership and this rebellion and others 

 like it in the 1920's and the 1930's and the I940's lie on a firm bedrock of 



