In the late 1900s, two movements sparkled especially in the western part of the U.S—the Sagebrush Rebellion and the Wise Use movement—They both fought against the control of these lands by the U.S. federal government. They believed that it is up to the local people to decide how the land is used.
First, The Sagebrush Rebellion started in the late 1970s and early ’80s, it consisted of a protest by western states. They wanted more state control over land instead of federal control which means they wanted less rules in a time where the U.S. government was creating more environmental rules which made it harder for people to use their land for business.
Then Reagan got elected, and things started shifting. He appointed James Watt as Secretary of the Interior who’s goal was to reduce the federal government’s role in land management. This made some Sagebrush Rebellion supporters happy, but it also created new fears about environmental destruction as they are pushing the risk of over exploitation of natural resources.
The political and environmental tensions of that era gave birth to the Wise Use movement in the late 1980s and 1990s, which is sort of a newer version of the Sagebrush Rebellion. But this time they focused more on people’s property rights and expanding economic development. They believed that the federal rules were an obstacle for American citizens to practice their right of freedom. They also sought to promote what they called the “New Environmentalism” that claimed to protect nature while caring about human needs. Wise Use will be the environmentalism of the 21st century (Alan M. Gottlieb).
These fights over land helped to grow a more conservative political movement known as the New Right, which wanted less government intervention and fewer regulations. What happened is that the Republican Party noticed the gap between what people wanted and what the government was offering and they decided to fill it. They used these issues to win support in western states and push a more anti-environmental and pro-economic agenda. Environmentalism started being portrayed as an elite agenda that ignored regular working people. In 1982 conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives released an internal report titled “The Specter of Environmentalism( Article).
Will Wright 
I wonder how this would have been viewed in the desires and activism seen in Native American groups like AIM. We see a desire to remove federal control over lands and return it to states, but it intrigues me regarding how Native American activists would have viewed this. Thinking of the massacre at Wounded Knee II, there is a heightened tension between, for example, the Lakota and the control that the United States government seemingly have over land. However, I think the same groups that are pushing for state control of land, would not agree with Native American claims to the land despite a similar feeling behind both groups desires involving to what extend the government should regulate land.
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Hi Asma, I agree with what you pointed out regarding the conservative movement and ideologies over public lands. One thing I also share similar sentiments and curiosity as to how the same conservatives would look at the native lands. Where does native autonomy and state vs federal autonomy lie?
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