A range of groups belong to the wise use movement, including industry, grassroots organizations of loggers, mill workers, ranchers, farmers, miners, off-road vehicle users, and property owners.
A blanket, one-size-fits-all 'zero cut' policy severely restricts the Sierra Club's ability to provide solutions to complex forest mismanagement problems.
[6] According to Arnold, many in the wise use movement believe the possibility of unlimited economic growth, in which environmental and social problems can be mitigated by market economy and the use of technology.
"[7] In the 1980s and 1990s, the management focus on public lands shifted from the harvest of timber to ecological goals such as improvement of habitat, largely as a response to the environmental movement.
"[citation needed] Wise use members have also argued that continued access to public lands is necessary to maintain the health, culture and traditions of local communities.
[citation needed] Jill M. Belsky, a professor of Rural & Environmental Sociology at the University of Montana, wrote: Academics Ralph Maughan and Douglas Nilsona write that wise use is a "desperate effort to defend the hegemony of the cultural and economic values of the agricultural and extractive industries of the rural West", and have "argued that the Wise Use agenda stemmed from an ideology that combined laissez-faire capitalism with cultural characteristics of an imagined Old West".
"Many observers noted that Wise Use activity in some areas overlapped heavily with the 1990s formation and growth of militias, self-styled volunteer paramilitary organizations presciently committed to their own version of homeland security.
"[11] Broadcast journalist Stephenie Hendricks claimed in her book Divine Destruction that wise use is in part "being driven by biblical fundamentalists who believe exhausting natural resources will hasten the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
The original "wise use" movement was a product of the Progressive Era, and included the concept of multiple use—public land can be used simultaneously for recreation, for timber, for mining, and for wildlife habitat.
The multiple-use and wise use concepts advocated by Pinchot reflected the view that nature's resources should be scientifically managed so as "to protect the basic productivity of the land and its ability to serve future generations.
They are not limited by liability, contract law or ethical codes... industry must come to support citizen activist groups, providing funds, materials, transportation, and most of all, hard facts.
Its existence by this name dates from a 1988 'Multiple-Use Strategy Conference' attended by nearly 200 organizations, mainly Western-based, including natural resource industry corporations and trade associations, law firms specializing in combating environmental regulations, and recreational groups.
The conference produced a legislative agenda intended to 'destroy environmentalism' and promote the 'wise use' of natural resources - an intentionally ambiguous phrase strategically appropriated from the early conservation movement.