The Greens Have Them Seeing Red : Nature: Members of the Sahara Club use aggressive tactics to battle groups they say have overstated threats to the environment.

Rick Sieman recycles aluminum cans, grows his own vegetables and calls himself an environmentalist.

But don’t mistake the Granada Hills man for an “eco-freak”--one of the more polite terms he uses to describe members of Earth First!, the Sierra Club and even the National Audubon Society.

In an office next to his back yard vegetable patch, Sieman plots their undoing.

Sieman, 50, is president of the Sahara Club, an upstart organization of mostly off-road racing and riding enthusiasts that received its first major dose of public attention last month when five members--including Sieman--were arrested for defying federal authorities and racing their motorcycles through protected land in the Mojave Desert.

Sieman publishes the caustic Sahara Club newsletter, which reports on activities of the environmental groups. He said he has spoken to off-roader clubs, logger organizations and gatherings of Sahara Club members from here to Arkansas to share his wisdom on nonviolent protest, surveillance and even a few dirty tricks.

The purpose, he says, is to reveal the “disinformation campaign” that he feels mainstream environmentalists are engaged in. Group members argue that environmentalists have “gone too far, spreading panic and hysteria” about threats to the environment.

They feel that such threats are exaggerated.

“We want to be the organization that people can come to get the real facts,” Sieman said of his year-old group, which claims 4,000 members nationwide. “We want people to be able to get under one umbrella organization to fight the eco-freaks.”

Critics dismiss the group as little more than a bunch of “wackos” and “motorcycle thugs.”

Sieman and three other Sahara Club bikers were arrested Nov. 24 as they sped their motorcycles around federal rangers onto land closed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. The cyclists were protesting the cancellation of the famed Barstow to Las Vegas race.

Conservation groups have doggedly fought the “B to V,” as it is called, charging that it crossed environmentally sensitive lands and endangered the desert tortoise. The cyclists vigorously deny that the race harms land or animals.

“I felt like Abbie Hoffman,” Sieman said of his arrest. A fifth member was arrested when he tried to block a U.S. Army tank from crossing the closed lands.

Jim Eaton, executive director of a Sacramento-based alliance of environmental groups, concedes that the Sahara Club now appears to be addressing a wide range of environmental issues.

But Eaton, of the California Wilderness Coalition, bristles at the club’s insistence that its members are concerned about the environment.

“Any group can call themselves environmentalists,” said Eaton, whose group has been criticized by the Sahara Club. “But the Sahara Club doesn’t show an inkling of environmentalism. It’s pretty clear they have no respect for the laws that protect the environment.

“To them, the environmental movement is kind of the symbol of all that is wrong.”

Sieman is a professional off-road racer and a writer for magazines that cover the sport. He said he was inspired to start the Sahara Club last year when the BLM began trying to cancel the race and after his son was knocked off his motorcycle by a “trip wire” strung between two Joshua trees while off-road riding near Lancaster. His son was not injured. Sieman blames “eco-pigs” for putting up the wire.

Though Sieman insists the fight against the environmentalists is largely a war of words, part of the advice he gives to groups involves what he darkly refers to as “top-secret dirty tricks,” which he declines to reveal. He does, however, claim with amusement that after one of his talks to families of timber workers in Northern California in August, license plate registration stickers on the cars of several Earth First! members were altered, resulting in them being stopped by sheriff’s deputies.

The license-plate prank could not be confirmed by officials in Humboldt County, where Sieman appeared at the invitation of the loggers’ group, known as Mothers’ Watch. Candy Boak, a spokeswoman for the group, said Sieman was invited because members “wanted to see what we could do to end the terrorism in our community.”

Although Earth First! has denied involvement, loggers accuse members and sympathizers of responsibility for the injuries a logger suffered in 1987 when a saw blade at a Cloverdale timbermill hit a large spike that had been placed in a tree.

Boak said Sieman’s speech “helped a lot of people decide to fight. When you have been the recipient of so many Earth First! tactics, it is good to see it going the other way. It makes them furious. They don’t know what to do.”

The Sahara Club also has drawn attention with a variety of publicity stunts.

In September, when a representative of Earth First! was addressing about 200 people at a college in Thousand Oaks, about 40 Sahara Club members stood in the audience and stripped off outer shirts to reveal T-shirts with caricatures of an Earth First! member getting choked and a Sierra Club member being “planted” head first in the desert.

The Sahara Club newsletter is replete with sarcasm and personal attacks on environmentalists, government agencies and public officials. It recently referred to the Sierra Club members as “Nature Nazis” and pondered whether they were all on drugs.

“The same clowns who were warning you about the planet freezing over 20 years ago are now babbling about global warming,” a recent newsletter editorial said. “Hysterical psycho-babble and knee-jerk reaction to un-proved allegations is now starting to dominate the media.”

Critics describe the Sahara Club tactics as sophomoric. “They are putting out a lot of rhetoric that incites people--it’s a lot of name-calling,” says Judy Anderson, a San Fernando Valley teacher, Sierra Club member and co-director of the California Desert Protection League.

“Nobody in (the) Sahara Club makes much sense,” said Mark Williams, a Los Angeles representative of Earth First! who has debated Sieman on a local radio program. “They berate people in an adolescent schoolyard manner. They are a very paranoid, wacko bunch.”

Williams said the newsletter gives a group of “nutty guys” a venue for espousing views some critics say are racist, homophobic and anti-environmental. Sieman denies those allegations.

Williams said many environmentalists--himself included--have received telephone threats after their names and numbers appeared in the newsletter.

Sieman denies encouraging threats.

“Whether or not they are violent, the implication is there,” Anderson said. “I don’t think of the Sahara Club as being benign.”

In its effort to effect change, Sieman foresees the club shifting toward conventional tactics--such as the class-action suit planned against the BLM over the closing of the desert.

But for now, he says, its “rowdy” approach is carefully planned. “Everything we do--including the name Sahara Club--is designed for maximum irritation.”

Not all off-road enthusiasts are on board with the Sahara Club philosophy.

Bill Fuentes, president of the Van Nuys-based Checkers Motorcycle Club, which has 75 professional off-road racers as members, says Sieman has spoken to his group but picked up few new members. Fuentes said the message may be right, but he does not agree with the method of spreading it.

Gerald Hillier, manager of BLM’s California Desert District, says the Sahara Club fails to recognize the need for controls on some desert lands. “They are saying, ‘Public values be damned. We are not going to be controlled,’ ” Hillier said. “Their views are not as large as they think they are.”

Sieman is undismayed. “Remember,” he says, “in 1945 the Sierra Club had 4,000 members. Now, they have over 500,000.”

EXCERPTS FROM THE SAHARA CLUB NEWSLETTER

“Remember the big stink raised over the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and how it was going to destroy all the wildlife and fish for generations to come? Well, all that doomsaying proved to be so much hot air, as the largest catch ever was realized in Alaska just recently. . . . The eco-nuts have refused to accept the position that the damage was reversible in order to justify their zero-risk approach to the environment.”

“The eco-nuts always like to quote John Muir, and in fact, base much of their movement on his thoughts. . . . Muir was a human-hater and one of the sickest screwballs to ever walk the trails. It’s only fitting that the Sierra Club should look to his immortal words for guidance.”

“BAMBI BIMBOS ON THE MOVE! Deer hunters in Florida will have to deal with animal rights fruitcakes in the woods this year, as the protesters plan to badger the hunters during a legal state-sponsored deer hunt.”