Audubon Specials: An Endangered Species : Television: GE has withdrawn its funding of the environmental shows in the wake of protests by a lobbying group of cattlemen and loggers.

General Electric has decided not to renew its $3-million, three-year funding of the National Audubon Society’s environmental TV specials that air both on PBS and the TBS cable channel.

The withdrawal of funding after next season follows a protest campaign waged against the giant company by the National Inholders Assn., a lobbying group of cattlemen, loggers and others who own private property within or near national parks and forests. The group took umbrage at a “World of Audubon” documentary last spring called “The New Range Wars,” about cattle grazing in public parks.

GE said that its decision was necessitated by recession-dictated cutbacks, and that there was no connection to the protest. But Charles Cushman, director of the National Inholders Assn., claimed credit for GE’s action.

Cushman said that he had gained support for his campaign from timber companies and others last summer after PBS reran “Rage Over Trees,” a 1989 Audubon special about logging in the Pacific Northwest that outraged many loggers.

Ironically, GE had stepped in to help fund “World of Audubon” after the Stroh’s brewing company dropped out following the original controversy over “Rage Over Trees.”

“We sent out 35,000 letters and organized a national letter-writing and fax campaign to GE,” Cushman said in an interview from his office in Battle Ground, Wash. “We urged people to contact their local GE dealers and to boycott GE products and services. I can’t prove that GE is withdrawing because of our efforts, but I know that they got hundreds of letters, and I believe that they are withdrawing because of our efforts. A company like that doesn’t want to get people (angry). We believe that GE is funding propaganda pieces, and we want to make Audubon controversial so that it will be harder for them to get advertisers.”

Chris Palmer, president of Audubon Society Television and executive producer of the specials, said that General Electric’s decision places the series’ PBS telecasts in jeopardy.

“Ted Turner has told me that he will fill the gap in funding on TBS,” Palmer said. “But we will have to give up our PBS airings if we cannot find a new underwriter because GE was our sole corporate sponsor on PBS.”

He said that GE has provided slightly less than half of the budget to produce and promote four Audubon programs each year, with Turner providing the rest. The programs air first on TBS and then on PBS.

“This inholders association is a right-wing group that hires itself out to oppose expansion of public parks and other conservation measures all over the country,” said Peter Berle, president of the National Audubon Society.

Cushman defended his tactics and said the boycott of GE was not being rescinded because it is continuing its funding through next year. “This is not a doily-tossing contest--people’s livelihoods are at stake,” he said. “This is not a free-speech issue, either: They have a perfect right to show these programs, and we have a perfect right not to buy their products.”

Palmer declined to speculate on the possible impact of the protest on GE. But, he said, such protests can have a “chilling effect” on issue-oriented environmental programming.

“ ‘New Range Wars’ had an environmental point of view,” he said, “but I believe that the program was balanced and presented the cattlemen’s views and others. If you’d asked me what was the result of ‘New Range Wars’ or any of our films that imply some criticism of a narrow, vested-interest group, if that group is well-organized, I’d say that our experience has been that they’ll launch boycotts and letters to defend what they see as their rights with virulent aggressiveness. That means that, like GE, a corporation will have to be courageous and stand up to them. . . . If producing these types of shows leads to less funding, there is going to be pressure to do shows that don’t offend.”

Among those who had protested to GE about its support was Rollo Pool, manager of public relations at Alaska Pulp Corp., a company in Sitka, Alaska, that Pool said employs 800 people and operates a pulp mill and sawmill. In an interview, he said that his company had told GE “not to bid on a $3-million project to rebuild a boiler at one of our sawmills as a protest against their sponsorship of ‘Rage Over Trees,’ ” and following the call for a boycott by the National Inholders Assn., had instructed its purchasing officer not to buy any GE equipment “unless there is no other alternative.”

“We told them we weren’t interested in buying their products unless they were the last company on Earth we could buy them from,” Pool said. “We get 100% of our timber from public lands, and a show like ‘Rage Over Trees’ is a slap in the face. ‘New Range Wars’ is about the same issue--we’re all fighting to keep our access to public lands.”