Aggressive Environmentalist Earns Top Marks for Preservation Efforts

Ken Rait has good reason to cheer, or even gloat.

First he helped convince President Clinton to declare 1.7 million acres in Utah a national monument, one of the big environmental achievements of the 1990s.

Then he helped persuade Clinton to seek protection of as much as 50 million acres of forest, hailed as one of the major conservation moves of the 20th century.

The intense, aggressive and even pushy Oregonian has won accolades from his peers--some call him a rising superstar--and earned the grudging respect of opponents, who wonder what connections, or tricks, have made him so successful.

“This guy seems to be the Forrest Gump of the forest movement,” said Duane Gibson, a lawyer for the House Resources Committee. “He has bit into a few chocolates, and they’re good ones.”

But is Rait popping champagne corks? No. Rait’s forest effort is far from done.

“I’ll defer my satisfaction until the final rule is signed,” he said. “It’s going to be a long haul between now and then. The devil’s going to be in the details.”

Therein lies a Rait weapon--he will push, and fight, relentlessly until he feels his goal is met.

At the White House, where Rait personally presented his case for protecting forests, an official described him as “rather dogged.”

Josh Kardon, chief of staff for Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), said he confronted Rait last fall after the environmentalist told some longtime Wyden supporters that the senator had a weak record on the environment.

Kardon said he pointed out that Wyden has a lifetime rating of 90% from the League of Conservation Voters.

Rait was “absolutely unapologetic,” Kardon said.

“He’s aggressive, effective--sometimes abrasive--but I sure respect him,” Kardon added. “It would be difficult to argue that Ken Rait hasn’t been one of the most effective environmental activists over the last decade.”

But Rait doesn’t take credit for his victories.

The forest initiative is the result of Clinton and others in the administration who were determined to protect the roadless areas, he said. He credits hundreds of activists who have pushed the issue for years.

“I do think it’s a situation where the stars really began to line up,” he said. “Sometimes good things happen for the right reasons.”

Rait wasn’t supposed to turn out this way, as a die-hard green activist.

The Buffalo, N.Y., native was set to follow his father’s footsteps and become a dentist. But high school trips to the Adirondacks in Upstate New York imbued a passion for the outdoors.

When he was in college at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., Rait said he realized the beauty he had known in the Adirondacks was getting hammered by acid rain.

After receiving undergraduate and master’s degrees in geography and water resources, he headed to Tucson, Ariz., in 1986 to pursue a PhD--which he never completed--in hydrology and water resources at the University of Arizona.

He volunteered with the local Sierra Club. Then in 1990 he landed his first paying gig as an environmentalist with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance in Salt Lake City.

His big score was working on a successful push to persuade Clinton to create the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996.

“What was stunning about that was . . . the administration took a hard look at the largest undeveloped coal field in the country and said, ‘You know, protecting this land is a higher public value,’ ” Rait said.

He wanted his daughter to be closer to her Seattle grandparents, so he moved to Portland, Ore., in 1997 and took a job as conservation director of the Oregon Natural Resources Council.

A year later he took the helm of a campaign to try to convince Clinton to protect forests. With Clinton’s announcement last October, Rait again struck gold and stood in a Virginia national forest after the announcement to shake the president’s hand.

“He gets the big ones,” said Chris West, vice president of the Northwest Forestry Assn., a timber industry group. “Ken Rait has a direct link somewhere.”

But what is his secret?

Rait, 37, lacks the portfolio of a Washington, D.C., power broker. He is not a major political donor or Capitol Hill veteran, nor has he served in any White House administrations.

Those who know him say Rait has mastered the tools of his trade, as he blends high-tech savvy, media skills, political sophistication and grass-roots activism into a powerful pro-environment punch.

“You’ve got to know the subject, you must know the press, you need to know about grass-roots organizing, lobbying,” said Dan Beard, senior vice president at the National Audubon Society. “He’s got a wide set of skills.”

And Rait also has perhaps the most essential tool--big money.

The Pew Charitable Trusts, a Philadelphia-based foundation, awarded Audubon some of Pew’s larger environmental grants--nearly $3.5 million over 27 months--to finance a forest protection campaign led by Rait.

Pew leaders knew of Rait’s work in successfully pushing for creation of the Grand Staircase.

“We knew Ken by reputation,” said Steve Kallick, the forest programs coordinator for Pew.

The Pew grants make up 90% of the Heritage Forest Campaign’s budget and gave Rait an arsenal of weapons. He hired consultants, ran full-page newspaper ads and commissioned a poll showing public support for forest protection.

He also spread the campaign’s money to other grass-roots groups, who in turn advocated the forest policy. The U.S. Public Interest Research Group received one of the largest amounts from Rait’s group --about $200,000--to carry on efforts such as door-to-door canvassing in more than a dozen states.

The Internet was a key weapon for Rait. He held an “Internet day of action” and sent mass e-mails. Activists pummeled the White House with more than 100,000 e-mails urging Clinton to protect forests.

“When the White House gets 2,000 calls a day over a period of two months, that’s something they sit up and take notice about,” said Mike Matz, executive director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

Rait is one of several environmentalists who gets access to top White House and administration decision-makers. He joined a handful of top green advocates in a briefing last summer with White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, where the advocates showed Podesta poll results in favor of roadless forest protection.

So with that kind of access--and a big-money campaign--have timber industry officials finally met their match in Rait?

No way, says Rait, ever the underdog.

“We’re trying to play in the big league here, and this is about the most we can muster,” he said.

Compared with the money that industry groups spend to influence public opinion, Rait insists, the forest campaign war chest “is a pittance.”

Don’t try to tell Ken Rait that he’s wrong.