Split verdict

After the election, photographers and hunters can still bait Alaskan black bears with sweets and grease, loggers can chop two Oregon forests, Coloradans will get more power from renewable energy and Utah voters won’t gain more open space.

In a national election won by conservatives, the results show that traditional powers in the West -- sportsmen, extractive industries and sagebrush rebels -- continue to wield clout at the ballot box, though environmentalists moved some of their agenda forward.

Among the outcomes of Tuesday’s election:

* In Montana, voters upheld a ban on the use of cyanide in gold and silver mining and established the right to hunt and fish in the state Constitution. A state lawmaker sought the amendment to ensure Montanans never lose the right to pursue game.

* In Washington state, almost 70% of voters approved cleaning up the Hanford nuclear reservation before more radioactive waste is shipped there.

* In Arizona, voters for the sixth time rejected an amendment to the state Constitution that would have allowed the government to swap state land for other public lands. Environmentalists feared the state would open the newly acquired lands to developers.

Kristina Wilfore, executive director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center in Washington, D.C., says results of some ballot measures, particularly the Washington nuclear waste and Montana cyanide initiatives, were the best outcomes for environmentalists.

USC’s Initiative & Referendum Institute pegged the Colorado energy measure, which mandates that power companies get 10% of their electricity from solar, wind, hydroelectric or biomass in 10 years, as one of the country’s most important votes. Institute President John Matsusaka says environmental groups in other states will likely follow Colorado’s lead. California approved a law two years ago requiring that 20% of power come from renewable sources by 2017.

Highlighting the environmental concerns of Western voters, the Pew Research Center polled registered voters last month and found respondents in the West were much more aware of environmental issues than voters elsewhere in the country.

Successful measures are often spun as health issues of personal concern to voters, the so-called “suburban mom environmental issues,” says Todd Donovan, a Western Washington University professor who studies direct democracy.

One such measure was Utah’s Initiative 1 Clean Water Growth Space. Before the election, a newspaper poll indicated 58% of voters supported the measure, which would have raised $150 million through bond sales for parks, open space and community projects and required a one-twentieth of a cent sales tax increase.

Early in the campaign, “I don’t think anyone produced a lawn sign against it,” says Dan McCool, director of the Salt Lake City-based American West Center, which studies environmental issues.

But Gov. Olene S. Walker, a Utah taxpayers association and property rights advocates persuaded nearly 55% of voters that the measure was unnecessary and a government land grab.

Oregon turned down a proposal to protect parts of two state forests from logging. Fires 70 years ago had devastated the forests and Scouts and elementary school classes from Portland had replanted them.

Because of that good deed, proponents of Measure 34 bet that voters’ affection for the trees in Tillamook and Clatsop state forests would boost the measure, says Bill Lunch, a political analyst for Oregon Public Broadcasting. But the timber industry far outspent environmental groups, “who were silent from the point of view of the average voter,” he says, and counties anticipating revenue and jobs from timber joined the opposition.

In Alaska, proponents of a measure to outlaw baiting bears with food misread voters too. Proponents were unable to persuade Alaskans to ban using bacon grease and doughnuts, among other junk food, to lure bears to photographers, gawkers or hunters. Though an Alaskan wildlife group funded the measure, opponents portrayed it as the handiwork of animal rights groups hostile to hunting.

“This is a political culture highly resentful of outside influences -- capital O in outside,” says Jerry McBeath, a political science professor at the University of Alaska. “This is a state where people like to go out and kill whatever’s walking.”