THE ENVIRONMENT ...

"We don't sue or picket or preach," says the brochure. "We simply do our best to locate those spots on earth where something wild and rare and beautiful is thriving or hanging on.

"Then we buy them."

Signed: The Nature Conservancy. What a relief from the power-hungry incitations by the Friends of the Earth, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the other despoilers of the environment!

Though the Nature Conservancy does not say so explicitly, it is a fact that the environment has no better friend than capitalism and private ownership. Who do you reckon takes better care of their forests, Weyerhaeuser or the US Forest Service?

The suggestion to preserve wilderness areas by deeding the in perpetuity to environmental organizations has recently ben made by John Baden and Richard L. Stroup of Montana State University ("Saving the Wilderness," Reason, July 81, pp. 28-36; issue $2 from Box 40105, Santa Barbara, CA 93103). Amusingly, but not surprisingly, the Audubon Society lets three oil companies pump oil and gas on their Rainey Wildlife Sanctuary in Louisiana, and in general manages its own land responsibly and with multiple use, in the very way for which they would hang, draw and quarter Jim Watt.

Except for mistaking the Sierra Club for an environmental organization (in a minor place), this is a brilliant paper recommended to every genuine environmentalist (and there are many of us left!); it also discusses the mining of strategic metals on public lands and gives some interesting historical insights.