Remembering Ecowarrior Dave Foreman, Part 2: Moving the Needle

Note: This is the second part of a two-part tribute to Dave Foreman, who recently shuffled off this mortal coil. Part 1 recounted Dave’s contribution to stopping the infamous Bald Mountain Road, a dagger into the heart of the Kalmiopsis wildlands in southwestern Oregon. Part 2 is my take on Dave’s unique contributions to the conservation and restoration of nature.

Figure 1. Dave Foreman never failed to give a hell of a speech. It was often more like a sermon full of information, wisdom, provocation, humor, and inspiration—but never damnation—delivered by a preacher who sought to save not human souls but life on Earth. Source: The Rewilding Institute.

The North Kalmiopsis wildlands, the lands Dave Foreman nearly lost his life trying to save from the bulldozer and the chainsaw, are still not, some four decades later, fully protected for the benefit of this and future generations. The remaining roadless wildlands have not yet been added to the Kalmiopsis Wilderness, but a good portion is somewhat administratively protected as Forest Service inventoried roadless areas. Some of the North Kalmiopsis lands have received wild and scenic river status, with more in the offing for the entire Kalmiopsis wildlands. Perhaps the mature and old-growth forests therewill be administratively protected by the Biden administration.

It can take a lot of time to save a piece of nature. Dave Foreman knew this. Dave also knew that given the rate of the human assault on nature, nature doesn’t have the luxury of time.

In my view, Dave Foreman’s greatest contributions to saving the wild were

·      getting conservationists, and then society, to think bigger;

·      popularizing science to save wilderness, when the science was still emerging; and

·      having a large and secure enough ego to let others take credit for and run with ideas he first popularized.

Moving the Overton Window

I didn’t know it at the time, and probably neither did Dave, but Dave’s fundamental course was trying to move what the sociopolitical chattering class now calls the Overton window. The Overton window is the thinking of Joseph P. Overton of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a conservative think tank. According to Wikipedia, the Overton window is “the range of policies that a politician can recommend without appearing too extreme to gain or keep public office given the climate of public opinion at that time.”

When Dave started his conservation career, wilderness designation was within the Overton window, but generally more because of human recreation than nature conservation. Wilderness also had to encompass relatively large areas, and generally more rock and ice than low-elevation forests or desert grasslands.

The Overton window is not moved by politicians; rather it is moved by think tanks and activists who advocate for policy solutions that start outside the current range of public acceptability. As the unpopular, if not previously unspoken, idea moves to become more popular, the Overton window moves to reflect that that policy solution is now within the realm of political discussion. Politicians only look out of Overton windows.

I recall a conversation with Dave that hit home with me. The public lands conservation movement generally came out of the progressive movement, and more on Republican than Democratic wings. Early twentieth-century public lands conservationists like John Muir, Stephen Mather, Horace Albright, Gifford Pinchot, and their ilk were all white, Republican (things were different back then), and rich. They didn’t want to rock the sociopolitical boat but rather just change its course a bit. Not turn the boat around—and if any rocking was required, not too much rocking.

“Where would Martin Luther King [Jr.] have been without Malcolm X?” thundered Dave, just to me at that point, but it was a line from a speech that he had given or would give many times. The radical Malcolm X did make MLK appear more reasonable in the public arena.

Foreman helped the public lands conservation community think (and act) “outside the box,” another metaphor for the limits of public acceptability.

Dave taught me that while ecological realities are immutable, political realities are mutable. Only if one has one’s idea aperture too small and/or time horizon too short does it appear that political realities cannot be changed.

Figure 2. Dave Foreman inspired many a wildlands advocate, including John Davis, now executive director of the Rewilding Institute. Since I have known him, John has always had one foot in something big and the other in something Adirondacks. Source: The Rewilding Institute.

Presaging 30x30 . . . and 50x50

Foreman was not a scientist, but early on in his conservation career, he knew—in his gut if not yet in his head—if we’re to have functioning ecosystems across the landscape (and seascape) and over time, that at least half of every ecosystem needs to be conserved and, in some cases, restored. Later Foreman came to know this not only in his gut but also in his head. As the discipline of conservation biology emerged, Dave embraced and popularized the science that provided objective evidence for what was previously just his personal testimony.

Today, the conservation buzz is all about 30x30, or conserving 30 percent of the world’s, nations’, states’ lands and waters by 2030. Don’t tell anyone, but 30x30 is simply an interim goal on the way to 50x50, which is where the science points. Yep, 50 percent by 2050. 

Urging Colleagues to Steal His Ideas

As Dave helped move nature conservation’s Overton window, he was genuinely pleased when others took credit for his work—credit either for moving the political window or for taking advantage of the concept/idea/notion/necessity that the moved Overton window exposed. More than one chief executive officer of a national conservation organization told Dave to his face that they were embracing/stealing “his” idea (of course, without crediting him). Foreman’s response was always “Go for it!” rather than “You’re welcome” and never “Hey, that’s my idea!”

While Foreman did radical things on behalf of nature, in his chest beat the heart of a reactionary deeply opposed to any so-called progress that came at a cost to the wild. It is not that he opposed civilization or was misanthropic. Rather, Foreman realized that for there to be fine cigars and exquisite liquors and the many other economic goods and services that we enjoy, and for our children to inhabit the earth and prosper, that the earth must continue to provide fundamental ecosystem goods and services. 

Figure 3. In 2004, Dave made the case for rewilding (a term he coined) the continent. By today’s scientific standards, his vision was rather conservative. Dave knew the Overton window doesn’t move all at once. Source: Island Press.

So did Dave Foreman end up damning or praising me when he came to southwestern Oregon? Depending on his audience, either one. It worked for me, it worked for him, and most important, it worked for nature.

Foreman moved the needle.

Thanks, Dave.

Bottom line: No one can replace Dave Foreman. But others must and will carry on working for the wild.

For More Information

Astor, Maggie. February 26, 2019. “How the Politically Unthinkable Can Become Mainstream.” New York Times.

Foreman, Dave. 1991. Confessions of an Eco-Warrior. Crown.

———. 1992. The Big Outside: A Descriptive Inventory of the Big Wilderness Areas of the United States. Three Rivers Press.

———. 2004. Rewilding North America: A Vision for Conservation in the 21st Century. Island Press.

———. 2004. The Lobo Outback Funeral Home: A Novel. Bower House.

———. 2011. Man Swarm and the Killing of Wildlife. Raven’s Eye Press.

———. 2012. Take Back Conservation. Raven’s Eye Press.

———. 2012. “The Great Backtrack,“ in Philip Cafaro and Eileen Crist (eds.), . Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation. University of Georgia Press.

———. 2014. The Great Conservation Divide: Conservation vs. Resourcism on America’s Public Lands. Raven’s Eye Press.

Rewilding Institute. “Dave Foreman (1946–2022).”

Risen, Clay. September 28, 2022. “David Foreman, Hard-Line Environmentalist, Dies at 75.” New York Times.

Wikipedia. Dave Foreman.

Zakin, Susan. September 21, 2022. “Dave Foreman, American.” Journal of the Plague Years.