by Heather Abel

About the author: Heather Abel is a writer for High Country News, a biweekly newspaper that reports on the West’s public lands and natural resources.

Idaho Rep. Helen Chenoweth stepped up to the podium at the Wise Use Leadership Conference in Reno, Nev., in the summer of 1995 and charged the Endangered Species Act with a series of assaults:

Californians lost homes to the 1993 fire because they were not allowed to clear weeds where endangered kangaroo rats live.

Snails smaller than a pencil point caused bankers to withhold loans— bankrupting Idaho ranchers.

Children may soon be ripped to shreds when the grizzly bear is introduced in Idaho, a state, she claims, it has never lived in.

Chances are, the Republican’s audience of property-rights leaders had heard these stories before. The...