layers of bureaucracy, and in some cases the leader-
ship became distant from the membership. The ma-
jor groups each had specific agendas, such as land
conservation for the Nature Conservancy or hiking-
trail preservation for the Sierra Club, but they often
shared issues in common as well. During most of the
decade, the leadership of the major groups met to
discuss those common issues.
President Reagan came to Washington mistrust-
ful of environmentalists and their goals. He staffed
his administration with similarly suspicious officials,
including Secretary of the Interior James G. Watt.
Watt had been tied to the Sagebrush rebellion in the
West, a movement that opposed federal ownership
of western lands. During the 1970’s, representatives
from environmentalist groups had enjoyed easy ac-
cess to executive agencies, but during the 1980’s, it
was corporative representatives who enjoyed this ac-
cess, leaving environmentalists on the outside. Many
Americans had also come to think that some federal
environmental standards had gone too far, so the
major environmental groups often faced difficulties
in convincing people of the necessity of further envi-
ronmental legislation.
Environmental groups spent much of the 1980’s
struggling to find a niche in Reagan’s America. Of-
ten shut out from the corridors of power, they tried
to find new means of influencing public policy.
Ironically, many Americans still considered them-
selves environmentalists in theory, so they contin-
ued to join environmental groups. In practice, how-
ever, they were swayed by alarmist tales of businesses
losing millions of dollars as a result of regulations
designed to protect obscure species of insect. This
struggle between a general commitment to the envi-
ronment and specific opposition to what were por-
trayed as extremist environmental bills continued
throughout the decade. However, enough people
became disillusioned with what they saw as the anti-
environmental stance of many Reagan officials to
motivate significant continued support for pro-
environment lobbyists.
Shortly after Reagan’s inauguration, the leaders
of nine of the major environmental groups—includ-
ing the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, the Na-
tional Resources Defense Council, and the National
Wildlife Federation, among others—met in Wash-
ington. They were joined by Robert Allen of the
Henry P. Kendall Foundation. The nine environ-
mental organizations plus the foundation, known
collectively as the Group of Ten, had somewhat
diverging agendas, but they all actively lobbied
Congress on behalf of the environment, working
through Washington’s legislative and judicial ma-
chinery. As a result, groups that refused to engage in
direct lobbying efforts did not join the Group of
Ten. These included groups such as the Nature Con-
servancy, which was committed to maintaining an
apolitical identity, as well as groups such as Green-
peace, which simply distrusted the federal govern-
ment and therefore chose direct action over appeals
to legislators.
Although the formal structure of the Group of
Ten was initially limited to the chief executives of
each member organization, subordinates from
within each group later met together. Over time, the
umbrella group agreed on a common agenda ac-
ceptable to all; it was published in 1985 asAn Envi-
ronmental Agenda for the Future. Nevertheless, there
remained some sharp policy differences among the
leaders of the Group of Ten. For example, Jay Hair
of the National Wildlife Fund was more positively in-
clined toward the Reagan administration than were
the other leaders and often forced modifications in
the group’s policy statements. These differences
continued to trouble the Group of Ten throughout
the 1980’s, and the group had broken up by the end
of the decade, as some leaders wished to distance
themselves from the more confrontational stances
of the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth.The Institutionalization of Environmentalism Dur-
ing the 1980’s, most of the major environmental
groups expended a good deal of effort to expand
their membership base. This effort was intended to
build on the enthusiasm that many Americans had
displayed for environmental causes in the 1970’s
and to strengthen the groups’ lobbying clout in or-
der to counteract the increasingly hostile political
climate in Washington. In order to expand their
base, environmental organizations utilized direct
mail campaigns to acquire members and raise funds.
Direct mail “prospecting” was expensive, so environ-
mental groups were caught in a cycle of fund-raising,
needing to solicit funds in order to maintain the very
mailing apparatus that they used to solicit the funds.
Several environmental groups also turned to cor-
porate foundations to fund their programs. Money
provided by such foundations often came with ex-
plicit or implicit strings attached, resulting in someThe Eighties in America Environmental movement 337