Talk:National Wildlife Federation

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It isn't true that NWF received "millions" in grants from corporate donors. In fact, they received very little in the way of cash from corporations during Jay Hair's presidency, notwithstanding all the accusations that one segment of the grassroots environmental community (formerly including me) leveled at him. I confronted Hair on the question about NWF personally several times and looked into the matter for a newspaper story in 1990, so I know of what I speak. World Wildlife Fund, Nature Conservancy, Environmental Defense, Natural Resources Defense Council all receive MUCH more money from "corporations" every year than NWF did during Hair's entire long career as President of NWF. (He died in a recent year of cancer by the way.)

I can't discuss the allegation concerning NWF's sale of land to purchase the building in DC, because I'm unfamiliar with it, but I suspect there is a lot of heresay contained there also.

Finally, the corporate conservation council referred to was a one-man operation at NWF at a time when NWF had over 100 people working in their domestic and international policy programs, and it operated almost entirely in isolation from the other programs (lest you think it had a "polluting" influence; it's one staff member didn't even attend NWF staff meetings, and he mostly focused his work on the following). Among other things, the "CCC" helped lead efforts to hold Exxon's feet to the fire following the 1989 Valdez oil spill in Alaska (a very successful effort) and to establish requirements for oil tankers to be double-hulled (not as successful). Some people didn't like Hair's efforts, including through CCC, to work one-on-one with industry, and that's fine; I was one of them too back then. But 15 years later, I think it's only fair to say that his approach has been copied by a lot of other organizations, and it has borne fruit.

NWF has played an extremely positive role in the environmental community for almost a century now, and it deserves to be described on Wikipedia without sole reference to one controversial President that ran the organization for about 15 years. Along with Ducks Unlimited and Izaak Walton League, NWF was instrumental in helping to set up virtually all of the National Wildlife Refuges that we have in the United States. International Program member Barbara Bramble was one of the first environmentalists in DC (if not THE first) to tackle a range of issues that no one used to think of as "environmental," from World Bank lending reform to debt-for-nature swaps and IMF structural adjustment policy. A host of environmental leaders now at other organizations got their starts at NWF. NWF's education programs, which include Ranger Rick magazine and Judy Brause's award-winning curriculum series, among many other things, is second-to-none. I could go on and on.

Someone with even more information about NWF than I have needs to modify this article to make it more NPOV.

[edit] Copyvios and POV

Alright, folks. It seems that quite a few people believe that the information off SourceWatch is POV or even completely false. Fine. Now let me tell you what not to do in this situation: Patch together a new article by lifting whole paragraphs off other web pages. Because a) it will be reverted as a copyright violation and b) it reads like a sales brochure which is most certainly worse than the old article (because if people want the sales brochure, they can go the organization's website — we already have a link to them).

Also, putting claims in an article into perspective is usually much preferred over the removal of the offending sections. How about you try to clean up the article one small edit at a time? Rl 14:30, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

RI. I agree with everything, to a sentence. For instance, I agree that (a lot) of folks think the entry on SourceWatch.org is "POV or even completely false." I also totally agree that the fluff piece that was substituted is not up to standards. I'll add that the accusations against both NWF and Jay Hair were real, regardless of whether the allegations contained within those accusations were sound. Those accusations were an important aspect (albeit only one aspect) of the organization's history in recent years.

I'll try to take time to write something better as soon as I have a chance. I know close to a hundred people who've been inside the very competitive DC environmental community over the past 15 years, mostly NOT at NWF, and I want to get some ideas from some of them first. Thanks for your comments. I'm a newcomer on this website.70.108.49.60 00:37, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

It's always a pleasure to work with people who don't take offense when you try to help them. By the way, since you plan to stick around at least for a while, why not register an account so you can work with some name rather than an IP address? I am looking forward to your contributions. Rl 07:33, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm an NWF employee (soon to be leaving) and posted the original article. By all means the article should be factual and the sourcewatch.org article may have some truth to it, however, that is not all that we do! I hope that user 70.108.49.60 can update the page in an unbiased way. Furthermore, the fact still remains that the publisher of Ranger Rick magazine is still the National Wildlife Federation. They still were a producer of a few IMAX movies and have had countless reports and other public information which can be reported within this article. It certainly is important to be balanced, especially in an Encyclopedic setting, but please be accurate as well.

I know neither the magazine nor the movies, but I agree that this information belongs into the article. Maybe list the IMAX movies and mention some notable articles (assuming there are some that have caused some public debate). Rl 21:09, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I took the time to look up Source Watch's articles claim. According to The Loudon County Parks website [1] claude.htm the site in question is now a 357 acre park and was bought from the NWF additionally Dr Claude Moore lived on premises at the park until 1991. The NWF ownership of the land begain in 1975 and maintained it as a wildlife education facility until 1986. Dyre42 06:42, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Corrected and updated it and gave it NPOV. So how'd I do on my very first try? Dyre42 08:28, 22 January 2006 (UTC)