Our counties play a key role in shaping natural resource policy at the local, state and national level.  Whether it is dealing with sprawl, pushing for increased logging on state and federal forest lands, fighting the Endangered Species Act or protecting farm land, counties across the nation individually and collectively make decisions and lobby on critical environmental issues.

Pro-environment county commissioners often avoid these issues.  This is not because of a lack of concern.  Rather, they too often are overwhelmed with routine county business, political fears and a lack of timely information and staff support on natural resource issues.  In many cases they do not know their like-minded colleagues across the state--or that any like-minded colleagues even exist in their state.

To the dismay of many environmental advocates, urban county commissioners often decline to get involved in federal public lands issues, ignoring the fact that by representing the largest population centers they represent the majority of the public land owners.  They too often defer to commissioners from counties which contain the bulk of the public lands.

With little information to counter anti-environment claims and no time to devote to these issues, environmentally-friendly commissioners are unable to stand up to their well-organized, ultra-conservative colleagues.

Many county commissioners, especially in rural counties, are operating with an "under siege" mentality.  They feel isolated. Too often we work hard to get them elected, and then we walk away from them once we get them in office.  We need to look at a successful election as the beginning of our work, just as the elected officials look at the election as the beginning of their real job.  The election, and all the work that led up to it, are just the preliminaries.  The elected officials still need the supportive letters-to-the-editor; they still need you to attend and speak out at important meetings. If you aren't there, who do you think your elected officials are going to hear from?  They hear from the people who have a financial interest in their decision.  Those folks are loud and clear. They keep in close contact with the people to whom they gave campaign contributions.  They know that it is important to pack a meeting.  They know that elected officials are swayed by the appearance of public support or opposition. And when your elected officials feel isolated from those who supported them during the campaign, and are surrounded by those who oppose them, it is easy to rationalize that this one vote won't make much difference (especially if the vote expresses a minority opinion), or to choose not to take on any more controversial issues:  in other words, to go along to get along.

Like it or not, your local elected officials have a lot more clout than you do.  If you can get them to adopt your position, your success is much more likely. What cover will you provide for elected officials to follow your lead?  Below are suggestions gleaned from the experience of the Executive Director of the Conservation Leaders Network, a former county commissioner in rural Oregon, and the experiences of a variety of decision-makers who have participated in trainings, workshops and panel presentations on the topic organized by the Conservation Leaders Network over the last several years.  We are not so naïve as to think that following these suggestions guarantees your success.  But we can guarantee that you will increase your chances of success by taking our advice.  You need to make it easy for the elected official to support your side.  All of this advice is geared to achieving that goal.  It needs to be easier for them to do what you want rather than what your opponents want.