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Washington's environmental community was the first to notice the amendment and sound the alarm. Staffers at Earthworks, the Wilderness Society, and other green advocacy groups identified lands in the crosshairs and called allies in the Senate, where the measure could still be defeated. It didn't take much prodding before western Democrats were united against the provision. But to stop the land sales, Republican senators would also need to speak out. That was a harder sell. Many conservatives accept large campaign contributions from mining, oil, and gas companies, and they tend to favor more industry access to public lands and resources. In addition, western Republicans don't take advice from national environmental groups, whose members tend to be urban and suburban liberals—not exactly their voters.

But there are outdoor organizations whose members include voters who can draw conservatives' attention. After an Earthworks staffer tipped off a counterpart at Trout Unlimited, the sportsmen's group (whose membership is two to one Republican) emailed its roughly 100,000 members and contacted regional editorial boards to spotlight the fight. News spread like wildfire—western sportsmen were outraged that public lands where they hunt and fish might be put on the auction block. Once they knew the stakes, local hook-and-bullet organizations held phone-bank days, organized letter-writing campaigns, and scheduled visits to regional Senate offices. A petition signed by 758 sportsmen's clubs affiliated with National Wildlife Federation, from the Great Falls Bowhunters Association to the Custer Rod and Gun Club, landed on elected officials' desks in Washington just weeks later. "These lands, so important to sportsmen and women, are open to every American, rich and poor alike," the letter read. "We believe it is wrong to put them up for mining companies and other commercial interests to buy at cut-rate prices."

The outcry from rural and exurban voters achieved what no amount of lobbying from environmentalists in Washington alone could have. Within weeks, western Republican senators renounced the measure on the Senate floor and to their hometown newspapers. As Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) told the Billings Gazette, "The local folks most impacted by a sale have to be on board." The measure was then effectively dead—within weeks the language was withdrawn from the House bill.

These struggles may pale in comparison to the brewing battle over global warming. As more red-state farmers find their crops affected by rising temperatures, more ice fishermen notice lakes that no longer freeze in the winter, and more hunters see wetlands where ducks breed begin to evaporate, concern about climate change is crossing old political boundaries. Although they may have diverse starting points and dramatically different reactions to labels like "environmentalist," liberal and conservative outdoor activists are discovering that on a range of issues, their concerns about the earth overlap. In many ways, this brings them full-circle to the beginning of America's environmental movement. If today's new alliances become a lasting coalition, the union could not only recast American politics with a progressive tilt but have vast implications for the health of the planet.

Conservatives may try to counter the emergence of this new environmental majority with greener rhetoric or by scaling back on favors to extractive industries. But it is hard to fathom how today's conservative elected officials could bring themselves to champion aggressive regulations on carbon emissions and other ambitious measures to control global warming, which would require a direct hit on the very industries that hold up the roof of the current Republican Party. The job of taking on those industries will have to fall to progressive leaders of either political party. And with the support of environmentalists, sportsmen, and others, they may finally have the political clout to pull it off.