Guess who's coming to protest?

This shift in focus from national to local health and justice issues marks a big change since the national green movement peaked in 1990 with the 20th anniversary of Earth Day, says Riley Dunlap, a political scientist who has charted public opinion about the environmental movement.

Americans felt the Clinton administration was sympathetic to environmental concerns and, ironically, they may have felt less pressure to join big environmental groups. The share of Americans who said they belonged to an environmental group remained steady at about 8 percent between 1994 and 2000, according to a survey by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

Then terrorism arrived. "Environment has really declined since 9/11 as an issue for Americans," Mr. Dunlap says. "It's not that they've become antienvironment or want regulations weakened, but they're not thinking about environment."

Yet this may not hold at the local or regional level, where environmental issues may be gaining momentum, he says. Even big environmental groups say they are gaining ground now - including using new means to reach constituents who would not have joined them before.

For example, the use of the Internet as a tool to reach new faces combined with the Bush administration's "rapacious approach" toward the environment, are stirring the masses, says Tom McGuire, vice president of membership programs at the National Wildlife Federation in Reston, Va.

While traditional NWF membership maintained by direct mail has remained flat for a decade at about 1 million, the NWF has added about 700,000 "virtual members" in the past three years alone.

"We're doing more work online and bringing in a younger demographic," he says of virtual connections like the "backyard wildlife" section of the NWF website that allows anyone to chart rare wildlife in their yard.

His group is also drawing new alliances with the "hook and bullet groups," he says, referring to anglers and hunters who think Bush's forest policy "has an impact on stream quality and other ecosystems they care about."

One of the stealthiest segments of the environmental movement declines to even be called part of the movement - the fast-growing ecospiritual or ecoreligious movements within religious groups.

During the 1970s and '80s, there were only pockets of people in the religious community who saw pollution and other issues as connected to humankind and God, says Paul Gorman, executive director of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment (NRPE) in Amherst, Mass.

That changed in the 1990s.

Formed in 1993, the NRPE is a coalition of the US Catholic Conference, the National Council of Churches of Christ, the Evangelical Environmental Network, and the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life.

"Environmentalism didn't begin with Earth Day, it began with Genesis," Mr. Gorman says."God saw all that he had created and it was good. It begins with human stewardship."

This week 120,000 congregations will receive materials about clean air and other issues geared to Earth Day - such as helping ministers pick hymns that have themes about caring for God's creation.

The national "What Would Jesus Drive?" campaign launched in November 2002 by the Evangelical Environmental Network is probably the most visible effort so far.

Its success has led to "What should the governor drive?" - an interfaith effort to focus attention on government's choices for its auto and bus fleets.

The WWJD campaign has been aimed mainly at getting Christians to think and talk about their transportation choices - to make sure "this decision is a moral one," says the Rev. Jim Ball, the evangelical minister who conceived it. The environment is important, but religion is always at the forefront, he says.

"We are a very different voice from environmentalists," he says. "We're looking at how global warming and pollution coming out our tailpipes is hurting neighbors, children, and the poor. We are not the Nature Conservancy at prayer."

This is the sort of thing that makes perfect sense to many people, like Mr. Rappold, the Montana rancher, who sees a carefully nuanced distinction from himself and environmental groups.

"I work with environmental groups, but I don't belong to them," he says. "I can do more as an independent rancher. Besides, my view is that whether you're an environmentalist or rancher, everybody has to pull together to save the Front [range]. That's the only way we're going to save it."

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