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Major organizations promoting wise use ideas include Alliance for America, the American Land Rights Association, the Cato Institute, the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, the Heartland Institute , and the Property and Environment Research Center . Several environmental advisors to president George W. Bush have been associated with the wise use movement. These include Terry Anderson and Interior Secretary Gale Norton. Groups which the wise use movement would rather not be associated with, such as the John Birch Society, the Unification Church, and the Lyndon LaRouche organization, have sometimes attempted to hitch themselves to the wise use cause, and hold similar views on environmental issues to the wise users.
Critics such as Carl Deal, author of The Greenpeace Guide to Anti-Environmental Organizations, and Political Research Associates, an organization run by Chip Berlet, charge that many wise use organizations give the appearance of being popular grassroots movements, but are actually front organizations for industry groups with a financial interest in movement's agenda.
Because of the incentives offered by their positions, many conservationists tend to err on the side of being overly cautious of change, while developers and industrial interests can tend to be overly optimistic about environmental effects. The wise use movement, along with most of its detractors, sees the issue as finding a solution which will allow responsible use of the Earth's resources without frustrating responsible and productive development.