`Hook and bullet' clubs shooting themselves in the foot
BY
SEAN PAIGE
In an alliance of odd bedfellows, hunting
and angling clubs are joining forces with their natural enemies, environmental
groups, in a bid to preserve their happy hunting grounds across the
And unless typical Americans stand up and
demand the continuation of the multiple use rules that long guided national
forest policy, they may soon find their access to public lands severely
limited, as these areas become the exclusive playgrounds of ecological or
recreational elitists who aren't willing to share.
This debate is only nominally about roads:
it's actually about who will have access to 60 million acres (or about a third)
of national forests, and whether these lands will continue to be managed for
multiple uses, balancing ecological, aesthetic and economic goals. That's why
this battle has implications for all Americans.
I don't do much hunting or fishing, but I
don't mind sharing the national forests with those who do. I have a
live-and-let-live attitude, believing that there's plenty of room for
everybody. But watching hook and bullet clubs joining forces with gang green to
support a roadless rule designed to severely limit
the people's access to "public" lands has me seeing these clubs in a
different light.
It seems some hunters and anglers have
become just another myopic special interest, which sees the roadless
plan as an opportunity to turn federal forests into private game preserves.
Public access should be limited, they argue, so there will be larger deer and
elk to hunt, and more serene trout streams to fish.
It's a selfish, short-sighted attitude that
could easily boomerang on these groups - since the same arguments and tactics
greens have used to exclude loggers, miners, ranchers and off-road vehicle
enthusiasts from national forests can easily be used to roll up the welcome mat
on hunters and fishers. Their eviction notice could be next if they embrace the
exclusionist impulse behind the roadless plan.
The battle between environmentalists and
resource industries has been raging for decades in the West. My scorecard still
has environmentalists winning far more than they lose, but a stalemate
generally prevails after years of legal and political combat. Now comes the roadless battle, which
began during the
Hunting and fishing clubs, because they are
perceived as more moderate and mainstream than green groups, may have enough
clout with Western governors be tip the balance in favor of the exclusionists.
But that would ultimately harm them, as much as it would the West.
The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation
Partnership is leading the push for states to adopt
But exclusivity, not accessibility, is
really the goal, since hunters and anglers already have access to most federal
lands. They want to do their thing in splendid isolation, without having to
cross paths with other people or share their playground with resource
industries.
Greens back roadless
areas because they want to evict "extractive industries" from public
lands. But hunting and fishing are also "extractive industries,"
anathema to those who worship nature and oppose human meddling in the wild. As
well organized as the hook and bullet clubs are, they are no match, in terms of
lobbying clout, for the big environmental groups - many of which would just as
soon see hunters and anglers thrown out of the forests. In such a power
struggle, hunters and sport fishermen will come out second best.
I don't mind sharing public forests with
rod and rifle types, as mentioned. But I know plenty of Americans who do -
people who see hunters as camouflage-wearing yahoos bent on blowing away Bambi.
An increasingly urbanized, Disneyfied
What goes around comes around, after all.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Sean Paige is editorial page editor at The
Colorado Springs Gazette. Readers may write to him at The Gazette,
Copyright 2006, The Gazette, a division of Freedom Colorado Information. All rights reserved.