Inside the Interior
Interior Department Recruits Hunters, Anglers, Yea-Sayers
By Hal Herring, 3-23-06
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The Department of Interior will announce the formation of the Sporting Conservation Council today, a group of men and women drawn from prominent shooting sports and hunting organizations. According to the press release:
"The council will provide important input in the areas of habitat restoration and protection; the impact of energy development on wildlife resources; forest and rangeland health; hunting access to federal lands; and other issues in which the sporting and conservation community can provide a valuable perspective to resource managers and senior leaders throughout the department…"
Former Interior Secretary Gale Norton says, "We wanted to find a way of institutionalizing the role of sportsmen and women in the decision-making process at Interior. Now, for the first time, sportsmen and women will have an officially sanctioned committee to advise Interior on issues important to them and the country."
Any hint that the current Department of Interior is listening to citizens who spend time in the outdoors, and seem to value wildlife, for whatever reason, is welcome. The forming of the council is a result of the extraordinary activism of hunters and fishermen in opposing some of the most extreme plans of both the Department of Interior and the Bush administration in general. Those familiar plans, such as the evisceration of the Clean Air Act, the attempted sell-off off public lands at bottom dollar to the mining industry, or the attempted rollback of wetlands protections (to name just a few), galvanized the opposition of millions of people who love to hunt and fish, and have maintained a strong connection to the natural world through their sport. The activism of these grass-roots sportsmen and women has been deeply disturbing to the Bush administration, because hunters and fishermen have traditionally been a conservative bunch. True to form, the administration has not yet realized that these conservative outdoorspeople have spoken out because policies like selling off the places where people of average means can fish and hunt are extremist and unnecessary. Instead, the dissenting hunters and fishermen are considered to be old friends who have somehow been brainwashed and are in bad need of an intervention to get them back in the fold. The Council members seem to have been carefully selected to lead that intervention. But wait. Without hope, the soul of an individual withers, just as does the soul of a nation.
It would be easy, but a mistake, to view the formation of the Sporting Conservation Council with paralyzing cynicism. First, let’s grant that the council can be defined by who is not on it.
The conservative Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Partnership was not invited (although some of the partners are). The TRCP, of course, opposed building new roads in roadless areas of the public lands, a position that the group has completely and mysteriously abandoned, as of last week, (too late, apparently). Trout Unlimited was not invited, because the group has opposed unfettered energy development on public lands, and pointed out that such development should not be exempted from regulations such as the Clean Water Act. The National Wildlife Federation will not be represented, even though its affiliates, such as the Montana Wildlife Federation, are comprised almost entirely of hundreds of thousands of hunters and fishermen. The NWF has loudly opposed the Bush plan to hold off regulating mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants until 2018, due to the impact on fisheries and fish consumption.
Coming to the table are men and women who are almost all staunch political and ideological loyalists. Susan Reece from the National Rifle Association is there. The Safari Club International’s Merle Shepherd is in. Bob Model of the Boone and Crockett Club, and fellow Boone and Crockett leader and former Forest Service Supervisor Steve Mealey will be on board. A cross-section of those hunting leaders who were invited to the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas, in 2004, are still insiders and will be on the council. Daniel Dessecker, of the Ruffed Grouse Society is in the group. In outdoor writer Ted Williams’ recent column in the magazine Fly Rod and Reel, Williams railed against the sporting organizations who have forsaken advocacy for environmental causes, and singled out the Ruffed Grouse society as a “make-believe conservation organization,”
with ties to the timber industry.
Among the centrists appointees are Jim Mosher of the North American Grouse Partnership, and John Tomke, of Ducks Unlimited. It is known that DU has clashed with the Administration over the proposed rollback of wetlands protections. Christine Thomas is Dean of the College of Natural Resources at the University of Wisconsin/Stevens Point Thomas is another centrist appointee, the recipient of dozens of awards --from the Safari Club among many other organizations -- for her activism and for her teaching work in defining the link between hunting and conservation. She is well- respected as the author of the book Becoming an Outdoors Woman: My Outdoor Adventure, which spawned a nation-wide educational movement of the same name, referred to as BOW.
Appointed to the group is Missoula’s Peter J. Dart, President and CEO of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. Following his visit to Crawford, Dart wrote in Bugle ( the RMEF’s magazine) that “it is truly great to have a President who is one of us, a hunter, a fisherman, and a conservationist,” and quoted the President as saying, “There is a big difference between conservationists and preservationists. Conservationists care. And we take action.” The column outraged many of the RMEF’s longstanding members, who were not eager to enter the realm of politics in the first place. Dart came to the head of the RMEF from the Safari Club, where he was Executive Director, and his arrival was part of a movement in the RMEF that amounted to a purge of many of the more traditional hunter conservationists that had built the organization. In the relatively small world of conservation professionals, that purge has been hashed and rehashed now for several years, searched for a larger political meaning that may or may not be there. (As full-disclosure and a biographical note: I have reported for Bugle magazine for seven years. Two years ago I wrote a two part series on energy development in the West and how it affected big game and hunting. Mr. Dart took an unprecedented role in editing the piece, and then sent copies of the story to the White House to make sure that it contained nothing offensive before it could be published. The incident, which was more complex than there is room to describe here, was an unpleasant window into how carefully the current administration monitors anyone who reports on the effects of its policies.)
A person rendered cynical by the Clear Skies Initiative, the Healthy Forests Initiative, or Gale Norton’s own Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy may find it impossible to take the Sporting Conservation Council seriously. That will be an opportunity tragically missed. Because even if there are appointees who are there simply as administration yea-sayers, there are others who came to their positions at the head of organizations like Ducks Unlimited through a sincere belief that wildlife and hunting underpin much that is healthy and positive about our country.
There is Steve Mealey who has been both wilderness outfitter and a supervisor in charge of logging public lands. While he may lean to a utilitarian ethic, his experience in western land issues is vast. If there are those in the council who came to simply greenwash anti-environmental policy, they might find themselves in an awkward and rather public spotlight. Christine Thomas has lived her beliefs and contributed to an enviable extent; a woman of her standing is not going to participate in a sham. The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation is one of the most effective wildlife habitat organizations in the nation. Faced with an administration chock full of extremists who cannot see the value in such efforts, its leader Mr. Dart will be forced to ask some very serious questions about what he truly believes and what the organization and its 132,000 members expect from him.
A return to moderation in public lands policy, and a reaching out to the rest of the citizens that want our country to regain its leading role in protecting the wildlife and waters and air, would be a great start.
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Comments
I am one of those hunters and anglers who sees the appointment of this "committee" with the appropropriate cyncism, as the members of the committee known to me have, in addition to the warts you mention here, shown a commitment to further privatization and commercialization of sport.
In particular, Bob Model, whom you mention, and John Baughman from the International Association of Fish & Game Commissions, whom you didn't mention but has been reported in the Wyoming press as also having been appointed to this council, are more committed to seeing that landowners profit from hunting and angling than to seeing that hunting and fishing is protected for all of us. Model, a very wealthy man, owns a ranch near Cody Wyoming and has long worked to gain control over hunting licenses for his personal benefit. Baughman was Director of the Wyoming Game & Fish Department for six years during the Geringer administration. It was under his watch that the so-called Private Land/Public Wildlife program came up, which proposed giving "incentives" to landowners by giving them hunting licenses to sell on the open market. Model's ranch was one of the ranches targeted for such largesse. Model has made subsequent political attempts, along with other wealthy landowners from the Cody area, to secure marketable hunting licenses.
Steve Mealy, when supervisor of the Shoshone National Forest, proved himself to be a timber beast with an eye to the profits of the timber industry rather than the health of his forest.
With the possible except of Christine Thomas, none of the people appointed to this committee have shown any commitment to the public trust, which is the only thing that stands between our right to hunt and fish by virtue of being citizens of the states where we live, and the determination of very wealthy people to assume control over wildlife for their own profit and pleasure, the situation that exists in Europe.
With an altered Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, and influence from Boone & Crockett and the Safari Club, all supporters of policies that give landowners greater control over wildlife and hunting and angling, what I see coming from this committee is an onslaught on the public trust.
While having such a committee in place in theory seems like progress, no organization is better than its members. No good will come from this council with its current membership.
A council with people like yourself, Jim Posewitz, Ted Kerasote, Tory Taylor, Dave Stalling, or even me might do some good. This one, I predict, will be a rubber stamp for all the wrong things.
Robert
Sam
With all respect, I respond.
If your cynicism is unfounded, the Department of Interior will hear from a group of men and women who represent a relatively powerful demographic of citizens that thinks and worries about the effects of gov't. policy on the American system of conservation, a complex demographic that is unique on this entire planet, and has accomplished a miracle in restoring wildlife, protecting wild country, and, more important, cultivating a way of looking at the world that recognizes that human existence is dependent upon, and enriched by, paying attention to, respecting, and safeguarding the natural world.
If your cynicism proves correct, for the first time, the conservation leaders invited to that table will be seen by the entire population of hunters and anglers and the members of their organizations as either helpless, or an active part of a conscious movement to facilitate and legitimize the actions of people who would undermine every aspect of this unique experiment in conservation and respect. I don't think such a revelation would be good for fundraising.
Conservation is a powerful American value. Will the men and women at that table be partners with those bent on ruining it, or will they fight for it, so that our country will stand tall as the visionary that it has been until recently?
Either way, we benefit by the creation of the council.
By the way, I read all of your posts, and they are a kind of fundamental resource for me.
Hal
I don't know what happened to TRCP, but the grapevine has pretty much laid down TRCP's initial funding and intent.
TRCP was created strictly as a Pew Trust attempt to split off the "naturist" faction from the hook-and-bullet crowd. Pew and Co from the Clinton roadless round noticed there wasn't much "gunny" support for roadless. Sure, there was Ted Kerasote, Ted Williams, Ted Kennedy (he wasn't?), Jim Posewitz, Tony Dean, Ben Long, the whole OWAA cadre, but the mainstream sportsman crowd didn't jump up and cheer.
Nor did they scream and yell.
Why? There's a huge leadship vacuum in sporting circles, most groups are either local or species based. Never mind how fragmented and fractured hunters are regarding each other's vices...the mutual hosing session that are our FWP meetings is just one example.
So, Pew can afford talent, at least people talented enough to comprehend the failures of the Heritage Forest Campaign.
Pew figures if they can chiz off a faction, the gunnies will get revenge on each other later, which helps the leftie, antigun agenda of a couple of other foundations who overtly support both gun control AND "environmentalism." W Alton Jones comes to mind. Joyce is another.
If the internecine squabble messes up NRA's strength on gun rights, all to the good. What a deal.
And let's not forget that TU acts as the fiscal pass-through for Pew funds to TRCP, and has been for a couple of years.
So yeah, I'm just as cynical as Robert H, but for fundamentally different reasons.
But the fact remains, this Interior effort is simply return fire for Pew's cooptive, preemptive strike. And I say about darn time.
Well, perhaps first we can dispense with the "respect" aspect of the discussion. I think it's a given, but it always makes me wary when a discussion begins with, "I respect my colleague from the other side of the aisle."
As far as it goes, I can't disagree with the structure of your post. "If this, then this, but if that, then that." That's simple logic.
It's simply that I think that the facts interfere with the logic. There are no real people on this council.
"Leaders" of "prominent" hunting and fishing organizations have been appointed to this council, which means mostly board members or executive directors of very large organizations. That is, we have people with corporate mentalities, and if I've learned anything in my 50 plus years, it's that the corporate mentality has no concept of the public good except as a cover for private interests and self interest. I can't think of a single high executive of any so-called "conservation" or "environmental" organization that I have any respect for. Once a bureaucrat, always a bureaucrat, and that's who gets those positions.
It's hard to believe that any of these individuals will come to this council with anything more than the particular interests of those organizations in mind. It's impossible for me to believe that the Safari Club, Boone & Crockett, or the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, or the International Association of Game & Fish Commissions for that matter, will advocate either for the public trust in wildlife or the public interest in conservation. These individuals will instead advocate instead the interests of their constituencies, most of whom represent the privatization/commercialization point of view, which, quite frankly, has little room for conservation of any wildlife other than the trophy game animals for provision to the market. Will any of thse people advocate for biodiversity? Ecosystem management? Predators?
No.
The single most glaring absence from talk about hunting and fishing is any recognition that science has progressed tremendously since the current wildlife management system was instituted in the 1930s. That is, wildlife management has stagnated in its agricultural beginnings while conservation biology now dominates discussions of how we understand the management implications of ecological research. At best, game management is obsolete. At worst, it's an obstruction to carrying out management activities that are rooted in the discovery that you just can't protect game animals any more, but you have to protect all species, you have to protect ecological functioning, you have to protect habitat at large scales.
So scientifically, we have advanced far beyond the game ranching and game farming aspects of wildlife management, but it's what we're stuck with, and right now, it's not benefiting hunting and fishing in particular or conservation in general. We're stuck with an unthinking, groveling bureaucracy that is well connected to commercial game ranching and farming, not to mention agriculture in general, in which there is no place for the public trust or the public good. It's about profit, pleasure, and power, pure and simple.
For example, Wyoming's elk feedgrounds.
I have watched this development with alarm, and have done what I could to prevent it from happening. In the long run, unfortunately, that's where we're going. There's too much money, and too much political power, behind it.
Be that as it may, perhaps you'll be able to keep track of the proceedings of what this council is doing and what it talks about and what the Department of the Interior does with its advice, and keep us informed. I stand ready to be proven wrong about the utility of this council, but quite frankly, it's going to take a lot to do that. I've seen too much bullshit flowing under the bridge in my lifetime, and too much bullshit from the people who've been appointed to the council.
All the best,
Robert
Did you read the story this morning about the
Evangelical leaders who are endorsing the Creation Care movement, and speaking out for environmental protection? I'll bet the Pew has somehow gotten to those ministers. You should blow the lid off of what's really going on.
Hal
Glad you noticed the same thing, yet another environmentalist effort to split off a chunk for its own purposes.
I'm not surprised to see the Zahniser Institute (Wilderness Society's Zahnie) on the list of partners.
Just another crockola, just like the Apollo Alliance or the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment.
Nor am I surprised at all by the phenomenon of "evangelical" environmentalism versus the usual paganistic or atheistic earth worship...I mean, if you read some of Terry Tempest Williams' stuff, there's a real sense of religosity -- including a desire to keep the infidels out of the temple.
That said...I support freedom of religion. And freedom NOT to have a religion -- or to have the state impose one upon me.
Doesn't this kind of opportunistic political predation push your journalist buttons at all, Hal?
I read with interest your piece about the newly created Sporting Conservation Council. I am a founding member, and member of the Board of Directors of the North American Grouse Partnership.
While most of the board, and probably most of the membership are ardent hunters of prairie grouse, this organization was formed to advocate for grassland and shrub-steppe ecosystems, far and away the most orphaned and threatened landscapes in the country. Note that many on the board of directors are North America's most prominent, active grouse biologists.
My inclination is to be highly skeptical about the new Sporting Conservation Council, especially in light of the organizations NOT represented, as you highlighted in your article. However, healing the falsely contrived yet real rift between hunters and anglers, and organized "environmental" groups is critical if we are to maintain any semblance of the natural legacy of North America, and the hard won conservation legacy of the late 19th and 20th centuries. The Wild Turkey Federation and Safari Club International are principally concerned with advancing hunting, and occasionally spend resources to wildlife habitat. In contrast, NAGP is not primarily organized around advocating for grouse hunting, but rather to bring attention to the plight of shrub-steppes and grasslands ecosystems, and to induce governments, corporations and NGOs to work in concert to protect and restore these ecosystems. In this sense we are like Trout Unlimited and the Izaak Walton League. We are not apologists for ranching or energy companies.
I am an ardent hunter and angler, and a card-carrying tree hugger from way back. One of the few bright spots for me in recent years has been discovering quite a few young people in the Inland Northwest who feel as I do. We have begun a movement to bring conventionally tagged "environmentalists" together with hunting and angling conservationists for meaningful advocacy for sustainable environmental quality in the Northwest.
Perhaps Jim Mosher's voice on this council will help advance a return to defensible management and policy at Interior and USDA. At least some of the council members may also be able to argue for widening the membership to include people from TU, the Ikes, and NWF. Maybe I'm just dreaming.
Sincerely,
Doug Pineo
The single best way to get the outdoors people back involved with the public lands is to vote this congress out, and then to vote for a pro-conservation president in 2008.
With all due respect to Mr. Herring's seven years of writing articles for the Bugle, my time with the Foundation dates back to nearly its founding. The RMEF grew beyond everyone's expectations (even its founders) because of a void in modern conservation organizations. The Foundation treated land owners, loggers, farmers and ranchers as potential partners--not potential enemies. The practical, hunter-friendly approach attracted an army of hard-working, blue collar volunteers. These volunteers have raised millions of dollars and preserved millions of acres of habitat.
Unfortunately, over time the Foundation attracted staff members, particularly in the Bugle, who held and espoused radical "deep green" environmental views that did not reflect the Foundation's pragmatic philosophy. The visit between J. Dart and President Bush exemplifies this divide.
Like him or not, President Bush runs the organization that owns more land in the West than anyone else: the Federal government. To Mr. Herring and others, Mr. Dart developing a positive relationship with the President was seen as "politics." Most long-time RMEF members saw Mr. Dart doing what the Foundation has always done... sitting at the table with anyone who can help us preserve, protect and manage the species.
The Board of Directors of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and J. Dart have asked some very serious questions. Mr. Herring and his friends simply do not like the answers.
As for the Bugle, I do not think any author is entitled to a bully pulpit in a privately owned and published magazine. For example, I do not think it is "censorship" when the Washington Blade declines to publish a religious gay-bashing essay. The former writers for the Bugle are free to continue writing. The current publishers of the Bugle are equally free to publish what they choose. Personally, I think all of this freedom is a good thing. You may worry about happened to poachers in feudal Europe. I worry about what happened to those who disagreed with the appointed "truthtellers."
Whatever the case, I'm glad to hear the POV of someone within the organization who has been through the whole thing, and more important, understands the whole thing.
I'm looking forward to the range war that's coming.
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
--Blaise Pascal
I appreciate your response to what I've written here, and hope that this will reach you.
First, I don't have any friends who wanted to turn the RMEF into a clone of the Sierra Club.
Bugle is not now, and never has been, a bully pulpit for any individual. It is one of the best hunting conservation magazines in existence, and I am proud to have been a part of it. It has been the single best place I have ever worked, and hopefully will continue to be.
I was concerned when Mr. Dart sent my stories to the White House because the stories were the result of months of work talking to people on every side of the energy development issue. Not all of those people agreed with the President's policies concerning development on the public lands. Many of them, for example, did not agree with the Bush admininstration's rollbacks in appliance efficiency standards which guaranteed that we would need much more natural gas, which would guarantee expedited development in big game winter ranges like the Pinedale Anticline. I did not feel then, and do not feel now, that the readers of Bugle magazine need to have the White House approve the articles that they read.
If you are looking for politics, you found it when those stories went to the White House.
As I stated in my article here at New West, I have every hope that the Council to which Mr. Dart has been appointed will be of value to hunting and to conservation policy. But nothing will be served if the people who sit at that table do not speak up for the protection of the resources that wildlife need to thrive. And it will require some backbone.What will render the council worse than a waste of time, is if its members sit nodding their heads like a pump jack, begging for approval from policy makers who do not have the best interests of the hunting and fishing community, or the environment that supports both sports, in mind.
Thanks,
Hal Herring
I beg to differ on the Sierra Club trend as it shook out in RMEF. It's a fact that a fair number of RMEF casualties are now at TU, NWF et al, which in light of their official organizational positions on many, many issues, ARE de-facto clones of Sierra -- or if not clones, cuzzins.
You yourself mention Steve Mealey. He's sure as heck no pump-jack, and it cost him. I admire him for that. And he's outrageously smart on top of his pragmatism.
As for the ever-tactful Mister Hoskins...Bob, people like you are a large part of the reason the open hand of welcome in the West is becoming a closed fist.
I have always noticed that American corporate fascists and their fawning scalawags, when criticized for the destruction of land and wildlife, or criticized for the theft of our common heritage, fall back on the claim that the opposition is only made up of "religious fanantics." I think not. The word, rather, is "patriot," a word the true origin for which in America is 1776. No doubt had Ken Decker and Dave Skinner been around in 1776, they'd have been Tories. Figures.
Robert
If you are a professional writer, I trust you know how the business works. If you don't like the way Mr. Dart or the RMEF reviews or edits your story, you are welcome to sell your work elsewhere. If you have written a modern masterpiece (or even an interesting hatchet job), you should be able to find a publisher.
You wrote that, "Mr. Dart took an unprecedented role in editing the piece, and then sent copies of the story to the White House to make sure that it contained nothing offensive before it could be published."
Did Mr. Dart tell you why he edited your story? Do you know why he sent a copy of your work to the Bush administration? Do you have any evidence his intent was to vet the story? Do you have any proof that anyone in the Bush administration actually responded or made an attempt to influence the editing process?
If we are going to sit around the campfire and wonder aloud, I can speculate that given the nascent relationship between the RMEF and the White House, Mr. Dart sent an advance copy of your work as a courtesy. Knowing a bit about politics, I can further speculate that he received a generic form letter because if anyone in the Bush administration actually read your story (doubtful at best), they concluded that it would fall well short of becoming "Appliance-gate." Why, I can even ponder the possibility that Mr. Dart edited your story because he found it long-winded, biased and dull.
What we seem to have in common, Mr. Herring, is that neither you nor I know what Mr. Dart was thinking when he edited your story or sent a copy to the White House. Where we differ? If I had just implied my publisher was a political lackey taking orders from Washington, I would not waste my time hoping he would publish my work in the future.
No doubt the great purge at Bugle about which Ken Decker is so proud is due to Dan Crockett and Dave Stallings' understanding of the scientific issues surrounding wildlife conservation and their devotion to the "public" aspect of the public's wildlife. No doubt the precipitating event for the purge was Bugle's publishing its series on commercialization. Dr. Valerius Geist had the first article in the year long series and I had the honor of writing the last article. I know it took a year to get the gutless "brass" at RMEF to give permission for the series. I also understand that the series offended important RMEF board members, the privatizers and the canned hunters--the ones with no ethics.
The purpose of a writer is to tell the truth. Part of the truth is to tell the story of the despicable and cowardly political censorship that publishers engage in. I'm glad that Hal has told the story of how Peter Dart sent his story to the White House for vetting--and that's exactly what it was--which is no different than a story being sent to Berlin or Moscow for vetting. It was also a perfect example of brown-nosing.
I hope RMEF members and Bugle readers are now more aware that RMEF is selling them out by lying to them.
Your insults will inspire no further reply from me. And you are speculating on something that you know nothing about.
Hal
You may remember a time in the deep dark past when I was HCN's WOTR token redneck. And in a way I was honored that the Marstons, Larmer and even Rocky Barker felt I deserved the opportunity.
But the fact I got tired of having all the edges ground off, and honestly see no point in making the effort any more. Do I criticize HCN? I'd sure like to, but the fact is, even a nonprofit has to please its customers, in this case the foundations that pay the bills and play the politics. I do respect WOTR a bit less than I otherwise would, but it's their positional credibility on the line. They've made a choice. And in a way I made mine.
As one who has worked with editors (not always pleasantly, fer shure), I know the game, too. I feel Mr. Decker is awfully close to the truth -- and if you don't want to concede that, well, that IS your choice. Whether it is a wise one might be another matter.
I've enjoyed the back and forth here -- it's been...well, challenging, and something new for me.
This medium of communication is something new in the world, and I find it is powerful and dangerous as well as positive.
The power is in the free and fast exchange of ideas, and the broadening exposure one gets to people who may view the world from a position 180 degrees removed from oneself.
The danger is that there is no human interaction -- no handshake, no clenched fist, no facial expression, no sudden recognition that the person across the table is a human being. Hate and meanness come in pretty easy, I find.
It seems too easy to bait and try to hamstring one another, shouting or quietly responding with one’s own views, throwing them out over all this space and country that separates us, across all this country that, I think, everybody who has commented here believes is the best land in the world, across all that timber, and canyon and prairie, and all those rivers pouring out of the mountains where the elk and mule deer are waiting for greenup. It is country worth fighting for, and it’s worth every minute of hard edged debate about its future. I’m in that debate whether I like it or not because I feel so strongly about my home and my nation. So are all of you.
In the end, I think the fact that we’ve carried this so far means we value a lot of the same things.
I got to leave this one to rest as much as it will rest.
Hal