TRCP, GUARANTEEING YOU A PLACE TO HUNT AND FISH

New Group Carries on the Legacy of Theodore Roosevelt

By Bill Schneider, 10-18-07

I don’t know if you believe in the power of visualization, but if you do, you should visualize former republican president and legendary conservationist Theodore Roosevelt in his grave out near Sagamore Hill, his New York home, with a huge smile on his face.

The reason is the roaring success of his newest namesake group called the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP).

I’ve recently returned from the TRCP Media Summit in Craig, Montana, and several engaging conversations with new group’s leadership. As I drove away, I had to say to myself, “it’s about time this happened.”

“We started up only five years ago,” says President and CEO George Cooper, with a big smile. “We’ve been told that it takes this long just to get established, but we are already having a big impact.”

So, you may be asking, what is TRCP? If you don’t know, I wouldn’t be embarrassed because of the newness and under-the-radar-line approach. Basically, TRCP is trying to unify the much-divided hunting and fishing constituency and make it the political force it should be.

“We don’t have a grassroots connection with the hunter and angler,” Cooper explains. What he really meant to say, I suspect, is “until we came along.”

Cooper is talking about the current conservation group landscape with a lot of different groups, most with a narrow or species-specific focus, working hard to represent their small slice of the entire sporting population, which even in the face of recent declines is still 40 million Americans. Meaning no disrespect for any groups, most of which do a terrific job for their members, but no conservation group has made any progress in connecting all these organizations into a united political front. And that’s precisely what TRCP is doing.

Jim Range, chair of the TRCP board of directors and a driving force behind getting the group off the ground, explained that no group was really getting ahead of the game on major federal legislation affecting fishing and hunting and having an impact on the bill, let alone serving as a national voice for the sporting public. “In the past, when we started working on legislation, it was already too late,” Range admits. “The deals were already made.”

So, in the first years of TRCP’s existence, Range looked at the congressional agenda and singled out the upcoming legislation that would likely have the biggest impact on fish and wildlife habitat, and to the surprise of many hunters and anglers, he came up with the highway bill, a massive piece of federal legislation not even on any conservation group’s radar screen.

“We started working on the highway bill,” Range notes, “and when it finally passed, it included $2 billion for fish and wildlife.”

(No, that wasn’t one of my typos; it was really $2 billion, not $2 million, with more billions to come as TRCP started working on other bills.)

After this initial success back in 2004 with the highway bill, TRCP hit its stride. Now, Range says the big priority is the upcoming farm bill. “We got into this one early.”

The farm bill, you may be asking, but think again. “This is the biggest bill ever to come out of Congress that affects fish and wildlife,” Range claims, “and we are going to get everything we had in the past farm bill and more.”

Geoff Mullins, TRCP staffer working on the Farm Bill, told me later that the House-passed version of the legislation already includes $21.5 billion for wildlife and hunting access programs, mostly for the Crop Reserve Program (CRP), which he calls “The Holy Grail of wildlife conservation.” And Mullins said, “we hope to increase that amount in the Senate.”

Again, we’re talking billions, not millions. You don’t hear those numbers often when talking about wildlife conservation. Not until TRCP started rolling, of course, and that’s considered a “big impact” in anybody’s book.

The key word in TRCP’s success is “partnership.” This collaborative approach was a ripe idea. All conservation groups struggle to affect the course of major federal legislation, so TRCP came around to become what you could call a “trade association” for hunting and fishing groups. Right now, TRCP has 27 nonprofit partners (Pheasants Forever, Trout Unlimited, Trust for Public Land, Wildlife Society, et al) and 18 corporate supporters (Orvis, Remington, Patagonia, Plum Creek, Versus, et al), all working together to, as Cooper describes, “represent the interests of all 40 million hunters and anglers.”

And I strongly suspect this diverse list of companies and nonprofits will grow rapidly in the next few years.

Our senators and representatives have never seen this type of bottom-up, aggressive coalition form for fish and wildlife interests, and based on current successes, they’re obviously listening. In politics, numbers make a big difference. (How’s that for an understatement?) And TRCP has the right numbers.

Right now, according to Cooper, TRCP can say it represents the interests of about nine million anglers and hunters, roughly the combined memberships of all partner organizations. On top of that, TRCP recently formed relationships with 23 trade unions because their research found that 70 percent of union members hunt or fish. Now, TRCP have 23 charter members of what’s called the Union Sportsman Alliance.

So, listen up senators and representatives, to that nine million, you can add 70 percent of the membership of these unions, and you have TRCP representing the best interests of another 16 million hunters and angers, most of which do not now belong to any of conservation organization. All of a sudden one group, for the first time ever, is speaking for all of us hunters and anglers, or at least 25 million of us. And again, listen up politicos, a high percentage of hunters and anglers vote. Without doubt, these numbers can swing any election at any level.

In my view, the founders made at least three strategic decisions years ago that allowed TRCP to quickly go where no conservation group has ever gone.

First, the group only focuses on a few mega-issues that have the greatest impact on fish and wildlife habitat and sporting access instead of getting spread too thin by chasing every issue that comes along. Right now, TRCP is concentrating on only four issues--fossil fuel development, the farm bill, mining law reform and the roadless rule--with minor activity on a few other issues.

Second, TRCP doesn’t take radical positions on issues, which leaves behind the hyperactive left and right but scores points with the broad middle of the political spectrum, which, regrettably, is not as outspoken as the extreme fringes. As witness to this strategy, Cooper points out that “we aren’t trying to stop oil and gas development; we just want it done right.”

One night after dinner, Range launched a discussion on politics--because, of course, you never talk about politics before dinner. In listening to this discussion, it was gin-clear that TRCP’s plan would work. Even though all or most partners hunt and own guns, for example, several people in the group discussion described the group’s efforts as “beyond guns” or “more than guns,” in a thinly veiled reference to the gun lobby which has been so effective in protecting the Second Amendment, but not on wildlife habitat and access issues, if not in conflict with them.

This moderate approach is obviously working on the farm bill. Here, TRCP worked closely with its partners and came up with detailed recommendations endorsed by all partners and then presented to Congress as the “national plan” from the fishing and hunting public. And the results are already in--85 percent of what TRCP and its partners asked for actually showed up in the final House-passed version of the farm bill. (The Senate votes on it sometime in the next six weeks.)

Third, TRCP founders looked out there and saw one reason no group has been able to successfully represent all groups. Most conservation groups compete with each other for members and foundation money. Instead of competing with other conservation groups, TRCP supports and compliments them, effectively increasing the reach and impact of all the groups. TRCP doesn’t even have paid membership, but you can click here and become an individual “partner.” I hope you do and add yourself to the more than 100,000 anglers and hunters who already have signed up.

Cooper is politically reserved when he talks about all this success--"The ship is turning a little bit, but it isn’t going to turn a lot until we get a new administration.”

That sounds conservative to me. I bet it turns a bit more before the election, as long as partners--nonprofit, corporate or individual--keep signing up to be part of the long-awaited solution

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.