guest commentary
A Sportsman’s Response to “Drill Here, Drill Now!”
By Guest Writer, 9-27-08
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| Caption: Corey Fisher of Missoula, Trout Unlimited's energy field coordinator. | |
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This simple slogan has become a rallying cry for folks fed up with high gas prices, approaching “Beef, it’s what’s for dinner” and “Pork, the other white meat” in its popularity. Clearly, Americans are fed up, and rightly so, with a sagging economy, a weak dollar and tightened budgets.
High gas prices have especially hit home with hunters and anglers. Don’t tell our spouses, but we spend a lot of money chasing deer, elk, pronghorn, trout, pheasants, grouse and the other game species that fuel our passion. In Big Sky Country, Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks released a report this year detailing that hunters spend $270 million in the state each year on hunting alone – add in about $300 million for fishing and hunters and anglers drive a significant portion of the state’s economy. Clearly, with tightened budgets, we have less money to spend at Bob Wards, Sportsmen’s Surplus, and countless other retail stores that cater to our innate need for stuff.
Additionally, Montana is a big state with diverse opportunities for the sportsmen, and we like to travel to sample as much as our budgets and home and work responsibilities allow. In short, high gas prices are especially hard on Montana’s hunters and anglers.
With that in mind, it would seem that hunters and anglers would support more drilling. The reality, however, is that we are accustomed to special interests against us dressed up in sheep’s clothing, waving red herrings and going off half-cocked.
Fact is, for those who haven’t witnessed massive leasing and drilling that has engulfed the Rockies in the past eight years, we’ve “been there, done that,” and it hasn’t worked.
Vice President Dick Cheney created the Energy Task Force in 2001 made up of the energy industry, and the Bush Administration passed the Energy Policy Act of 2003 that in part sought to vastly increase domestic production of oil and natural gas. Since then, record applications to drill have been processed for drilling public land, record lease sales have taken place, record productions have occurred, and yet, as the rate of all this drilling and production has increased, so to has the price at the pump.
But how can that be? The answer is simple: we don’t have enough dead dinosaurs…not even close. The U.S. has only 3 percent of the world’s oil reserves, yet we use 25 percent of it. If looking at just the Rockies, we have less than 1 percent of the world’s oil. This amounts to a drop in the barrel—literally—so it should come as no surprise that even though we’re already drilling here and now, it is not the answer.
The solution is a comprehensive energy policy that includes moving away from petroleum to renewable energy, conservation, and technological innovation. If it were as simple as punching more holes in the ground, we would not be in the mess we’re in.
Sportsmen have come to realize in the last decade that the places we hunt and fish: the Upper Green River Basin, Roan Plateau, Powder River Basin, Book Cliffs, and many other public hunting and fishing lands throughout the West are becoming industrial zones. Game is being run off, habitat is being destroyed, streams are sullied and we are losing the places we know and love. And the price at the pump keeps going up, and up…and up. Sportsmen know when they are getting a raw deal, and destroying more of our public lands for an unattainable, unachievable energy policy is only making this deal worse.
Yes, we can and should drill where we can do so in an environmentally sensitive way, but that is not what is happening right now. Outside Pinedale, Wyo., mule deer populations have plummeted 46 percent; in the Powder River Basin, sage grouse populations have plummeted, trout streams in western Colorado are being poisoned from careless spills, and here in Montana lands along the Yellowstone River have been leased for drilling. The Yellowstone River!
Few know our lands and understand the needs of fish and wildlife like sportsmen do, so Trout Unlimited, the National Wildlife Federation and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership have teamed up with over 300 local rod and gun clubs and businesses that cater to hunters and anglers to push for the Sportsmen’s Bill of Rights, a set of commonsense recommendations for our lawmakers and land management agencies to implement when balancing drilling with the immense fish, wildlife, and hunting and angling values our public lands are renowned for. While drilling is not the silver bullet, we know that, in the short term, drilling for natural gas and oil is a part of the solution. These recommendations will help to ensure that, while we continue to drill here and now, our hunting and angling heritage is not lost in the West, forever.
Corey Fisher is an energy field coordinator for Trout Unlimited’s Public Lands Initiative. He lives in Missoula, Mont., and can be reached via e-mail at .
[End of article]Like I said...Hunting for an Angle.
Trout Unlimited, Pew Trust, TRCP, NWF blah blah.
Never mind that muley declines in the Pinedale region might, just possibly MIGHT be associated with the epic long term drought as well?
Never mind that it's been oil and gas from other places that has always made it possible for sportspeople to travel to where they want to be, at a reasonable cost.
And that reasonable cost factor is going to affect sportspeople no matter where they are and where they want to be. That's a factor far larger than just the impact of petroleum exploration and production upon wildlife.
There is an alternative to drilling, park your vehicle and put a wood stove in the house.
Comment By Dave Skinner, 9-28-08I agree with the first, Marion, but not with the second. I remember what Missoula was like during the first Oil Shock. Combined with Hoerner Waldorf's stink and primitive wood stoves, and EVERYONE burning wood, with no clue on how to properly do so...it was a cauldron. Skied up at Snow Bowl a couple times, there was this nasty brown lake of smut under a cerulean blue Montana sky. Blech.
So glad I went to school in Bozeman. My lungs thank me.
Amen, Corey. Hunters and anglers have a long tradition of conservation and pragmatism, and there's nothing conservative or pragmatic about a reckless energy policy and a "drill, baby, drill" campaign platform.
The NRA would like us to think that what's at stake in this election is our Second Amendment right to own firearms. But the NRA doesn't represent hunters; they merely use us to promote their narrow agenda. Most folks know that what's really at stake is the integrity of our wildlife habitats, climate, and economy.
Both Obama and McCain support our Constitutional right to own firearms. McCain is campaigning to continue in the path of GWB's energy and economic policy; while Obama is running to stregthen middle class economics and dramatically build re-newable energy systems (which would also create lots of long-term jobs).
Thanks for this article.
paul
This reeks of Trout Unlimited so bad I can smell it from here....
Comment By Marion, 9-29-08Our rights are taken away everyday by judges with an agenda. The very last thing we need is an Obama apointing the same kind of activist liberal judges to the SCOTUS.
Remember O said that the courts should not be able to allow guns, it must be up to the cities.
We need to do everything we can to solve our energy and economy problem, we need to drill here, NOW, we need to get off our ass and get the generation 4 nuclear power program started at the Idaho National Laboratory. Cellulosic alcohol needs to get started in earnest; we need many more oil refineries. We need oil to gas production facilities in Montana and Wyoming. We need windmills in Nantucket sound and ANWR should have been pumping oil ten years ago. We need to carpet the Wyoming and the Great Basin with windmills.
I am a sportsman also and I will have more time to fish if I don’t have to start burning wood in my Blaze King because I can no longer afford heat with electricity.
When we cant afford energy we will have to adjust, when the Arabs have all our money we will have to adjust.
There is nothing worse for the environment than a bad economy not only because it makes the hassle of getting firewood mandatory, it also make it impossible for industry to be able to afford the Double bottom line, a business term used in socially and environmental, responsible enterprise and investment.
As I cheered today at the defeat of the ill-conceived Financial Rescue Bill but as I did so I was thinking of what I can do when I lose my job because of it.
I figured I could start cutting and selling firewood, I could stop releasing my trout, and I could hunt more than just the elk that I do presently, and everyone in the west who becomes poorer can do the same.
Environmentalists are terribly tunnel visioned!
Next time you happen to be in the vicinity of a "sportsman's" gathering, take a look at the vehicles....almost all are big trucks and SUV's. Obviously, it's an "all about me" attitude and to hell with low gas mileage and pollution. Can you imagine these "sportsmen" in anything but a gas guzzling rig? It just wouldn't be the "macho" image.
This is nothing but more BS from the National Wildlife Federation.
I'll add one more comment.......".sportsman" don't remove their fish from the water to photograph them. In fact, it's illegal in some states. The fish must be kept in the water while removing your fly. Posting pictures like this doesn't help fish survival and fish populations.
Comment By dorawy, 10-02-08Is it all about more, more, more? We need MORE energy to support our habits... Why aren't we trying harder to conserve energy so we wouldn't have to scramble to support our habit? The money spent on drilling for oil could be better spent investing in a more energy-efficient lifestyle, starting with helping companies and individuals lower their energy usage (and corresponding energy costs). This would help alleviate stress on the economy, the small business, and the individual. If the money used for drilling was instead used to move toward energy efficiency, individuals wouldn't actually have to make economic (or personal) sacrifices. Using less energy also meanings damaging fewer of the ecosystems that provide resources like clean water and fertile soil. Plus, we would damage fewer of the natural places that Montanans love.
What we really need is to be, well, conservative with our energy plans. We need to be careful to plan for the future, look at long-term solutions, and give up our ideas that we can have everything we want when we want it.
I think we are going to see folks cut back on the ability to stay warm this winter, especially if it is a bad winter. Some will probably die. We need the ability to keep warm in the winter. I don't use an air conditioner so that is not an issue. Folks do need gas to get to work, especially in this country, where they may have to drive long distances.
Certainly I would like to see all of these environmental meetings held via internet to cut the need for fuel, plastic bottles of water, etc. Think we coudl convince Mr. Gore to stay in his huge home instead of taking his jet and encouraging lots of folks to drive?
We have to have the fuel to survive now, while we work on alternatives for use 10-20 years away.
Dorawy,
Idealism is great but it often isn’t reality based, we already have a failing economy because of high fuel prices and democrats trying to put people in homes that couldn’t afford them.
$700 Billion is likely going to be appropriated today to bail out Wall Street; our progeny are going to be paying for that for generations. Coincidentally that is the amount we send to oil producing countries every year because democrats think our economy is something we can gamble with.
I commute 100 miles a day to work, as I can’t afford a home in Jackson Hole where the median priced home is $1,000,000. The environmentalists there don’t want any more homes built there, because they don’t want anyone in their green space so thousands of people have to commute 50 to 100+ miles to get there. I don’t think wanting a job is wanting too much; there aren’t many jobs in my town of 108.
The Idaho National Laboratory wants to develop generation 4 nuclear capability which will produce hydrogen for our future cars but the democrats in congress won’t let Generation 4 research pass because it has the word nuclear in it.
It gives me a warm feeling of progress when I see a hillside full of wind generators but environmentalists try to shut them down because birds fly into them.
We need to do all we can and develop ALL of our energy producing possibilities or we will pay dearly for our lack of planning.
I agree Dorawy...we want more, more, more. It comes down to supply and demand. They wouldn't be drilling if the demand wasn't there.
That gets back to my previous comment...Are hunters and fishermen ready to give up their gas guzzling trucks and SUV's? I doubt it. Let's see TU, NWF and TRCP "walk the walk" or quit complaining about more drilling.
Good point, Logger.
The fact remains that most sportspeople are NOT TRCP/TU/NWF member, but fully realize the sporting life takes resources.
Most horsie types understand the realities of a big old power-strokin' dually pickup with a fifth-wheel trailer, and the long road to the turn-around and corrals.
Even the most "pure" tree hugging vegan ecotopian jumps in the econorig and burns gas to get to the trail head. Or flies first class to Outer Underpittia for that geotourism vacation.
We all need resources. They are what they are, and they are WHERE they are...places both pretty and ugly. The bottom line is to consume those resources carefully and wisely, while producing them in the same way.
Sort of takes me back to the old WW2 slogan, "Is This Trip Necessary?" Maybe...if you want a life worth living.