Why Can’t The Right Get Conservation Right?

©Michael Furtman

I had the pleasure recently of speaking at the Wisconsin Council of Trout Unlimited’s annual banquet. During the course of the evening, I also had the pleasure of meeting many like-minded conservationists, people who give so much of their time and energy to defend and improve those natural resources we all care about.

One gentleman was up from the Chicago area. We exchanged email addresses and about a week later, I received this message from him:  

“I have read your articles in Midwest Fly Fishing with great interest and at times used your writings as inspiration to formulate articles for our newsletter,” he wrote. “I must have done something right because I have received a few nasty letters accusing me of being a “Democratic Liberal”. The amazing thing is that my only audience is Trout Unlimited members; we definitely need more educational initiatives for this group.”  

It is the sign of the times that anyone who writes about conservation will almost immediately be branded by the ditto-heads out there as being a liberal. It makes little difference if your writing for your local TU chapter newsletter, or a national magazine. Inevitably you will get filed away by the conservative right as some kind of a nut.  

It wasn’t always so, of course, but today’s Republicans know little about the impressive conservation history of their own political party, and those who do, seem to believe that those past efforts were some kind of a mistake.  

The truth is that there have been many great conservation leaders, in politics and out, that were politically conservative. Just a few decades ago, our nation passed some of the best, and most needed, environmental protection laws using massive bipartisan support. The Clean Air Act. The Clean Water Act. The Endangered Species Act. And there were others.  

But that support for the environment changed dramatically beginning with the Reagan administration, and outright hostility to environmental protection became the norm with the Republican Revolution of the mid-1990s which saw the rise in power of such anti-environment politicians as Newt Gingrich.  

Now many on the right will be quick to point out that environmental protection laws are flawed; they are onerous, are too complicated, or don’t do the job intended while being burdensome.  

There may or may not be truth to those statements, but the fact is that the rights’ answer to these problems hasn’t been to fix the rules, or introduce new ones that actually protect the environment while streamlining their application, but to simply gut the laws, or fail to reauthorize them, or nominate judges who overrule them.  

There is a certain amount of irony in the fact that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, after his questionable duck hunt with VP Dick Cheney, complained about the quality of the hunting. Said Scalia after the hunt:  

“[t]he duck hunting was lousy. Our host said that in 35 years of duck hunting on this lease, he had never seen so few ducks.”  

The irony is that Scalia was in the majority when, in January 2001, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled that the Clean Water Act should not apply to isolated wetlands. In fact, the very reason the court case was brought was to determine if the federal rules that extended protection to isolated wetlands because they are used by ducks and other migratory birds, were legal. Scalia and the conservatives on the court ruled they could not be protected for this reason.  

There is little doubt among scientists, or even the general public, that wetlands serve many vital purposes. Given that, it would seem that even conservatives would then seek a better rule, a different way, of protecting wetlands.  

Nope.  

Instead, the Bush administration, in January 2003, instructed the Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corp of Engineers to tell their regional field staff not to require Clean Water Act permits for activities that pollute or destroy many wetlands and seasonal streams unless they first get permission from agency national headquarters. Which, of course, is nearly impossible to get.  

An additional irony is that many sportsmen and women voted for Bush because “he’s one of us.” Supposedly he hunts and fishes, and because of that, he must be OK. Millions of anglers and hunters bought that during his first election campaign.  

But there seems to be a rebellion growing.  

All across the U.S. , anglers and hunters are starting to question the “friendliness” of Bush to the environment. Editorials and articles are appearing, including even in USA Today, the New York Times, and Washington Post, in which hunters and anglers are publicly stating their displeasure with the conservative assault on natural resource protection.  

Said a USA Today article:  

Hunting and fishing conservation vs. resource development on public lands is a growing issue throughout traditional GOP enclaves in the American West. Along Montana 's Rocky Mountain Front, for example, protests from sportsmen on natural gas exploration are ringing out. This area is revered by hunters and fishers for its world-class trout and large populations of big game.

"Areas like this should be last on the list," says Paul Hansen of the Izaak Walton League. "A lot of conservative-voting people are pretty unhappy over the Bush administration's record on issues like this." And that record was amplified by the ringing silence accorded environmental issues in last week's State of the Union message.

"What's happening now on public lands is forcing sportsmen to organize," adds Chris Wood, vice president for conservation at Trout Unlimited. "Never before have our interests been as at risk as they are now." His group boasts close to 150,000 members, fewer than 30% of whom say they are Democrats.  

And from the Washington Post:  

The Mule Deer Foundation is one of many hunting groups objecting to the administration's push to accelerate coal-bed methane drilling in Wyoming and New Mexico . The drilling technique, which pumps water out of shallow aquifers to get at methane trapped in coal seams, has laced vast tracts of Wyoming -- including prime deer-hunting land -- with roads, wastewater pits, power lines and noisy compressor stations.  

"Remove the best habitat from 8 million acres and deny its use to 150,000 mule deer, and you have some idea of the potential impact of uncontrolled CBM [coal-bed methane] development in northern Wyoming ," Dale Ackels wrote in the foundation's magazine, Mule Deer.  

There are nearly as many reasons to oppose the conservative agenda on the environment as there are hunters and anglers who care about such things. For instance, about 450 gun clubs across the United States – including 49 combat handgun clubs – have signed a petition objecting to the administration's proposal to remove the Tongass National Forest in southeast Alaska from the protection of a Clinton-era rule that bans new roads in undeveloped parts of the forest. The Tongass contains perhaps the world's premier salmon fisheries and is a favorite site for high-end big-game hunting.  

For others, it is the threat to public lands – and thus angling and hunting – in the American West.  

Far from being a bunch of tree-hugging liberals, a group of gun makers, ranchers, guides and other hardcore outdoorsmen recently traveled to Washington to protest the administration’s energy policies.  

"Hunting and fishing isn't something we do. It's who we are," said Ryan Busse, from Kalispell, Montana, vice president of sales for firearms maker Kimber Manufacturing Inc. "Someone who wants to take that away from us - as much as we want to support them on everything else - we can't support."  

Busse was one of seven Westerners who appeared at an event sponsored by Trout Unlimited to oppose the Bush administration’s energy bill, which would speed drilling across the West (and near the Mason Tract in Michigan) and offer subsidies to boost the West's coal-bed methane boom.  

"It's time I stood up and was counted," said Wyoming outfitter Courtney Skinner of Pinedale, whose family runs one of the largest elk hunting guide businesses in Wyoming and who also came to Washington. "We have to protect the things that keep our heritage going."  

Stony Burk is another lifelong Republican who says he is now "sincerely sorry" he voted for Bush and Montana 's slate of GOP federal lawmakers because of the administration's plans to dramatically expand energy development along the Rocky Mountain front.

"They're saying, 'We're going to take your beautiful daughter and just cut a little scar across her face and it really won't harm her visage, so which cheek should we scar, which cheek should we build a road on,' " said Burk. "This land does not belong to George Bush and it does not belong to the oil and gas companies. The essence of this place will be destroyed."  

Burk’s arguments have a familiar ring – to those of the Anglers of the Au Sable right here in the Midwest , who are courageously fighting a similar incursion near the famed Mason Tract.  

To my friend who has been getting the nasty-grams for writing about conservation in his TU chapter newsletter: Keep It Up.  

Keep it up because conservation should not be a partisan issue. Opposing a president’s policies, whether you belong to his party or not, is not traitorous. In fact, the only real hope for true environmental stewardship is that the Republican party will again embrace it.  

Until then, we will only be treading water – and dirty water at that.

(This article originally appeared in Midwest Fly Fishing magazine. © Michael Furtman.)