The Green Sportsman

Can the endangered Yellowstone cutthroat survive the fertilizer industry in Idaho? That's the question western fishermen are asking after a recent a report showed high concentrations of selenium in the Yellowstone drainage is putting the troubled native cutts in even more jeopardy. Read it here.

Selenium is a by-product of mining operations that produce phosphate, primarily for the fertilizer industry. The naturally-occurring element poses no threat at normal levels and, in fact, is important to human health. But the high concentrations that leach into drainages from waste rock at mine
sites are deadly to fish, and pose health risks to humans.

Green sportsmen and others for years have been pushing Idaho's powerful phosphate industry to clean up its act, but have been thwarted by compliant Washington administrations. In 2005, for example, the Bush Administration proposed raising the amount of selenium pollution in waterways using research whose author said was being misinterpreted.

This latest report, by two Idaho State University researchers, was paid for by the Boseman-based Greater Yellowstone Association, which has been a lead player in battles to protect one of the nation's most cherished landscapes, which is also a holy shrine for trout fishermen.

Southeast Idaho has been ground zero in the selenium debate because it has three operating phosphate mines and 27 closed mines--seven of which left the environment in such terrible condition that they have been declared Superfund sites.

Yellowstone cutts have been in decline for decades, primarily due to dilution of the species gene pool and reduction in its range by the introduction of non-native species like lake trout. Fisheries scientists
fear the rising selenium levels could be a finishing blow.

Mining interests said the report was just another effort by greens to prevent expansion of one phosphate facility. They're probably right. But that doesn't mean the research is inaccurate--or that a prized game fish won't be fighting for its life against increasing odds.

And one more point: These are public lands and public water the phosphate miners are using and polluting. The public should have the right to set the conditions for that opportunity--not the applicant.

The ranks of actively-green western sportsmen increased this week with the formation of Sportsmen for the Wyoming Range. A coalition of hunters, anglers, and sporting organizations concerned with the runaway pace of energy development in their backyards, the group says it has two main objectives:

1. No new oil and gas leases on public lands in the Wyoming Range.
2. A process that would allow trade-outs or buy-outs of existing oil and gas leases at fair market value (agreed to by leaseholders) and a retirement of leases that are traded or bought.

Part of the Bridger-Teton National Forest, the rugged Wyoming Range stretches for 150 miles on a north-south line south of Jackson and between US. 189 and US. 89 (click map image to enlarge). For most visitors to the state, it's that other range to the west of the famous Wind River Range. But to generations of Wyoming sportsmen, it has long been the destination of choice, a place where a resident could find big mule deer, herds of pronghorns, grouse, trophy trout--and very few tourists.

But more than 200,000 acres have been leased for energy development in the Wyoming Range, posing threats to the migration routes of this wildlife, and to water quality for the fish. Wyoming sportsmen have been alarmed at the loss of wilderness qualities over the last six years they once took for granted.

"We realize that industries like oil and gas companies bring a lot of money to Wyoming and we absolutely support them, but we also believe that there are some places that should be left as they are for our sons and daughters to hunt and fish and enjoy for years to come. The Wyoming Range is such a
place," said Tom Reed, who has hunted and fished the range for 20 years and is field coordinator with Trout Unlimited in Wyoming, one of 13 groups that have signed up.

I hope the group understands it's in for a tough fight. National groups, including the influential Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, have been protesting the Bush administration's policies in the Rocky Mountains for years, with limited success. Just this week the TRCP filed a formal protest with the Bureau of Land Management for putting 28 parcels of Wyoming lands considered critical mule deer habitat by the state up for lease. It's not the first time sportsmen have been stunned by the pro-oil, anti-sportsman stance of the agency.

So, good luck SWR. Get ready for a long, hard slog.

More good news for green sportsmen: Early signs from the new Congress indicate that it may well break the grip of big oil on the nation’s energy policy. That news came late last week when the House passed H.R. 6, rescinding $14 billion in tax and royalty breaks given the oil industry by the Bush Administration, and reinvesting them in an energy efficiency and renewable energy fund.  (Read the full report here.)

This is great news for sportsmen, because the so-called energy policy under the Bush Administration has been to sweep away decades-old protections for fish, wildlife, clean air, and clean water to allow energy development almost anywhere at anytime. Backed by a compliant Republican Congress for six years, the administration heedlessly bushed aside the concerns of long-time supporters to allow easier profits for the industries that have bankrolled much of its campaigns.  This has been especially obvious in the mountain west, where Bush Administration disregard of sportsmen’s concerns has finally provoked a backlash.

Green sportsmen now have the job of convincing the Senate to follow suit, and to urge both houses to heed the wishes of the overwhelming number of sportsmen, and other Americans, by moving forward with an energy policy that stresses conservation and respect for the environment.

Green sportsmen continue to make the biggest news – and impact – on the environmental front with the announcement today that the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership is joining forces with organized labor to form the Union Sportsman's Alliance.

The TRCP, which lists most hunting and fishing groups on its roster, will gain about 20 million more affiliates through the labor unions. More importantly, both groups will increase their political influence in Washington.

The news is being hailed by most observers of the environmental movement and politics as a possible master stroke that could dramatically increase the importance of green concerns in Congress.

Eric Smith, a professor of environmental politics at the University of California at Santa Barbara, told The Washington Post the alliance is a "huge deal" and a "political breakthrough" that will put substantial pressure on Congress to protect large tracts of federal land, especially in the Rocky Mountain West.

The TRCP, led by chairman Jim Range, one of the best-connected Republican lobbyists in Washington, has been working on the deal for three years. Polls showed some 70 percent of union members hunt and fish, while 72 percent were concerned about the loss access of fish and wildlife habitat. Forging an alliance with organized labor will increase access for sportsmen’s conservation groups to pro-labor lawmakers who might not have been interested in their issues in the past.
"We can make the union movement and environmentalism compatible and not antagonistic," Tom Buffenbarger, president of the International Association of Machinists told The Post. "As of late, an awareness has grown that our goals are the same. We want good air, clean water and access to the outdoors."

Perhaps just as importantly to the wider green movement is the idea that the presence of organized labor will help dispel the stereotype that environmental issues are the concern of only a thin slice of the educated elite and liberals. Sportsmen have been burning that image during the last few years as they rebelled against the excesses of the Bush Administration in destroying protections for fish and wildlife, especially around energy operations in the Rocky Mountain west.

It’s unlikely mainstream environmental groups could have forged a similar partnership with organized labor. But sportsmen and union members have the same approach to environmental protection – as active participants in the ecosystems that are being destroyed by shortsighted changes in national policy.

Evidence continues to mount that sportsmen are returning to their environmentalist roots with this news from Sunday's Washington Post: Officials inside The National Rifle Association are openly criticizing the Bush Administration's policy on public lands, and pushing their organization to become greener and less politically partisan.

From the Washington Post:

The Bush administration has placed more emphasis on oil and gas than access rights for hunters said Ronald L. Schmeits, second vice president of the NRA, a member of its board of directors and a bank president in Raton, N.M. We find that our members are having a harder time finding access to public land," said Schmeits, who recently pushed the NRA to lobby for congressional protection of the game-rich Valle Vidal forest on federal land in New Mexico. Gun rights are still number one, but there will be more time and effort spent on this issue [by NRA leaders] as we move forward.

The mainstream press accurately sees this as a significant change for the NRA, which has traditionally been a rubber stamp for conservative administrations that tend to be pro-gun but anti-environment. As the Post's Blaine Harden reports "Such a change in policy could undercut a key argument that the NRA uses to raise money, sway voters and help elect candidates. It has long warned its members that many environmentalists are advancing a subversive gun-grabbing agenda masterminded by liberal Democrats.

That history of demagoguery has been covered in detail on the pages of Field & Stream in recent years, an effort that has brought some heated criticism from NRA loyalists. So it's gratifying to hear an NRA official like Schmeits admit what has been obvious to so many sportsmen for so long: There's no inconsistency in being pro-gun and pro-environment.

But sportsmen have also long been aware of another truth about the NRA: Conservation has never been its main concern of the NRA.

That's been obvious in its knee-jerk denunciation of almost any and all environmental proposals opposed by the Republican Party, which has always been stridently pro-NRA. Although the NRA's transparent political strategy was to secure congressional support for its positions by backing pro-gun congressmen on all other issues, in recent years most sportsmen – including NRA members – realized that policy may be great for target shooters and gun collectors, but suicide for anyone who relies on public lands and waters for hunting and fishing.

The biggest news could be that this is the second national media story in as many months (see my Dec. 21 blog) on the growing role of sportsmen in battling the anti-fish and wildlife environmental policies of the Bush Administration.  Hopefully our community has decided to reassert its leadership in America's environmental movement.

A breakthrough of sorts came over the holidays when the Bush Administration announced climate change was hurting polar bears. Read it here.

This is widely perceived to be the first admission by President Bush--considered the nation´s Sportsman in Chief by many hunters and anglers--that global warming is real, a moment being hailed in other parts of the world as a possible turning point in addressing what most heads of state consider the most pressing environmental concern of the century.

If that’s an accurate reading of the president´s opinion, then he´s only following the lead of the majority of America´s sportsmen, who came to that conclusion much earlier last year. That concensus was revealed in a national survey conducted by Responsive Management for the National Wildlife Federation. Read it here.

It´s encouraging to find Secretary of the Interior Dick Kempthorne making statements that his agency "takes climate change very seriously and recognizes the role of greenhouse gases in climate change." Those words would never have crossed the lips of his predecessor, Gayle Norton. But cabinet secretaries never utter words on policy without getting them approved from the White House. That´s important to remember when assessing this other quote from Kempthorne. “That whole aspect of climate change is beyond the scope of the Endangered Species Act.”

So what we´re seeing is a small thaw in the president’s attitude toward a crisis that threatens the future of public hunting and fishing, not to mention human health.

Still, it´s not a bad start for the New Year--sportsmen who care about their future should contact their congressmen to support the decision.