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Sportsmen and Environmentalists Coming Together

- by Brian McCombie
This story first appeared in the Nov. 14 edition of Wausau's "City Pages."

You may have seen the bumper stickers that read "Stop Sulfide Mining,"  small protests against plans to open the Crandon Mine.  But did you notice who produced the sticker?  Or did you assume it was the work of an environmental group?

Or consider the words of this environmentally concerned individual:  "The Crandon Mine is a chance for total pollution.  It's a chance for slag heaps, toxic dumps, and acid water.  Until they [Crandon and the DNR] can show the people of Wisconsin there are sulfite mines that can operate safely, and show us a mine that's been shut for ten years and isn't polluting, we don't want it!"

What do bumper sticker and quote have in common besides their opposition to Crandon Mining?  Both are the work of Wisconsin sportsmen.   While many varieties of this bumper sticker exist, look closely and you'll see that at least some of them are the work of Muskies, Inc., a group dedicated to preserving and enhancing musky fishing nationwide and in Wisconsin.

The quote is from William Buckley of Marshfield, a hunter, fisherman, President of the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation, and a Wood County representative of the Wisconsin Conservation Congress, a group of sportsmen that advises the DNR.

Sportsmen championing environmental issues?  And even working with environmentalists?
 
"Oh, definitely," says Anne Kieffer, chair of the local Sierra Club chapter, Wisconsin River Country.  "I think that's been proven with Crandon Mining.  Fisherman especially are concerned with the quality of water that could be effected by the mine.  On an issue like this, it's the immediacy of the threat that brings [environmental and sportsman's] groups together."

Sometimes the two communities form actual partnerships; other times their efforts parallel each other.  Historically-speaking, it's true that sportsmen and environmentalists haven't always had close ties.  In fact, they've frequently seen each other as the enemy.  Today, though, the two camps are increasingly recognizing the value of cooperation, as has happened over the Crandon Mine.

"We've always known that we've had common ground with conservation and sportsman's groups,"  says Jim Wise, vice chair of Environmentally Concerned Citizens of the Lakeland Areas (ECCOLA) which is fighting the Crandon Mine.   A hunter and angler himself, Wise says that Crandon Mining "has tried to say that the only people who don't want sulfite mining are radicals and Earth Firsters.  And that's simply not true."

"Environmentalists and sportsmen have put aside any perceived differences," says Wise.  "We have to look at having clean water, clean air, and, let me say, clean government.  In the bigger picture, all sides need to work together to change the face of our government by literally changing the faces of those who govern us."

Sara Johnson has seen the benefits of such cooperation first hand.  She's the executive director for River Alliance of Wisconsin, a river advocacy group based in Madison and founded nearly four years ago.  In many ways, River Alliance is the epitome of sportsmen and environmentalists working together.  Founding board members came from groups like the Sierra Club, Trout Unlimited, and the Federation of Flyfishers.  Today, its 600-plus members continue to reflect this intermingling of environmental and outdoor interests.

One of the River Alliance's key victories came in June 1997 when it reached an agreement with Wisconsin Electric over hydro-electric plants the company operates in the Menominee River basin area.  The plants are coming up for federal re-licensing, and rather than going through the lengthy, adversarial process of butting heads with environmental groups, Wisconsin Electric decided on a different approach:  negotiating with River Alliance on the many ecological  issues concerning hydro-electric plants.  After nearly two years of give and take,  Wisconsin Electric agreed to remove three dams altogether, operate their dams to provide more consistent river flows, and install fish barriers on all water intakes so fish won't be sucked into the turbines and killed.

"It was a tremendously big win for Wisconsin's rivers," Johnson says.  "And the only reason it was possible was because environmentalists and sportsman's groups like the Sierra Club, Trout Unlimited, and the Federation of Flyfishermen pulled together to participate in the re-licensing process."

Wisconsin Electric won, too.  By reaching an agreement with River Alliance before applying for a new license, the company streamlined a re-licensing process that can take up to five years.  This should save Wisconsin Electric several millions of dollars it would have otherwise spent on environmental studies, impact statements, and possible litigation.

Crandon Mining and hydro-electric plants are just two of the places where enviros and sportsmen find similar concerns.  Through the Wisconsin Conservation Congress, sportsmen, like their environmental counterparts, have responded with a loud "No!" to the Wisconsin Air National Guard's proposed expansion of the Hardwood Air-to-Ground Bombing Range in Juneau County.

"Our major concern is the loss of 7,000 acres of forest," says William Buckley, referring to the Wood County land that the expanded range will take, 6,200 acres of which is county forest.   "Wisconsin is losing public lands at an alarming rate."

This last point is of special concern to Buckley and the state's sportsmen.  Buckley talks about the situation in Texas, where less and less public land is open for recreation.  With the remaining public under increased use pressure, private land owners find it profitable to rent out their property to wealthy hunters.  Buckley finds it ominous that lease arrangements like these are becoming the norm in Buffalo County north of La Crosse.

"I can see, by the year 2050, a solid urban corridor running from Chicago up through Green Bay," Buckley says.  "And a population in Wisconsin up to 8 million people.  If this happens, what will it mean for hunting and outdoors recreation opportunities?  I think you'll see them shrink as affluent people come in and rent lands for their own use."
 

Pen in Hand

Read today's outdoor writers and their publications, and you'll also see this shift to the enviro-sportsman occurring.
 
"A strange new animal stalks the woods of North America:  the eco-redneck," writes Steve Chapple in his new book, Confessions of an Eco-Redneck  (Plenumn Press, $24.95).  "It is an obvious irony to some, an unintentional one to others, but these days sporting persons and environmentalists are apt to be one and the same."

One and the same because you can't fish in waters thick with toxic waste,  can't hunt if wildlife habitat has been destroyed by bulldozers and developers.  As Chapple stresses throughout this collection of short, humorous essays, if you're one of America's 50 million anglers and 15 million hunters, you're going to have to care about and fight for our increasingly-threatened environment.

And if you're an environmentalist, well, you don't necessarily hunt or fish.  But who is more likely to support the issues you care about?  Golf course and condominium developers?  Corporations that see rivers as convenient places to dump used chemicals?  Or those sportsmen who, like yourself, have a definite stake in clean air and water?

Enter Chapple's eco-rednecks.  When they're not hunting or fishing, they frequent country taverns, drive pickup trucks, and listen to Jimmy Buffett.  Their idea of a first-class dinner?  Grilled venison chops and lots of cold Budweiser.  Oh, and eco-rednecks are more than a little tired of hearing that it's only vegetarians, animal rightists, and Greenpeacers who are environmentalists.  As Chapple argues,

Todd Smith also agrees that sportsmen and those in the environmental movement have a great deal in common.  He's the editor-in-chief of Outdoor Life, which with its 1 million-plus subscribers is arguably the most influential of the country's outdoor magazines.
 
"We're living in a changing world," says Smith.  "As time moves forward and land becomes more and more scarce, I think there will be many more opportunities for hunters and fishermen to work with environmentalists.  And I'm all for that."
 
Smith notes that Outdoor Life, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary in 1998, has a long tradition of its writers and editorials backing pro-environmental policies and programs.  The magazine, for example, supported the Clean Water Act.  It also called for the creation and continuation of the Conservation Reserve Program, which generates wildlife habitat by paying farmers to let agricultural lands go fallow.  The magazine's conservation pledge asks it readers to "protect and conserve the natural resources of America," and "to educate future generations so they may become caretakers of our water, air, land and wildlife."
 

Wolf River Blues

A similar ethic can be found operating today in an environmental organization like American Rivers, which promotes river stewardship nationwide.   Founded in 1973, and with a membership of approximately 21,000, American Rivers is probably best known for its annual Ten Most Endangered Rivers list.
 
"A huge part of our membership are people who recreate on rivers," says Chad Smith, Outreach Coordinator at America Rivers' national office in Washington, D.C.  "Many are flyfishers, canoeists, and kayakers.  And of course there are those who are interested solely in river conservation."
 
Nationally, American Rivers works with both environmental and sportsman's group to find ways to protect and preserve our country's waterways.  Smith notes that American Rivers has worked with fishing organizations like B.A.S.S. and the Isaac Walton League in the past, and is now creating alliances with a number of waterfowl hunting groups.

In the Dairy State, American Rivers has teamed up with the River Alliance of Wisconsin to try to stop the Crandon Mine from opening.  For both groups, the concern is the terrible ecological consequences of having a sulfite mine at the headwaters of the Wolf River.  That's why in April 1997 the Wolf appeared on American Rivers list of endangered waterways.  According to an America Rivers report, the Wolf River

As the River Alliance's Sara Johnson notes, "The threat to the Wolf River has pulled together environmentalists and conservationists like no other issue in the history of the state."
 
But if cooperation between these groups makes so much sense, why hasn't it happened more often, in and out of Wisconsin?

Dividing Lines

In the September/October 1996 issue of Sierra, enviro-sportsman Ted Williams published an essay entitled "Natural Allies."  In it, Williams calls for increased cooperation between the various sportsman's and environmental groups because of their common concerns for the clean water, clean air, and viable wildlife habitat.  Citing Chris Potholm, a professor of government at Bowdoin College in Maine, Williams argues that hunters and anglers joining with environmentalists would be an "invincible" combination as the two groups would represent "60 to 70 percent of the [voting] population, an absolutely irresistible coalition."
 
The letters to the editor that followed Williams' article were instructive in understanding the potential splits between these two communities.  While some praise William's call for cooperation, others angrily denounce the whole idea.    The common thread here was that hunting is a "Neanderthal form of recreation," and hunters like Williams are blood-thirsty, sick individuals.  Unite with these mentally defective types?  Not on your life.
 
Williams notes that the word "environmental" creates suspicion for many readers of the hunting-fishing magazines for which he also writes.  Articles and essays of his with a pro-environmental slant invariably draw protest. "If you insist on bringing up controversial environmental issues, you do not become a sportsman's magazine but an environmental magazine," one reader responded.  "There are [already] too many 'do-gooder' magazines on the market today..."   Or, "Ted Williams has betrayed sportsmen everywhere," one angry reader wrote in response to another piece which dared to use the "E" word.
 
Anne Kieffer of the Wisconsin River Country chapter of the Sierra Club sees things a bit differently.  Though not a sports person herself, she has no problem with responsible hunting and fishing.  But she feels there may be some problems with sportsman's and environmental groups coming together.
 
"On hot-button issues like the Crandon Mine, these groups can and will cooperate," says Kieffer.  "But on other levels, like the depletion of the ozone layer, it's much harder to find a consensus."
 
Kieffer usually attends the Marathon County annual meeting of the Wisconsin Conservation Congress.  Though she's careful to stress that the Conservation Congress always approves the various environmental issues up for discussion, she notes that they come up near the end of meetings after hunting and fishing concerns have been dealt with.  At this point, a meeting that started with 200 people may have only a dozen participants left.
 
"It's really hard to get a sense of how sportsmen feel about the environment, simply because there's not that many of them left when these issues come up," Kieffer says.
 
Chad Smith of American Rivers thinks the problem is that, "In the past, the messages given out by environmentalists and sportsmen were relatively the same, but they weren't sending them out in the same way.  Plus, enviros tended to shy away from alliances with hunters and anglers.  They felt it would be politically  incorrect to sign on with sportsmen."
 
There was a time, Smith remembers, when these groups disagreed on how to manage forests.  Environmentalists, for example, opposed clear cutting.  Hunters, though, tended to like limited clear cutting as it created better habitat for game species like deer and turkeys.
 
"That smaller issue got in the way," says Smith.  "But the broader question--which they agreed on--was the importance of healthy forests.  They came to understand that you need a balance between preserving habitat and using the land."
 
Whatever their divisions, and a certain political reality can't have escaped both groups.  As Jim Wise of ECCOLA argues, coalitions of sportsmen and environmentalists have much more political clout and influence than either possess individually.  When Big Business or Big Government wants to do something potentially harmful to the environment, it's difficult for a single organization to effectively block these actions.  But a broad coalition of enviros and sportsmen has a much better chance of getting attention for their positions, rallying public support, and ultimately affecting change.
 
Of course there will be disagreements on specific issues.  But as Wisconsin sportsmen and environmentalists are finding out, it doesn't really matter why you oppose a toxic sulfite mine or what particular recreational activities you hope to save.  The important thing is that you both work to stop the mine from ever opening.