Hunters Are Finally Waking Up

I grew up in a portion of central Pennsylvania where hunting was a divine right. My grandfathers, father, and most of my uncles, cousins, and friends lived to hunt. I did too. I still enjoy grouse hunting with my son and returning to Pennsylvania each year for the deer hunt. My dad now hunts only with a camera.

Most of the hunters I know or are related to are conservatives. Gun rights is a big issue for them and they fear and loathe the liberals who are hell-bent on taking away their guns, or so they imagine. The NRA and the Republican Party have succeeded in making this a litmus test issue for hunters.

Strangely, though, these conservatives have not been very big on conservation. Conservative -- conservation -- shouldn't they go together? They haven't because conservative hunters have bought the other NRA, Republican Party line that conservation is just a politically correct term coined by liberal tree-hugging environmentalists. Who want to take away your guns and don't you forget it!

Fortunately, though, this is beginning to change. Hunters (and fishers) are waking up to the fact that while they are busy protecting their right to own guns, business interests and the Republican-led federal government are systematically destroying the land where they hunt and fish.

In the most recent issue of Field and Stream Magazine, they reprinted an article first published in 2003 that begins with this paragraph:

Rod and gun in hand, and backing the Second Amendment right to own firearms, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have won the hearts of America’s sportsmen. Yet the two men have failed to protect outdoor sports on the nation’s public lands. With deep ties to the oil and gas industry, Bush and Cheney have unleashed a national energy plan that has begun to destroy hunting and fishing on millions of federal acres throughout the West, setting back effective wildlife management for decades to come.

They follow that up with an article entitled Conservation Report: The Killing Fields:

Alan Lackey has been an elk and mule deer guide in the high country of New Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains for over 21 years. When he is not pulling a pack string into the mountains, he’s a ranch manager in Roy, New Mexico. Before that, he owned the Chevrolet dealership in Raton, where he also served as the president of the Chamber of Commerce. By his own description, he is a deeply conservative person.

Like huge numbers of sportsmen across the American West, however, Lackey is quick to tell you that there is nothing conservative about the pace or scale of energy development on public lands in the region. “This is a giveaway of public resources at the cost of every other value we hold,” he says. “Oil and gas production has been elevated to the primary use of our public lands, even when the local people say no to it. The whole plan is like burning down your house to stay warm for one night.”

Lackey is referring to the potential energy development of the Valle Vidal (Spanish for “The Valley of Life”) in the Carson National Forest of northern New Mexico. It is a 100,000-acre expanse of wild country that starts with open grasslands at around 8,000 feet, runs to parklands threaded by snowmelt-fed trout streams and huge stands of aspens, and reaches into the high timber country and beyond to snowfields and high peaks. It is home—both winter range and calving ground—to New Mexico’s largest elk herd, said to be about 2,500 animals. The valley is targeted for as many as 500 coal-bed methane wells.

“If you were going to create a perfect elk country, the Valle Vidal would be it,” says Lackey. “There is no way to replace it if we let it be destroyed.”

It’s largely a myth that public lands are restricted from development on a massive scale. Of all federal lands, 88 percent are open to oil and gas exploration. Until recently, much of that land was ignored because energy prices were too low to make it worth developing. That has changed, as anybody who pays a heating bill can tell you.

The rapid giveaway of energy-extraction rights has resulted in an unprecedented amount of drilling up and down the Rocky Mountain West, much of it on public hunting land. Many thousands of wells are planned or already in operation, as well as thousands of miles of roads and pipelines to service them...

Federal land managers in the Forest Service and the BLM are, in many cases, trying their best to balance the energy boom with the other uses of the lands. “I honestly believe that we could develop these resources responsibly,” said a staffer in the Pinedale office who asked not to be named, “but we have to be allowed to do our jobs. Right now the decisions about development in our area are made in Washington, D.C., not here.”

By law, the BLM is required to manage public lands for both energy development and wildlife. What are they doing to protect habitat during this massive drilling initiative? “BLM consults with state and federal fish and wildlife officials and requires a site visit for every permit issued,” says BLM director Kathleen Clarke. “Wildlife biologists will work with companies to identify areas where there are concerns in order to minimize the number of permit applications that are submitted with wildlife impacts.” Clarke notes that biologists attend on-site meetings with the operator at proposed drilling and access points to identify wildlife issues and to make recommendations to reduce wildlife or habitat impacts. They consult with the state game and fish agency concerning species of state interest.

Clarke says that the BLM is faced with a unique situation in the Pinedale area. “World-class mineral resources are found beneath world-class wildlife habitat. Finding the balance between providing domestic sources of natural gas and minimizing or mitigating impacts to other natural resources will continue to pose a challenge.”

For veteran BLM biologist Steven Belinda, who was assigned to the Pinedale office two years ago, the disappointment of working as what he terms a “biostitute”—simply rubber-stamping energy development on the public lands—ruined his dream job in the famed country of the Upper Green River, the home of elk and grizzlies, antelope and wolverines. Belinda quit the BLM in February to take a job with the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. He told a reporter for the Washington Post that he had spent all but 1 percent of his time in the BLM office working on drilling permits.

“If we continue this trend of keeping biologists in the office and preventing them from doing substantive work,” said Belinda, “there is a train wreck coming for wildlife.”

George Bush and Dick Cheney are no friends of hunters, and by no definition of the term can they be labeled conservatives. I would much rather have a genuine conservative as President who cares about deficits, who doesn't believe in nation-building, and who is committed to the conservation of our natural resources.