Sunday, May 02, 2004 4:04 PM

Tony Dean Outdoors
Issues
Sportsmen Will Make a Difference in November

By Bob Marshall

It was Wednesday morning, and Sen. John Kerry was calling. He had an
important point he wanted to make to hunters and anglers: "I think I do a
better job of fighting for the rights of sportsmen than George Bush does,"
Kerry said.

Over the next 20 minutes the Democrats' presumptive presidential nominee
gave detailed explanations for that claim based on now-familiar themes: He
is a life-long hunter and angler, he has never voted to take away hunters'
gun rights and -- most important -- he is much stronger on environmental
protection, without which sportsmen would have little fish and game to
pursue.

By the time Kerry had to get back on his campaign plane, I knew the
interview revealed good news for sportsmen. Not because of the knowledge and
passion Kerry displayed when discussing the issues; the man didn't win three
terms to the U.S. Senate without being a convincing campaigner. Instead, it
was the fact that he bothered to call at all.

Sportsmen and their issues may be back in play during a presidential
election for the first time in decades. And that can only be good news for
the future of fish and wildlife, and all other things that depend on a clean
environment.

It was no accident that Kerry chose to wrap this Louisiana visit around
sportsmen's environmental issues -- including a tour of Shell Beach's eroded
marshes and a lunch with local anglers. The Democrat's photo-op came just
two weeks after Bush had a raft of sportsmen's groups out to his Texas
spread for a similar publicity event.

The sudden prominence of the hook-and-bullet crowd in this election is a
direct result of what has been a serious revolt over the last year within
the ranks of a community Republicans have taken for granted for more than 30
years. The sporting culture had long been suspicious of mainstream
environmental groups -- "tree-huggers and granola crunchers" -- because they
were championed by liberal politicians. To most sportsmen, "liberal" meant
anti-gun, and anti-gun meant anti-hunter. So any administration could always
count on the catch-and-kill folks to be in their column -- or at least
silent -- when they squared off with environmental groups.

The Bush Administration may have changed that.

In its zeal to roll back environmental policies that have protected fish and
wildlife habitat for a generation, this administration clearly misjudged
today's educated sportsmen. Hunters and anglers have been outraged as oil
and gas wells have spread across previously protected forests and prairies,
as waterfowl wetlands have had Clean Water Act protections stripped, as
blue-ribbon trout streams have been placed in the path of logging
operations.

So when the presidential season got underway, the unthinkable happened. Not
only have sportsmen been openly bolting the president, there are now
"Sportsmen for Kerry" groups.

It's hard to overstate the importance of this change to the future of public
hunting and fishing -- and the general health of our environment. For 50
years the two greatest forces in American conservation have been sportsmen
and environmental groups. Hunters and anglers put up most of the money that
paid for government programs rebuilding fish and wildlife populations, while
the green groups worked in Washington to provide essential federal
protections for the needed habitat.

But despite their obvious common interests, the two groups seldom worked
together, instead buying into stereotypes that insisted they were mutual
enemies, not brothers in arms. That friction was important to the moneyed
interests who oppose tough environmental regulations and even the idea of
public lands as part of a public trust. Their worst nightmare always has
been the possibility of environmental-sportsmen. If the guys in the
hunter-orange hats suddenly began thinking green, politicians they could
always count on might have to start listening to the other side.

Now that could be happening.

The first sign came late last year when the president agreed to sit down
with sportsmen's groups to discuss his administration's assault on the Clean
Water Act. By the end of the session he agreed to restore some protections
to waterfowl wetlands. The reviews were good enough on that episode for Bush
to follow up with the recent meeting at his ranch. And now we have his
challenger reaching out to sportsmen -- and sportsmen responding.

The ideal outcome of this would be for sportsmen to recognize that
mainstream environmental groups have been waging their battles for many
years -- but they can no longer do it alone. If hunters and fishers take
that step --if the "catch-and-killers" admit they have as much at stake in
the battles over clean air and clean water as the "granola-crunchers" --
then fish and wildlife issues will cease being a partisan issue.

And that would be good news for hunters and anglers -- and all other living
things on this planet.

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