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Bush policies anger hunters, anglers
BY DANA WILKIE
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE
WASHINGTON - When hunting and fishing enthusiasts gathered at President Bush's ranch last week to talk about protecting wild places that are dear to outdoorsmen, Scott Stouder wasn't among them.
And that's probably just as well, since this coordinator for the 135,000-member Trout Unlimited might have given Bush a piece of his mind.
Stouder has a solid history of voting Republican - for Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush Sr. and George W. But this year, he says, "I would vote for John Kerry. The things this administration is doing to our public lands are inexcusable."
Stouder's feelings reflect widespread disappointment among a traditionally Republican stronghold - hunting and fishing enthusiasts - who say White House policies are destroying millions of acres of Western lands for fish and wildlife. Their recent activism puts them hand-in-hand with an unlikely ally - environmental groups that typically represent Democrats.
"A lot has been made about the differences between environmentalists and hunters and anglers," said Chris Wood, vice president of conservation for Trout Unlimited, whose Republican members tend to outnumber Democrats 2-to-1. "But they share most of the same goals - healthy habitat for fish and wildlife, clean air, clean water. What's uncomfortable for the hunting and angling community is that (until now), we viewed our relationship with the federal (government) as a collaborative one."
The White House insists it is listening to outdoor enthusiasts, and points to meetings the White House held last December with sportsmen's groups, and the one Bush hosted last week for 15 gun and sportsmen's clubs at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.
"We've had a long-standing, constructive relationship with these conservation and sportsmen's groups," said James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. "Does that mean all the time a specific interest group will get everything it wants? Certainly not."
Forty-seven million Americans over age 16 hunted or fished in 2001, and collectively spent $70 billion doing so, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Hunters and fishers are often conservatives interested in gun-owners' rights, and typically, they are a reliable Republican voting block.
But it's not clear that Bush can count on their support this year.
Last fall, 486 gun and sportsmen's clubs signed a letter to Dale Bosworth, chief of the U.S. Forest Service, complaining about Bush's decision to open the Tongass National Forest - nearly 17 million acres of old growth forest in Southeast Alaska - to logging. "These people are flat-out furious with a lot of the public land policies of the Bush administration," said Greg Petrich, director of the Northern Sportsmen Network of Juneau, Alaska, which led the letter-writing campaign. "This is not the kind of treatment they want to see for their public lands."
Sportsmen's groups have expressed similar concerns about Bush's efforts to open public lands along the eastern front of the Rocky Mountains to oil and gas drilling, and his reluctance to more tightly interpret laws protecting wetlands from developers and farmers.
BY DANA WILKIE
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE
WASHINGTON - When hunting and fishing enthusiasts gathered at President Bush's ranch last week to talk about protecting wild places that are dear to outdoorsmen, Scott Stouder wasn't among them.
And that's probably just as well, since this coordinator for the 135,000-member Trout Unlimited might have given Bush a piece of his mind.
Stouder has a solid history of voting Republican - for Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush Sr. and George W. But this year, he says, "I would vote for John Kerry. The things this administration is doing to our public lands are inexcusable."
Stouder's feelings reflect widespread disappointment among a traditionally Republican stronghold - hunting and fishing enthusiasts - who say White House policies are destroying millions of acres of Western lands for fish and wildlife. Their recent activism puts them hand-in-hand with an unlikely ally - environmental groups that typically represent Democrats.
"A lot has been made about the differences between environmentalists and hunters and anglers," said Chris Wood, vice president of conservation for Trout Unlimited, whose Republican members tend to outnumber Democrats 2-to-1. "But they share most of the same goals - healthy habitat for fish and wildlife, clean air, clean water. What's uncomfortable for the hunting and angling community is that (until now), we viewed our relationship with the federal (government) as a collaborative one."
The White House insists it is listening to outdoor enthusiasts, and points to meetings the White House held last December with sportsmen's groups, and the one Bush hosted last week for 15 gun and sportsmen's clubs at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.
"We've had a long-standing, constructive relationship with these conservation and sportsmen's groups," said James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. "Does that mean all the time a specific interest group will get everything it wants? Certainly not."
Forty-seven million Americans over age 16 hunted or fished in 2001, and collectively spent $70 billion doing so, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Hunters and fishers are often conservatives interested in gun-owners' rights, and typically, they are a reliable Republican voting block.
But it's not clear that Bush can count on their support this year.
Last fall, 486 gun and sportsmen's clubs signed a letter to Dale Bosworth, chief of the U.S. Forest Service, complaining about Bush's decision to open the Tongass National Forest - nearly 17 million acres of old growth forest in Southeast Alaska - to logging. "These people are flat-out furious with a lot of the public land policies of the Bush administration," said Greg Petrich, director of the Northern Sportsmen Network of Juneau, Alaska, which led the letter-writing campaign. "This is not the kind of treatment they want to see for their public lands."
Sportsmen's groups have expressed similar concerns about Bush's efforts to open public lands along the eastern front of the Rocky Mountains to oil and gas drilling, and his reluctance to more tightly interpret laws protecting wetlands from developers and farmers.
