A Thief In The Night
by Robert Rice
(Continued)
Successful conservation in North America has always been married to the Sportsmen. Those good ole boy fishermen and hunters who would like clockwork every year plunk down their money to fish or hunt or hang out on public lands. The license fees allow the running of the state wildlife organizations, the purchase of land and all the salaries of the fisheries and wildlife folks it takes to run an organization like your states department of conservation.

To me, the odd duck that I am it seems like a reasonable tradeoff. Sportsmen pay for the land to enjoy the hunting and fishing and the non game species, government agents and lookey lou’s go along for the ride for free. Sounds fair enough to me, no one cares enough about fence lizards for example to do a fence lizard conservation area or a fence lizard stamp or catch and release fence lizard chasing. Because of the sportsmen though the fence lizard has a lot more places to hang out and chase bugs. Under this system, I the conservation guy, all the hikers, kids and naturalist, the fence lizard and an occasional sportsman who appreciates the fence lizard are all happy campers. Seems easy enough to understand, if we manage the fun to catch, kill or eat species to the benefit of all the unloved species we do a good thing, conservation wise.

However if we take sportsmen out of this happy little equation all the sudden Mr. Fence Lizard has a problem, a big problem. A bulldozer will show up one day on his happy little fence row and WHAM he is out of business because someone, somewhere signed something and now the former pasture is a soon to be strip mall. While not the end of the world for us, it is for Mr. Fence lizard the end of his world. For Mr. Lizard the only thing standing between him and the onslaught of strip malls, asphalt and death is the deer hunters, Bass fishermen and other folks who every year throw down their money to do what they love to do. To me that model works. It has in fact worked very well for many decades.

Not to burst anyone’s bubble but that whole put it in a box and hide it model does not work. It soon runs out of money. Renewable resources are just that renewable. Let’s say for instance you cared about shooting/looking at /kissing turkeys you could start an organization that promoted better habitat for turkey, passed on starter populations to suitable area’s and promoted reasonable legislation that would allow the wild turkeys to prosper. If you were correct in say a couple of decade’s wild turkeys would be common place in all of their historic range. Oops too late it has already happened just ask the National Wild Turkey Foundation.

The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Ducks Unlimited, Trout unlimited and many more organizations have all followed the same model. They have done the basic conservation work that benefits their target species of choice to the benefit of countless non game species. Let sportsmen pay for what they want and the other guys will benefit. Don’t believe me ask a western meadowlark, or a garter snake. There would be a lot less of those guys around if it wasn’t for sportsmen.

           southern redbelly dace
Sportsmen have long since figured out that a healthy, active, diverse public lands model is good for them and the things they like to chase. Want to catch big Bass? Then have a watershed full of diversity and clean water and general conservation joy. Sure the bass get beat on a bit but not much else does. Darters, dace and killifish all enjoy the pleasures of a secure home paid for by Mr. Bass. That’s a model that works. Models based on non resource users calling the shots do not work. Those who provide the capital to acquire and maintain or public lands should be the ones most in control of its future.

This whole public thing only works if someone cares about the resource in question. Think about Public restrooms, nasty right? That’s because no one is vested in them being anything but open. An administrator some where wrote a budget for that restroom on the side of the highway to be there. He did not use the restroom, probably never saw the restroom, he just thought that a restroom there was good idea. So he did it and now it sits as an expensive testimony to the depths of human hygiene.

On the other hand how many restaurants proudly display clean restrooms signs? That’s because they have a vested interest in their business succeeding so they do their darndest to make sure that their customers enjoy using the resource (their business) and come back again. That’s how conservation should work. We the sportsmen should demand better parks, better management so we the sportsmen can enjoy what we have paid for. In the process all the little, often unseen, non game species and hikers, and hobbyist of one type or another come on along for a free ride. Everybody wins if we maintain healthy managed herds of game species on ever improving public conservation lands. If we remove the customers (the sportsmen) then sooner or later this little conservation business we have going on is gonna shut down.

Until next time good luck and good fishing!