Commentary: Diversity may kill us as hunters, anglers and trappers if we fight about our differences

Editor’s note: Russ Mason is a regular contributor to Outdoor News publications.

Hunting, trapping, and angling have a diversity problem. Not the kind you’re probably thinking but the sort on the bumper stickers I used to see as a kid: “You Bet Your Dupa I’m Polish.”

Ask any hunter, angler, or trapper how they see themselves, and the response is rarely generic. Chances are they’ll self-identify as deer hunters, fly-fishers, waterfowlers, beaver trappers, grouse hunters, or predator callers.

I suspect you get the drift. Even within the various genres, different groups and their representative organizations fight about their differences. Controversies over antler point restrictions or put-and-take pheasant hunting are good examples.

The consequences of this sectarianism are that anti-hunting organizations, commercial interests, real estate or energy developers, and proponents of almost any other state budget priority than fish and wildlife management dance circles around us when our interests come up against theirs.

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There’s an obvious way out. All that’s required is for hunters, anglers, and trappers to set aside their aesthetic preferences, and speak with one voice when it comes to wildlife management. Easier said than done, perhaps, but its’ easy to list some basic principles that everyone should be able to endorse. Here are a few to consider:

• Hunting, fishing, and trapping are good;

• License revenues are what restored America’s wildlife and what makes for resilient populations today;

• Professional habitat management is essential;

• Regulated hunting, fishing, and trapping never extirpated a species (just the opposite is true);

• Regulatory decisions and policies grounded in science are always better than those based on emotional rhetoric, expedience, or whatever seems popular.

When Samuel Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1886, he said he was “proud to make a business out of labor.” The same is true when it comes to American conservation.

The National Deer Association, Trout Unlimited, Pheasants Forever, B.A.S.S., Ducks Unlimited, National Wild Turkey Federation, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and Safari Club are all businesses, whose bottom lines are as important to them as the species they represent. Not unreasonable or unexpected, but in practical terms, what that means is that economics necessity promotes an unhealthy competition among organizations for members and influence. Unhealthy because the competition creates gaps in priorities that are easy for others to exploit.

Here are a few things that could help:

• A common and plain statement of principles – red lines that organizations won’t cross;

• A willingness to deliver political consequences when conservation or hunting, fishing, or trapping opportunities are sacrificed in favor of other objectives;

• Continuous, outward-facing, and proactive messaging that gives the general public the facts.

Worth noting, we’ve been here before. When Michigan United Conservation Clubs and the Wisconsin Conservation Congress were founded in the 1930s, the whole point was shared purpose: common principles and defense of natural resources. This shared purpose is as valuable today as it was 80 years ago and both organizations could serve as convenors among all of all the species-centric organizations that have sprung up since.

It’s ironic that hunters, anglers, and trappers have become so sectarian. Too often, concerns over ‘what could happen’ to a favored activity or method cause them to miss the greater danger right in front of them. It’s the forest and the trees scenario in reverse.

At the beginning of the labor movement, there was another homegrown labor organization called the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or Wobblies for short). Founded seven years after the AFL, Wobblies aimed to organize all workers, not just a specific trade or industry. Hunters, anglers, and trappers could take a page from the IWW script. If nothing else, the Wobbly motto: “An injury to one is an injury to all” seems entirely apropos.