August is winding down; Labor Day stands on the
horizon. We’re in a midterm election
year, and as sure as fall follows summer, the political campaign season will
follow the upcoming holiday.
Rumblings have already begun.
Most
political pundits are predicting a “blue wave,” in which Democrats, taking
advantage of both traditional anti-incumbent trends and growing suburban
discontent, take control of the House of Representatives. While some Democrats have spoken wistfully
about taking over the Senate as well, the fact that they’re
defending far more seats than the Republicans are, with may located in
traditionally Republican states, makes such a shift in control very unlikely;
Democrats could easily lose a few seats in the upper chamber.
On
the Republican side, there has even been talk of a possible “red wave,” in
which Democrats not only fail to gain control of the House or Senate, but end
up losing seats to a surging Republican party. The
current President has embraced the concept, and has predicted
But in the end, it is people, not parties, that fill Congressional
seats. And red and blue aren’t the only waves breaking on the electoral shore.
There is also green.
that deserves every anglers’, and every sportsman’s,
attention.
The piece focuses mostly on inland issues, and on the
current Administration’s affronts to conservation concerns. It declares that
“A Green Wave is coming this November, the pent-up force of
the most overlooked constituency in America.
These independents, Teddy Roosevelt Republicans and Democrats on the
sideline have been largely sidelined as the Trump administration has tried to
destroy a century of bipartisan love of the land.
“But no more.
Politics, like Newton’s third law of physics, is about action and
reaction. While President Trump tries to
prop up the dying and dirty coal industry with taxpayer subsidies, the outdoor
recreation industry had been roaring along.
It is a $374-billion-a-year economy, by the government’s own
calculation, and more than twice that size by private estimates.
“That’s more than mining, oil, gas and logging combined…
“This is not green goo-goo or fantasy projection. You can see and feel the energy in places
ignored by the national political press…
“’We hunt and we fish,’ said Land Tawney, a Montanan who
leads the fast-growing Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. ‘And we vote public lands and water.’”
It’s not my intent to comment, right now, on the current
Administration’s policies. The midterm
elections are about Congressional seats, not about electing or re-electing a
president. But the principles presented
in the New York Times piece apply to Congressional elections, too.
As sportsmen, we should all try, as Land Tawney said, to “vote
public lands and water,” and as salt water anglers, we should be thinking of "voting public resources," too, because those resources are a part of every
American’s heritage, and shouldn’t be sold off wholesale because, lost
in some fever dream, a cabinet secretary decided that the path to reducing the
nation’s trade deficit lies across the backs of the country’s fish stocks.
It’s a tough thing to say, given the current level of
political partisanship, but if anglers and other sportsmen want to preserve
natural resources for their use, and the use of their descendants, it’s time to
stop voting for parties, and start voting for people—or, more precisely, to
start voting for policies that conserve the land, water and living resources, by
supporting the people who support such policies.
For if the wrong policies become enshrined in law, the land,
the water, the resources, and us, who depend on all three, will be well and
truly screwed.
Again, this is not about party.
Too often, people try to turn conservation into a partisan
issue, and fail to recognize that no party has a monopoly on virtue—or vice.
“The vibrant beauty of the oceans is a blessing to our
country. And it’s a blessing to the
world. The oceans contain countless
natural treasures. They carry much of
our trade; the provide food and recreation for billions of people. We have a responsibility, a solemn
responsibility, to be good stewards of the oceans and the creatures who inhabit
them.”
And that wasn’t just talk.
President
Bush was a strong supporter of the 2007 reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens
Fishery Conservation and Management Act, including toughened provisions to end
overfishing (including the annual catch limit requirement) and its expansion of
catch share programs. He pleased
anglers by issuing
an Executive Order prohibiting the commercial harvest of striped bass and red
drum in federal waters. And he pleased
the conservation community by invoking
the Antiquities Act to create four marine monuments that protected an aggregate
335,000 square miles of ocean, the greatest ocean area ever protected by any
world leader.
His successor, President Barak Obama, a Democrat, also had a
good record on ocean issues. He
quadrupled the size of the a marine monument off Hawaii created by President
Bush, created the
first marine monument in the Atlantic in order to protect deep-water coral habitat,
established a
national ocean policy that promoted conservation and habitat protection,
and made it very clear that he
would veto any bill that weakened the provisions of the reauthorized Magnuson-Stevens
Act that President Bush signed into law during his second term.
So yes, it comes down to policy, not to party, and to the
individual candidates willing to support the policies that benefit living
marine resources and those, like us, who depend upon them.
Right now, Magnuson-Stevens is again at the fore. H.R. 200,
passed by the House, seeks to weaken many of its important conservation provisions,
including those approved by President Bush a decade ago, and later defended by
President Obama. The vote was a relatively close
222-193, and largely along party lines, although 15 Republicans did vote
against and 9 Democrats voted in favor.
Anglers should take a long look at how their representatives voted, and reward
them—or not—in November.
But H.R. 200 isn’t the only thing going on. There are the
folks co-sponsoring the so-called “Modern Fish Act,” S. 1520, that would also
weaken the federal management process.
There are Rep.
Zeldin’s recurrent efforts to open federal waters to striped bass harvest. There has been a parade of bad red
snapper bills.
Actions should have consequences, and legislators should
know that if they support the wrong policies, and vote the wrong way, then that
“green wave,”—or whatever else you might want to call it—that has been lapping
around their ankles for so long is going to turn into a 100-year storm, and
there’s a good chance that they’re going to drown.
If anglers, sportsmen and other conservationists don’t vote
their own interests—clean water, public land, abundant resources—this November,
they may very well lose them.
Because elections have consequences, too.
Interesting. Thanks for the insight. I'm not as sure about your "green wave" as you call it. However, each decision angers someone, and pleases another.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the commentary.