Across the sagebrush divide – will western resource battles ever end?

The publicly owned lands and waters of the Rocky Mountain States are worth a lot of money – more now than ever before.

Enterprising Americans have been trying to put that public money into their private pocket ever since the first white man stuck a claim stake in western soil. History seems to flow forward into today’s headlines out here in the West.  The methods of privatizing the public treasury have stayed fairly consistent over time. What has changed is the privateer’s sales pitch for why the American people should be grateful for having their pockets picked.

“Energy Independence” comes to mind as the hottest cause de jour for resource rape on the public estate. Actual energy independence is a contemporary impossibility; but never mind, sucking the rocks dry for a five percent cut in oil imports is close enough.

A great American irony laughs at us, however, because we all find ourselves with our hands in each other’s pockets when it comes to exploitation of public resources. 

Bashing oilmen, miners, timber-cutters and grazers comes easy to those folks whose paycheck is filtered through several economic layers from its original source in the Earth. Those filters make it easy to demand change from industry and hard to demand of oneself the sacrifices that will shrink our personal footprint a shoe-size or two.

Bashing strikes both ways, of course. 

Oilmen, ranchers and other resource industrialists cling to their historic hegemony over resource policy in which commercial production dominates resource use and environmentalists are supposed to butt out.

Thus we get the “privatize profits and socialize costs” syndrome – and all the ingredients for endless political conflict. 

So, yet another acrimonious season of turf warfare is shaping up in the Rocky West as 2014 rolls along. Call it the Sagebrush Rebellion, but know it really is the unending battle over who gets the good out of public lands and waters.

In Nevada, a rancher is defying the whole idea of federal public ownership of land. Having refused to pay grazing fees for 20 years he successfully defies the law with the help of armed anarchist ‘militias’ who traveled in from other western states just to make sure the BLM doesn’t stop the public pocket-picking going on there. 

Not to be overlooked in that confrontation is the rancher’s claim that only Nevada can own public land; “federal government go home(?).”

Meanwhile, up here in Montana, an attempt by the state fish and wildlife agency to develop some consensus ideas on re-locating publicly owned bison to areas away from Yellowstone Park was canceled in the face of livestock industry blowback.

Sandwiched in between are efforts by right wing / industrial political factions in Utah, Colorado, Nevada, Idaho and Montana to force the federal government to surrender ownership of national forests and BLM range lands to state control.

This state takeover ideology has been a key project of western state Republicans for decades. The last serious effort was in the mid-1990s when red-state legislatures started resolution drives coordinated with Republican bills in Congress to give the federal lands to the states.

That campaign failed when conservation organizations caught on to the seriousness of the action and rallied a strong grassroots revolt.  

People see what they want to see. Some people see how states maintain public infrastructure, and how much tax money states actually invest in keeping up existing parks and open spaces. Consequently they can’t see how states will do anything with the huge federal estate but give it away to the industrial campaign donors who are really driving this great land grab.

Another group of people view western federal lands through the eyes of investment bankers and profit speculators. Where ordinary people look at a national forest and see their freedom space, the Wall Street tribe comprehends only a chance to flip a deal for profit – and to control the future of life in America thru ownership of our foundational resources.

My own concern, however, is with the persistence of such disputes more than the substance of them.

Rural and urban westerners just can’t get off first base with each other to work out durable resolutions to chronic conflicts. Leaving these wounds open can only lead to greater infections and the eventual collapse of our interactive western public-private land system.

The Montana bison re-location fracas makes a good case study.

At one level the conflict derives from city people and rural people not understanding each other.  At the next level it’s about these two cultural clans being so inwardly focused on their own tribal values that they inflict grievances on each other without realizing they are doing so. 

With these two levels of misunderstanding as barriers we never get to the third level where ideas for mutual agreement can arise.

About four years ago a national environmental group started a publicity campaign promoting the ‘return of wild, free-roaming bison to the prairie.’ This idea sounds fabulous in the ears of city folks whose shared value is the romance of a wild, untamed west. 

Those same words shout a declaration of political war, however, if you are one of those people whose livelihood and heritage is bound up in a fenced-and-leased public land estate.

The net result is a conversation that starts as a shouting match and never progresses beyond stalemate.

Clearly, city people don’t understand the agricultural occupancy of the Great Plains as a product of national policy founded in homestead laws and the Taylor Grazing Act. Those public spaces where the city crew would like to see bison roam is already fully occupied by a public land grazing industry legitimized by more than 100 years of law supported by the national consensus of manifest destiny. 

Making room for bison will require coming to terms with the people of that industry – a more difficult task than preaching platitudes.

On the other side of the fence, rural residents don’t understand the reasons why city people will not go away and leave them alone. The social and emotional need of 300 million urban dwellers for large open, natural spaces to which they can dream if not visit just doesn’t make sense to people whose whole world is composed of open, natural spaces. 

Thus, an idea like ‘wild, free-roaming bison’ sends rural folks right over the edge – and slams the door to both conversation and any opportunity for profiting from that urban desire. This situation will not change until city people start avoiding words that make rural people crazy and come to terms with rural reality. 

Rural people, on the other hand, face an existential survival crisis unless they stop pretending their livestock-centric world is not changing - and that they can prevent the 21^st Century from happening to them.

Personally, I very much want to find a way to keep western agriculture in the hands of traditional family-owned farms and ranches. Demographic change and inflated land values are squeezing the vitality out of the traditional rural way of life. People of the land can’t stop this death-squeeze by themselves; they need some form of partnership with those irritating city people.

These dramas will come and go in the headlines. The rural way of life will live or die as wounds are either healed or deepened. 

Meanwhile, back in the city where the vast majority of voters live, a deeper, stronger force is at work where control of federal public lands is concerned.  People of the Rocky Mountain West are adamant that their national outdoor treasury must continue to be owned and controlled by federal agencies and that access to this treasury must improve.

Over the long haul I predict this public will shall prevail, but only if voters decide elections on this issue.

Desire for a strong federal public estate means nothing if voters elect pick-pockets to their Legislatures and Congress.

  ~~ Ron Moody

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Roots, Respect and social permission to hunt

Yet another political dust-up over trapping appears headed for the November ballot here in Montana.

If memory serves, this will be the third such effort to ban trapping (on public land) by way of a popular vote on a ballot initiative in the past several years.

An old aphorism has it that: “friends come and go. But enemies accumulate.” The persistent efforts by anti-trapping advocates who continue counter-attacking after serial failures can be rationalized by supporters of trapping in several self-justifying narratives.  What cannot be explained away, however, is the existential threat posed by an accumulation of persistent enemies to a way of life like trapping that lingers from yesteryear at the rural margins of the modern urban society.

Ironically, leaders of the modern trapping industry have made a great effort to stop accumulating new enemies. During my tenure on the Montana Wildlife Commission I participated in two regulation-setting cycles for trapping. In both cycles the Montana Trappers Association presented a plan of self-regulation and trapper education that I could not improve upon. I’m confident the majority of trappers adhere to the Association program and have not been the impetus for the recurring political attacks by trapping opponents.

That doesn’t matter much, however, if you fall victim to the 10-percent rule: that 10 percent of trappers will cause 90 percent of problems. In the case of trappers the proportion is probably more like five percent afflicting 95 percent. But a trouble-making five percent obviously is plenty of enemy-breeding activity.

The fact that ethical trappers cannot stop a few crude and contemptuous people from setting traps near public land trails used by urbanites with pets delivers an object lesson to practitioners of that other death-inflicting outdoor activity – hunting.

The vast majority of hunters can be of high-principle and sound ethic; but the culture of hunting will still accumulate enough social enemies to bring it to an end when the larger society concludes the good of hunting is not worth the trouble of putting up with the bad.

 The roots of sub-cultures such as trapping, hunting and fishing go deep into the greater urban population. Without the sustenance of these roots new recruits will not rise to fill the ranks of future outdoors people. More immediate, political and social permission to hunt and trap progressively declines. Political attacks by anti-hunters and anti-trappers typically are only the final, visible stage of a below-surface, step-by-step decline in which hunters and trappers become ever more isolated from mainstream values and interactions. 

In a human dominated world, social isolation is prelude to cultural extinction. Hunters and trappers are especially vulnerable to this isolation hazard given the physically secluded nature of hunting and trapping. Practitioners of the woodscrafts are forced to exert themselves toward social relationships even as their cherished experiences pull them away from society into lonely and wild places.

The smaller the portion of America’s non-hunting majority who know and respect the practice of hunting the smaller the social permission society will grant to hunters.  Sadly, trappers seem already to be dangling way out at the end of the social permission rope. Nobody should overlook the pathos of ethical hunters and trappers who plead their own good behavior as defense. When social permission is withdrawn, it is withdrawn for all.

Trappers who snare pet dogs near popular hiking trails on public land around large cities create a public relations disaster for all trappers. Makes no difference whatsoever if their sets are legal the enemies still accumulate – and enemies vote. 

Hunters have their own cadre of public relations 10-percenters.

Regardless of one’s opinion about large predators, the way hunters currently portray themselves to non-hunters by their treatment of wolves is generating an accumulation of political enemies in the larger society. The lynch-mob mindset against wolves displayed here in the northern Rockies is gnawing at the roots of hunting support among urban Americans who view the wolf, not as an elk-eater, but as an emotional icon. 

My engagement with hunters tells me the majority of western urban hunters want to think of the wolf as a valued trophy game animal – not as vermin. They would look at the wolf in the same way they view black bear – as a predator but also as a valued game animal that must be managed as such. Many of these same hunters, however, are swayed by the groupthink telling them every bite of wild meat swallowed by a wolf is stolen from the mouth of a human hunter.

Even the mountain lion, which, unlike the wolf, has acquired a hunter fan club, is sometimes targeted for over-harvest by policy makers obsessed with producing larger elk populations.

The point of this essay is to advise all these good hunters that they are not invisible as they cast their cultural portraits on the social wall for all those non-hunters to observe and judge. Believing you are right will be a poor consolation if your self-righteousness breeds more enemies than you can out-vote.

A shrill minority of hunters shout their contempt for all those ‘bunny huggers’ they despise.  State legislators, governors and wildlife commissions scramble to appease this groupthink of contempt. They could care less about the distant accumulation of political enemies. Thus uncaring, they certainly can’t be concerned about a growing urban indifference to whether or not hunting continues as part of our American way of life.

But this is root-rot at work. And it will lead to the shriveling away of the flower, leaf and limb of our hunting tradition. Until we hunters learn to grow allegiances among the larger society instead of accumulating enemies we cannot avoid arriving at the same troublesome place now occupied by those ethical trappers who personally do nothing to offend.

Remember, political collapse of the social contract that supports hunting does not require a majority of Americans to become anti-hunters: collapse only requires that they stop caring – stop seeing value in the hunters’ presence in society.

Only by earning the respect of non-hunters by showing ourselves as champions of values shared by non-hunters can we avoid the social oblivion of indifference.

And non-hunters have made crystal clear the one value they expect from hunters above all other values.  They expect hunters to show respect for the wild animals we hunt. Poll after poll pops this value to the top of the chart.

Hunters displaying contempt for an animal like the wolf, which is valued by the larger society, can expect only an accumulation of contempt in return.

To its credit the Boone and Crockett Club continues to emphasize the importance of keeping the respect of the non-hunting public. Among the 10 points of the Club’s Code of Ethics is the pledge: ‘To do my part in upholding a positive public image of hunters and hunting.’

Jack Ward Thomas, in an article titled “A Hunting Ethic” published in the spring edition of FAIR CHASE, the B&C Club magazine, cites four ‘filters’ or tests to establish a standard of fair chase. Prominent among these, he says, is “The action does not facilitate negative criticism toward hunting in general from those who do not hunt.”

Contempt breeds contempt; respect earns respect. Hunters who sneer at the values of non-hunters are pulling all hunters down the social rope toward the noose now tightening around the neck of trappers.

  ~~ Ron Moody

In the arena – but what difference does it make?

Spring turkey season is less than a month away. It appears, however, that some other nimrod will have to keep the gobblers honest this year.

For I will be hunting votes rather than beards and spurs.

I made it all the way to age 67 before the beasts in the political arena finally cornered me. Circumstance conspired with my own preachments about citizenship to cut off my retreat. I am left with no escape but to turn and face the electorate by putting my own name on the ballot. So now I’m a candidate for the Montana State House of Representatives.

What could I have possibly been thinking?

Like any other American citizen I care about my country, and in a general fashion, devote serious concern to all the decisions that must be made to operate the world’s largest constitutional republic.  Any given citizen is forced to specialize to some degree, however, because so many decisions spanning so many aspects of human life are required.

The particular policy specialization upon which I have focused my citizenship has been to advocate for preservation and advancement of what I call “the great American Triumph of the Commons.” I’ve written about that in previous columns so I will not belabor the topic here. (Check the archive on the right column of this page.)

What difference will it make if a hunter-conservationist with a passion for wild things and wild places gets elected to a state legislature?

Regardless of what perception you may have of relative importance of the various levels of government (national, state or local), state government in general and the state legislature in particular is the place where the fate of hunters and anglers goes most often and directly onto the chopping block.

State legislatures decide what power to delegate to the state game and fish commissions. The legislature decides how well or poorly funded the state wildlife agency will be. State legislatures in general, and the Montana Legislature in particular, meddle incessantly in the particulars of licenses, seasons, bag limits, poaching penalties and a myriad of other threads that constitute the policy envelope within which hunting and fishing takes place.

You may hike as far up a Missouri Breaks coulee as you please, or haul your fly rod as deep into the Beartooth wilderness as boots will take you – but you can’t escape that envelope. It’s right there in your wallet where you keep your license. Or it’s waiting for you on the trail in the person of a game warden. Or perhaps it has settled itself into your conscience. But the acts of your state legislature are always with you.

The vast majority of hunters and anglers are completely oblivious to the origins of their legal envelope. A small percentage of outdoors people take some part in deciding seasons and license restrictions, etc. during the public comment part of wildlife commission proceedings. Only a micro-corps of sportsmen, however, actually enter the arena as advocates to the legislature to influence the actual construction of the legal envelope.  The 14 million other American hunters and anglers owe more than they will ever know to these valiant few.

I follow the proceedings of other states with an emphasis on the Northern Rockies. Being a Montana resident I use the happenings here in Big Sky Country to also illuminate the parallel activities going on among the neighbors. What I describe here is just as true in Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah – actually nationwide.

By their power to make laws, state legislatures define much of the experience that people encounter when they go hunting, fishing, hiking, paddling or whatever else that people do in the great outdoors.

Whose blood do you see in the dirt of the arena while the Legislature is in session? 

Here in Montana and neighboring states the past decade has been one of steady bleeding away of the value of our public trust institutions. Even more bloody has been the evisceration of the public sportsmen’s’ interest versus the ambitions of other arena contestants such as the energy industry, commercial exploiters of wildlife, and, in some instances, agriculture.

Large areas of Western public lands are no longer worth the effort to hunt because of habitat degradation. Vaster areas can’t be hunted or hiked because legal access is blocked and lawmakers refuse to change that.

Budgets of state wildlife agencies have either languished or actually been cut. Hunting licenses have been legislated into payoff schemes for commercial interests. Trespass laws have been skewed to create an imbalance of power between sportsmen and landowners. (I’ve met too many ex-hunters who quit because the fear of unintended penalties took the attraction out of the sport.) Laws are passed to impede wildlife management in general and transplanting of wildlife to improve the abundance and health of game populations in particular.  This could be the world’s longest paragraph but, hopefully, you have the picture now.

Here in Montana, for too many years, that micro-corps of hunter-advocates I mentioned have made Spartan-like journeys to their Legislature fighting a defensive battle from session to session trying to slow the attacks upon public sportsmen’s’ interests.

Victories have occurred; recent passage of a bridge access bill in Montana being an example. But even that came only after a state Supreme Court decision in favor of the public trust forced the Legislature’s hand.

What difference can be made? That depends on who gets elected.

Regardless of how much effort sportsman advocates exert to influence a sitting legislature – the real decision about whose interest will win and whose will lose was made before the legislature ever convened.

That decision was made on Election Day.  By my estimate about 95 percent of the design of the sportsman’s legal envelope is made on the first Tuesday in November of every election year.

Do you know what your state senator or representative is up to in the state capitol? Does he or she vote on bills according to the values they espoused when they asked for your vote?  2014 is the best year possible for you to seek true answers to those questions.

I think you will find that the hunt for votes has much to do with the success of your hunt for bucks, birds and lunkers.

  ~~ Ron Moody

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