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Long ago conservationists fought together for wildlife

by Larry Niles
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Wildlife and habitat suffer grave threats in our time. But this isn’t the first time. Early in the last century, the destruction of habitat and the nearly unchecked killing of wildlife for meat, fur, feather, and entertainment created income for some but ended in ecological collapse. Conservationists restored these lost natural resources over the next 100 years despite the efforts of politicians to prevent it. Their efforts inform our own to restore the Delaware Bay estuary and other damaged ecosystems across the country.  It also warns us of the ways political bosses conspire against responsible resource management.

 

Unimaginable damage

One can only imagine the extent of the damage caused by the robber barons of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Pristine waters of the east flowed with sewage and industrial waste. The advent of gas tractors in the early 1900s brought on widespread plowing of fragile soils, leaving them vulnerable to extensive erosion. The damage created the Dust Bowl, one of the great ecological disasters of any time. At the same time, Loggers decimated the last of the virgin forests that greeted our ancestors and raked the remains for firewood and charcoal.  

Thanks to Teddy Roosevelt, things improved with the passage of national laws that stopped the market-hunting of wildlife and created our first national parks and forests. Still, lawlessness and habitat destruction went on until the nation lost significant portions of the populations of even highly productive species deer and turkey.

The collapse of huntable populations of game animals, deer, turkey, and especially waterfowl, slowly fueled public outrage. Even as the Great Depression hobbled the nation’s economy, activists like Ding Darling, a famous political cartoonist ( his cartoon is the featured image above), helped President Delano Roosevelt rally the public and Congress.

 

 

First-Hand experience

Within five years, the coalition of conservationists had successfully created the political power to pass sweeping laws. They created the first Duck Stamp and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. They implemented a new tax on guns and ammunition that fueled a new state-based system of regulating hunting and fishing. Hundreds of millions of dollars flooded conservation initiatives. All still functions to this day.  

Early in my career as a field biologist, I experienced the radical change this represented. I served as a regional biologist for GA Fish and Wildlife in the Okefenokee region of the state. It included eight counties of vast wooded wetlands, small farms of cotton, grains, and tobacco, and enormous industrial short-rotation forests. The scattered and small backwoods communities in my region remained mired in poverty, and the racism of the Jim Crow era as the rest of Georgia progressed into modern times. 

Many of the “old-timers” in the GA. Fish and Game, like Frank Parrish, my supervisor, acquired college degrees in wildlife management as part of their GI bill benefits from fighting in WWII and Korean Conflict. They were among the first class of professional wildlife managers spawned by conservation luminaries like Aldo Leopold and Paul Errington. They fought the early battles with the rural communities to stop illegal hunting and political manipulations of seasons and bag limits. Conservation Officers faced gun battles with angry Okefenokee swamp dwellers,  that could not accept the government taking away the right to kill whenever they wanted. The local politicians fueled their anger to mask their own [olitical motives under the mantel of individual rights. 

 

 

Banding together to win

How did my colleagues in GA win? Because even while the politicians tried to subvert conservation, hundreds of thousands of hunters and fishers banded together. They created enough political power to forced wildlife protection into the mainstream. Compared to the rest of the nation, Georgia residents were among the last to fall into line, but this transition occurred across the country.

That coalition of conservationists has eroded in recent years. Anti-hunting furor, feral cat protection, anti-trapping, gun rights, and other partisan issues divide conservationists into ideological positions, just as has happened with nearly every other aspect of our lives. It weakens the cause of conservation by forcing hunters and fishers into the arms of right-wing groups like the NRA or left into groups like PETA. 

 

Sport hunters and the NRA: How conservationists act against their own interests

The NRA’s manipulations demonstrate how industry neutralizes conservation. This tax-exempt non-profit takes advantage by drawing hunters in with a message that conflates the right to hunt with the right guns.  In the process, they reap millions in donations. Under the table, however, they make money from national and international corporations that destroy wildlife and habitat like Koch Industries.  

In turn, Koch Industries also greenwashes its destruction with donations to business-friendly conservation groups like the Nature Conservancy and Wildlife Habitat Council. The latter group presented Koch Industries with a conservation award.  

To the delight of industry, this dis-orientation of outdoors people helps to cancel their political power. Non-partisan issues like habitat protection or fishery management turn into partisan issues that give politicians cover to make money and take direction from commercial interests. Politicians seed the conflict so as trick outdoors people into acting against their interests. 

We think we have progressed since the days of Georgia like “Boss Hogg” manipulating seasons and bag limits but we have not. The same battle wages on, however, now with just smarter and richer adversaries. 

 

Boss Hogg lives On

We think we have progressed since the days of Georgia like “Boss Hogg” manipulating seasons and bag limits but we have not. The same battle wages on, however, now with just smarter and richer adversaries. 

One can see how politicians game conservationists in the case of Congressman Jeff Van Drew of NJ Second Congressional District.  

Dr. Van Drew, a dentist before becoming a local democratic politician, got lucky and caught the democratic wave in 2018, which converted a republican congressional seat to a democrat.  Cynically Van Drew returned the favor by voting against impeachment inquiry and abandoning the Democratic party when it came time to vote on the articles of impeachment. Now a Trump sycophant, he hopes to game the partisan divide for personal gain. He should fit right in with the Trump administration.

 

Republican US Congressmen Jeff Van Drew ( as a democratic state Senator) presenting an award to the Boy Scouts of America

In 2010, Van Drew campaigned for the state Senate running against a new saltwater fishing license that he described as a tax on sports fishers. He railed on about the effort of the government to stop anglers from exercising they’re god-given right to catch fish without government interference and unfair tax.  Large fishery companies and head boat associations spurred him on. Van Drew won, and the license fell to defeat.  

 

Taking fish without responsibility for the fishery

The need for the license, to repair the damaged fisheries of NJ, which includes nearly all important sportfish, remains. Van Drew stopped any hope of professional fishery managers collecting data and implementing harvest restrictions that would have helped the fisheries. He divided the political force of fishers into left and right segments that deluded their political power. See this discussion on a Striped Bass forum to see the damage he had done.  

He did it to get ahead just as he now abandons one party for another to get ahead. But he also destroyed a traditional path forward used by conservationists for decades. The revenue and political weight of sport fishers buying licenses would have revitalized the fishery. In the ten years since this ” boss hog” politician defeated the license fee, the fish would have rebounded.  The heady sportfishing of the past would have returned. The businesses depending on the fishers, like headboat captains, would have enjoyed a fishing renaissance and increase profit.   Everybody would have won, including the fish.

Instead,  Van Drew worked for the people making money from fish or sport fishers, but not the fish. Looking over his campaign donations one can see the Garden State Seafood and Atlantic Cape Fishery both commercial fishing behemoths in the port of Cape May.  But he also received money from the Recreational Fishing Alliance, a non-profit representing mostly headboat captains and with strong ties to commercial interests. The RFA boasts of its effort to defeat the new license.  They helped Van Drew turn it into a registry so to avoid missing federal funding that comes with saltwater fishing licenses ( all states have them except NJ).

 

Unite the old coalition to fight political and industry interference in good management 

But fishing and hunting licenses not only make a registry of the people who fish and hunt.  They bring millions in new funding and a vocal constituency who demand control of the actions funded by that money.  That’s what Van Drew wanted to prevent – any hope of sport fishers and the public from having a meaningful say over NJ’s Boss Hogg fishery management system.

Conservation will never be a concern of all Americans. It will never be the main issue for either political party. But my experience tells me, conservationists, from both the left and right, stand ready to defend the resources on which we all depend. A new coalition built of all people who love wildlife and fisheries, productive habitat, or just the natural world must overcome political ideology and save it. We need to fend off politicians like Van Drew and recreate the old coalition that gave us much of the natural resources we once enjoyed and so easily gave away.  

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