A Plague on All Your Forests

In the early 1980's, when Bill Geer of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership was directing the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, he instructed his biologists to look for environmental factors that limited the size and number of deer. They found that the most important factor by far was road construction. "And in those days," he recalls, "we promoted as many roads as the Forest Service." So Geer had his agency do an about face and start closing roads. It proved to be the best thing he could have done for anglers and hunters.

I asked Geer why sportsmen keep working against their own interests--letting groups like the NRA and the Ruffed Grouse Society speak for them on roadless protection, voting in a president and legislators who cheerfully sacrifice fish and wildlife for the convenience of their campaign contributors. He couldn't answer the question, but I liked his response: "I've had this theory ever since I was director in Utah. You could tell hunters and anglers that 'tomorrow we're going to round you up and shoot you,' and they'd piss and moan about it all night long, and next morning they'd be lined up waiting to get shot."