Sportsmen vs. the Northern Forest

"It is if all the cards are on the table."

Well, no. It's management with or without cards, with or without tables. When I asked Ehlers to explain how ecological reserves conflict with the interests of sportsmen he e-mailed me a list of "Open Land Species Threatened by Uniform Climax Forest Management" that included superabundant organisms proliferating in suburbia and industrial forests. Among them: Joe Pye weed, blackberry, black-eyed Susan, chokecherry, mourning dove and robin. He is serious, and so are the Vermont sportsmen who follow him in lock-step. Prevent ecological reserves! Save the Joe Pye weed!

After reading Ehlers copious screeds and interviewing him for the better part of an hour, it became clear to me that of all the things for which he can be justly chided, failure to think is not among them. For example, he has figured out how to sell magazines, and he does it extremely well. Outdoors Magazine is now the most influential sportsmen's publication in Vermont, and it has just gone regional, seeking circulation in Maine, New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut. Tom Butler makes this observation: "There are state legislators who honestly believe that if you don't log every acre all the time, all the animals will die, that the only way to healthy wildlife populations is to have intensive forest management everywhere, that nature can't do anything right. There's an element in Vermont that is grossly ecologically ill-informed, and I think James Ehlers is savvy enough to goose it along."

"Ehlers loves to portray himself as representing the downtrodden, someone who waves a flag for hunters and anglers who get pushed around by modern society," says Steve Wright, who directed the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife from 1985 to 1989 and now serves the National Wildlife Federation as its New England coordinator. "He's also a very ambitious businessman."

The stink raised by Ehlers attracted National Rifle Association (NRA) membership barkers who descended on Vermont like blowflies. "Dear Vermont NRA Member," read the January 29, 2002 missive. "As you know, the State of Vermont purchased the Champion lands, now known as the West Mountain Wildlife Management Area, for the purpose of preserving them for traditional uses, including hunting and trapping. Environmental activists are working hard to keep in place an easement that would allow them to close large areas of this parcel to these uses! THEY WILL TELL YOU OTHERWISE. DO NOT BELIEVE THEM. IF WE DON'T RESOLVE THIS MATTER NOW, WHAT WILL IT MEAN FOR HUNTERS, SHOOTERS, TRAPPERS, AND FISHERMEN? IT MEANS the environmental activists could, on a whim, end all of these activities on land that has been cherished by sportsmen for generation upon generation. IT MEANS you could be denied access to more than 20,000 acres paid for by your hard-earned tax dollars. THEY WILL TELL YOU WE SHOULD BE HAPPY BECAUSE THIS LAND WAS A GIFT. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU PAID $4.5 MILLION FOR A GIFT?"

Actually, the state did not "purchase the Champion lands." Vermonters didn't pay a cent for the "more than 20,000 acres." The management area was, as I reported earlier, given to the state by the Mellon Foundation and the federal government. And, even if environmentalists wanted to (which they don't), they couldn't close one acre to fishing, hunting and trapping because these uses are legally guaranteed in perpetuity. Such is the NRA's commitment to truth.

Also scenting membership opportunities was the Ruffed Grouse Society, an outfit that would cheerfully sacrifice whole watersheds of brook trout for an imagined chance to fill one more grouse with chilled eights. It feigned outrage that the tiny core area would be preserved from the scalping delivered most everywhere else in northern New England, and it tub-thumbed for a bill that would have done away with the ecological reserve or, as it chastely and deceitfully put it, "retain active timber management in the 'toolbox' of Fish and Wildlife managers for use on scientifically justified wildlife habitat enhancements."

Wise-Use types puffed up and trilled like toads in rainwater. The Property Rights Foundation of America proclaimed that "the long-range goal" of the entire campaign to save the northern forest is to "eliminate forestry and other human use." The Northeast Regional Forest Foundation declared that "there is nothing preventing The Nature Conservancy from transferring or selling this easement to another, even more radical organization in the future."

Jim Northup, director of Forest Watch, makes this observation: "If the most shy and sensitive creatures we share this planet with are to survive over the long term, we absolutely must establish some wild places for them. The areas of the national forests that have the least logging have the most pristine waters and the healthiest fisheries. In a densely populated region like the Northeast the future is certainly more roads and more houses and more people. Many sportsmen here travel thousands of miles for high-quality hunting and fishing opportunities. And we have some chances to create those opportunities right here in the Northeast. Those chances won't happen accidentally." Nor will they happen if sportsmen keep trying to torpedo them.

By the time you read this Vermont will have a new governor, a new lieutenant governor, a new House and a new Senate. Instructed by Ehlers, most sportsmen are backing candidates who have it in for ecological reserves. With help from these politicians the Vermont Traditions Coalition--comprised of the camp owners, the Vermont Federation of Sportsmen's Clubs, clearcutters fronting as the Associated Industries of Vermont and the Vermont Forest Products Association, and property-rights groups--will have spawned (or will be preparing) legislation to get logging back into the core area. Even if they fail, they will have generated so much political heat that ecological reserves, desperately needed in the East and in all American forests, may no longer be politically feasible. And that's food for thought--or should be--for all sportsmen.