Jordan...you've missed my point entirely.
I don't have a problem with TU's stance on access, but for them to mandate that position to local chapters is an elitist approach that will ultimately hurt the fishery you're/we're so concerned about!@
Jordan...you've missed my point entirely.
I don't have a problem with TU's stance on access, but for them to mandate that position to local chapters is an elitist approach that will ultimately hurt the fishery you're/we're so concerned about!@
nam
Really?
TU's biggest chapter and a few issues of their magazine over the past year or two are all about the Guadalupe River Chapter of TU. Why don't you do a little research on the Guadalupe River and TU's involvement there?
You will find that your assertions are completely out of touch with a great chunk of where TU has been spending its money and energy over the past few years.
You should also look into all the stock they put over the past couple of years in getting sportsmen on board their cause via an affinity approach between TU, RMEF, DU, NWTF, et al. Thumb through a TU magazine and count the pages that don't focus on trout or salmon fishing.
You see, TU darned well KNOWS how inseparable the relationship is between fishery conservation and fishermen.
Ironically, if this measure becomes TU doctrine, then the main focus of their largest chapter (economically and numerically) will become anathema to TU national. The Guadalupe chapter's "big thing" is providing stocking and access on a completely artificial and questionably sustainable trout fishery on the Guad...historically, a warm water stream turned cold by a dam where trout barely are able to survive the long, hot Texas summers without even more artificial intervention. Why? Easy answer: the Guad is strategically located within easy day-trip distance of Austin, San Antonio, and even Dallas. And TU draws a TON of their money from the FLY-FISHERMEN who live in those cities and would not have any access to speak of to the Guad if TU did not manage the bulk of the access under the local club's auspices and "sell" it as a privelege of membership.
So I don't know who you think you're lecturing or about what. But your assertions are laughably ignorant of the facts.
Fishing the Great Beyond
Please refrain from bold, color and attitude.
I think my assertions are out of touch with where TU has been spending a lot of their time and effort recently. I certainly won't argue with that. I'd never deny that fishermen, and their money, provide the backbone of TU, and make all their efforts possible, but TU, by their own admission, is a conservation organization, not a group created to provide benefits for their members. I'm giving the benefit of the doubt to the TU bigwigs here, but if (as I've stated multiple times in this thread) the decision means that the organization is going to focus their resources more on conservation, then the decision is ok with me. Hopefully, the board members share my perspective - the one overriding activity of TU should be the protection and restoration of our coldwater watersheds. Given the current state of our environment, a non-supportive federal government, and rapacious private enterprise bent on enriching themselves by destroying our waters, conservation should be TU's sole priority.Originally Posted by SilverMallard
I know this is an unpopular statement, but I would rather TU focus their efforts on conservation, rather than spend money on lawyers to fight access battles or pour money down a muddy ditch in Texas. Feel free to hate me for it, but a clean environment and sustainable populations of wild trout swimming in unpolluted waters are more important to me.
Jordan, as I said, that horse is long out of the barn. TU is ultimately about fishing.
You don't seem to recognise what it takes to get people excited about conserving a stream. People need to be able to have a "sense of ownership" of the stream in order to want to protect it. They need to be able to point to the stream and talk about what they did to help it. "I planted those trees, I seeded that bank, I built that rock wall," etc. TU is largely about building coalitions amongst people who have a similar vision; coalitions with, perhaps, local Boy Scouts, local soil conservation organizations, local granges, local chapters of other conservation organizations, and of course local landowners. The river is only part of the watershed, and these coalitions need to be broader than just water between the two banks.
The danger in these two cases is not so much what they stand for in themselves, but the impact they could have on future circumstances. Lack of access means lack of potential "sense of ownership" by an otherwise willing coalition of local conservation minded people.
In short, the great majority of anglers are not going to lavish time, energy and money on coldwater fisheries they can only view from a bridge.
Also looming out there is the advancing of the perception that TU is a "rich boys club", something many of the local chapters have to deal with regularly. We don't need National adding to that perception.
This message was posted on the Minnesota TU board, by Matt Clifford, an attorney with the Clark Fork Coalition, and a member of the board for Montana TU.
I've enjoyed reading everyone's comments on this. I've always noticed there's a tendency on all sides to see stream access as an issue driven by emotion and abstract philosophical debate. Let me take a slightly different tack, and talk about TU's real-world experience with the issue of stream access over the years.
TU's greatest strength is its ability to mobilize a nation-wide membership of conservation-minded anglers. TU has built this membership by recognizing that when people develop a passion for fishing, they develop a passion for conservation. While TU is not a fishing club, its activities have always included things that promote an interest in fishing, including fly-tying demonstrations, casting lessons, kid's fishing days, and preserving stream access.
That's what we've been doing for over three decades in Montana, and people tell me you all have been doing it in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Colorado, and other places as well.
I'd say the results have been pretty impressive. As someone always brags at the annual meeting, we're "the greenest of the hook-and-bullet groups and the hook-and-bulletest of the green groups." That gives us a particular credibility that the Sierra Club and the Safari Club can never claim.
We are now hearing that stream access is not "essential" to our mission, that it's divisive, and that it distracts us from our "real" work. We hear that TU does not "need" to be involved in access to be effective. That may (or may not) have been true 20 years ago, but by now the train has long since left the station. TU has built an impressive cadre of grassroots activists based in part on promoting access rights, and in some places -- including Montana -- is seen as a respected leader on access issues. Our members have come to expect this, and have re-paid us in spades with their conservation work and support.
In short, while some donors at the national level may not belive that stream access is "essential" to TU's mission, that is decidedly not the experience of TU chapters and councils around the country. What will it say to the rank and file if the organization makes a sudden U-turn at the behest of a few people they've never heard of? Around here, I've heard angry threats of chapters seceding from the organization and individuals canceling memberships. I think that would be a mistake. But if it happens en masse, TU will not be "the greenest of the hook-and-bullet groups and the hook-and-bulletest of the green groups" any more. We'll be a top-down, national environmental group like so many others. And there will be a lot fewer of us.
That's what's really at stake here. Stream access will never be an easy issue for an organization like TU, but I've always been impressed with how TU has handled it in the past. My hope is that TU can work through this latest flare-up without sacrificing one of our greatest strengths, and that we'll ultimately write this whole episode off as growing pains. We'll find out soon enough.
Matt Clifford
Montana Trout Unlimited
I would argue that most flyfishers, including myself do have that sense of ownership on a lot of the public waters we fish, and are proud of them. I would much rather to be able to point to a section of stream and say to my fishing buddy 'I planted those trees, with TU's help,' instead of standing next to a dead stream or a polluted one and say 'I wish my $20 had bought trees to shade this stream instead of paying for a lawyer in Montana.' I agree that stream access is important, but protecting the environment is more important. It's a simple dichotomy: either X dollars go toward stream restoration and conservation projects, or they go toward fighting for access in the courts.
It's not that these battles shouldn't be fought, it's that there is a more important issue - issue of conservation, as put forth in the mission statement.
I understand this - if a person can legally fish on a stream, he or she is more likely to have a vested interest in protecting it. But once again, it's a question of which is the more important issue, conservation or fishing access? Some people might disagree with me, but I would argue that our environment is in a state of crisis right now - between water-use debates, soil erosion and runoff, pollution from city and town sewer systems, and of course the damage caused by mining operations past and present. So many of our waters literally have the axe hanging over them - others would require just a little effort to make them fertile again.The danger in these two cases is not so much what they stand for in themselves, but the impact they could have on future circumstances. Lack of access means lack of potential "sense of ownership" by an otherwise willing coalition of local conservation minded people.
I agree that conservation and water access are intertwined. In a perfect world, there would be enough money to fight the battle on all fronts - until then, environmental organizations like TU are FORCED to choose their battles - to recognize where their money, and the efforts of their membership will have the most benefit.
Jordan,
How do your monitor what you cannot access? If anglers and paddlers (about 95% of the folks who make up the Stream Team volunteers who do about 80% of all water quality monitoring and clean-ups) cannot GO THERE, how can we protect them from polluters?
Next, how is losing tons of money from anglers going to give us this mythical net benefit of more money for conservation you keep touting? The math is pretty simple.
You seem to me to be ignoring the facts in favor of a principle...setting up a straw man so you can knock it down and say you won. Sure! Conservation is the big goal. You betcha! But if 99% of people don't care and the 1% who do can't get there, HOW are we going to do conservation work?
No...access IS conservation.
And, fyi, TU is not an "environmetal" organization. It is a conservation organization. The question is: is it going to remain a conservation organization, or is it going to become an environmental organization? You seem to be advocating the latter. You're darned right that's an unpopular position!
Blackdog 1101,
Thank you for posting the note from Matt Clifford.
All the best,
Black Gnat
TU
Like it or not the issue here is money. Lodges, outfitters, guides, the "Business" of fishing is BIG money. If you don't believe me look at your fishing catalogs from Orvis etc. There is serious big money to be made by managing restricted access for people who have the money to pay for it. By being "neutral" TU has taken the position that they will not oppose the current trend of restricted access and pay for play. And why should they? These are the corporations and people who have the money and the political connections. These are the resources that TU needs to drive forward it's conservation program.
The United States is one of the few places in the world where it is widely held that the public has the right to fish. Consider that many of worlds Atlantic Salmon streams are "held" by the landowners and fishing is available only to those who can pay serious big money.
I personally, feel no pain if someone has to pay for the privilege ( not right?) to fish at a fancy lodge on restricted water. But if a corporation can buy up the river banks on a major stream out west, why can't the local farmer charge ten bucks to fish the river that flows through his pasture? Suddenly my "right " to fish a river is dependent on my ability to pay.
This is not an abstract issue that only impacts people in places you and I may never see. It impacts all of us and it impacts our favorite "home streams". There is NO neutrality on the issue of stream access. You are either on the side of public access or not.
It would seem that we will soon see on which side TU is on.
AgMD
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