it smacks of blaming the victim to say otherwise.
But isn't saying that sportsmen were duped by industry into working against their own interests also blaming the victim (and insulting to boot)? I don't agree with the way she singles out the animal rights movement as the sole cause, but I do agree that one important cause of the backlash was that mainstream environmentalism took on an elitist, authoritarian, nature-fetishizing aspect. This both alienated its natural grassroots among sportsmen and people of color, and was substantively wrong. Yes, the Wise Use ideology unfairly demonized environmentalists -- but there was also a grain of truth to it. Just as we're trying to do with the environmental justice community, environmentalists need to take to heart sportsmen's concerns as well as asking them to take up our agenda.

From the Washington monthly piece:

"The billionaire Koch brothers, overseers of numerous oil refineries and chemical companies, founded the Cato Institute and the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE), which support privatizing federal lands"

Thanks for highlighting this article Dave.

The effect of animal rights advocacy in breaking up the coalition between hunting and fishing groups and environmentalists against corporate exploitation of public lands, is most illuminating.

Compare a corporate farm feedlot meat or dairy "farm" or egg factory to even a psychopath-disguised-as-sportsman  like Cheney killing 75 quail in one outing.

A few bad actors like "wolf killer" Cheney do not even compare to the everyday degradation of routine corporate agriculture that the vast majority depend upon for food.

I guess it's better to let the sportsmen and women themselves police these kinds of idiots than diss the whole hunting and fishing community.  

That's how I handled my last run in with some teens killing for the sheer joy of sadism near my favorite bike/ski trail.  Shame them from the sportsman point of view, that works.

This article is a REAL eye opener on the coaltion of diverse interests to protect wilderness.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

David,
In this excellent post, you ask "who else [besides agribiz and big oil] will grow the corn and sell the ethanol?"

It's important to remember that agribiz does very little actual growing. There's a passage in Richard Manning's Against the Grain that puts it well:

A farm scholar once asked an abribusiness executive when his corporation would simply take over the farms. The exec said that it would be dumb for the corporation to do so, in that it is not free to exploit its employees to the degree that farmers are willing to exploit themselves.

As a farmer, that passage never fails to elicit an audible gulp from me. Agriculture is too full of risk and uncertainty for serious corporate interest. Corporations are willing to buy low and sell high, however.

The direct-payment subsidy system that's in place is insidious precisely because the payouts don't go to ADM, Cargill, et al. They go straight to farmers, encouraging overproduction and lowering the price of commodities. Thus opponents of subsidies, rather than railing against ADM, find themselves working against "the family farm."

So, my "small point" is that you should have said "who else will process the corn and sell the ethanol."
Cheers,
Tom

That's the second time you've busted me making that small-but-significant mistake. Never again!

www.grist.org

It is true that the Sierra Club and others sometimes work against hunting. My experience is this occurs when the hunters are behaving badly. For example, among hunters there is a significant constituency that hates predators. Hate isn't a strong enough word. Predators to them are just a 'bad' animal. They want them dead by any means and in any number. Yes animal rights people often object to those means, but environmentalists are correct to object to the numbers if they are detrimental to wildlife populations.
   I call myself an environmentalist and don't think animals have rights the ways humans do. But there is no shame either in wanting animals treated respectfully, with compassion and dignity. No one should feel like they have to leave their heart at the door to have a place at the discussion table. (I also notice that on other topics like factory farming where animals are treated horrifically, the enviromental damage is also pretty horrific- animal rights and environmental protection often go together.)
   It is very easy for hunters to wear the "conservaion" cloak when what they really want protecting are their own self interests and not the common good- their permission to kill and not wildlife and habitat for its own sake.

Right, Mkray, animal rights and environmentalism are not the same thing at all, and I am surprised that Christina Larson seems to want to confuse them.  It is not clear what the Sierra Club was up to in its campaign to reduce hunting seasons; it is a non-sequitur to assume that it was motivated by a sense of animal rights.  Animal-rights activists share many interests and values with environmentalists, as you say.  But here and there they part company.

Consider the Disney classic movie "Bambi," one of the most environmentally pernicious works of art of all time.  Is there any greater reason why, in the latter half of the 20th century, in the wolfless Northeast, the white-tailed deer has become a trash species, ruining healthy forests and destroying the habitat of birds?  Now, the sentimentality of Bambi-lovers is hardly the same as a thoughtful animal-rights ethics.  Still, one sees how they might be confused.  Wherever such a simple anti-hunter animosity comes from, it often creates environmental problems.

By the same token, where are those Northeastern wolves?  Here too, discrimination is in order.  There are hunters and there are hunters.  The anti-predator prejudice, which you refer to, runs strong in Europeans and their American descendants.  An environmentalist does not have to be a supporter of animal rights to understand that the wholesale slaughter of great American predators -- wolves in the first place, but also grizzlies, cougars, eagles, lynxes, and a few others -- was not at all a good thing.

As both a supporter of animal rights and an environmentalist, I have not too much of a problem with cultivating the friendship of those serious hunters who kill their couple of deer or elk each season, and are satisfied.  We can work well enough with their interest in "conservation."  On the other hand, the Cheney-ish, Scalia-ish "sportsmen" who like to murder birds, are beyond consideration.  

Two final complications: First, why is it so hard to get hunters to stop using lead shot?  Lead shot left in unretrieved carcasses can be lethal to scavengers, such as the endangered California condor.  And secondly, it is, needless to say, very very difficult to fight the influence of the NRA, who have infiltrated all the hunters' organizations, setting them in resolute unfriendliness toward environmentalist advances.  And why?  To make sure that the hunters will not be seduced by us liberals from voting as a bloc for the GOP?

  Great post.  There are two issues, one is the split between "sportsmen/women" and environmentalists, and the other is the conservative response to the whole thing.

  One reason for the split may be due to a fundamentally different view of relations between humans and nature.  Many (NOT ALL!) hunters still come from the view of nature as something they need to conquer and subdue (this includes those who want to kill all predators).  They tend to see humans and nature as enemies, and we must triumph over and control nature.

   The environmental movement (parts of it anyway) has begun to tend towards the view of humans as part of nature, seeing a need to live in harmoney with other species, and see ourselves as one part of the grand mosaic that is nature.

   These two views clash, and not in a minor way.  It is not clear to me that they can ever resolve and unite (but they hopefully can find common ground from time to time) into anything that might be called a movement.

    The other issue is the ability of the existing conservative movement to distract and confuse issues.  I think this is a significant problem, and we need to focus more attention on it (I have no solutions, look forward to other people's ideas).

   Soon we will see green gasoline and green SUV's and green suburbs (with 40,000 square foot green mansions) and green nuclear weapons as well....
It may all be seen by them as a matter of marketing, not changing anything..

Patrick

You mean like Bush's response to drooping poll numbers and criticism from high places- to change his public relations staff?

I totally agree about the different views of our relationship with Nature- being a part of the whole, existing in harmony VS being at war with 'bad animals' and 'bad weather'. I think most hunters understand the balance required in Nature- predators and prey (not so sure about 'sportsmen'). The 'war' perspective is much more pervasive- I suspect that a majority of our population sees humanity fighting against Nature instead of working with Her.

I blame the contracting out of all responsibility to corporations and industry. We don't grow our own food, so we're not responsible for how it's done. We don't make our own clothes or generate our own energy, so it's someone else's job to do it right. But if we dare to tell them how to do it, they threaten us with higher prices, reduced supply, and fewer jobs. So now it is the consumer's fault that animals and the Earth suffer. Most Americans have NO relationship with Nature- only with their hired hands. When responsibility is diffused, the worst things happen, and nothing changes.

Only solution I see is to get small and localize. When communities provide most of what they need for themselves, when the impact of how we treat the Earth is felt locally, personally, then people will have working, positive relationships with Nature.

a liberal in redsville

"And why?  To make sure that the hunters will not be seduced by us liberals from voting as a bloc for the GOP?"

National Rifle manufacturer's Asociation.

It's all about corporatism, not about our rights. The bribes flow freely to keep those cheap saturday night specials churning off the assembley lines, most of those factory jobs moving to China.

Around our neck of the woods, in northern Wisconsin, all the small predators are on the rise.  That makes the bird populations go on a waning cycle, but then it will reverse again.

Wolves, bear, and cougars even are recovering in a big way.  Eagles can be seen 10 to a deer carcass along the highways.  A huge deer population explosion from human feeding and clear cutting is not being controlled by current gunting or the increase in the numbers of predators.  

Hunting seasons need to be expanded and special hunts in suburban areas with lots of deer feeding and where deer feed heavily on fatm crops are needed.  I think commercial deer hunting ought to be considered.  

Now that fur prices have dropped, the small predators and beaver and muskrat populations are too high.  To control over feeding by beavers homeowners here have to pay trappers a premium.

Life out of balance.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

There is another destructive movement afoot in the Environmental Arena. they are the NMBY's. Some have legitimate gripes but there are others who just don't want this or that project and create effective campaigns using scare tactics of lies and distortions to rally support against this or that project. This kind of effort gives the true environmental movement a bad name that industry can easily prey upon, labeling us as extreemists.

Bouty Baldridge Wilmington, NC