That was a rouser, Dennis. Let me follow up. It's hard to resist a vacant
soapbox.

Before we overestimate our clout, a good demographic and marketing survey
might be sobering. Compare: how many members in the NRA vs how many in the
ABA? Or, how many readers of Field and Stream vs. how many for American
Birds which was so poorly subscribed that Audubon has all but dropped
publishing it? On the other hand an ABA survey a few years ago showed that
birding is a rapidly growing "sport." Hunting, I hear, is in decline.
Birders are also said to be statistically far above the mean in both
education level and income. Is that true for hunters as well? Anyway,
although I don't have precise answers to any of my own questions, I think
it's safe to say that as our great avocation comes of age, so must we, and
(like all of those hunters who loyally support the various organizations
that shore up their interests politically) get out our checkbooks. When it
comes to public lands a user fee is just another name for a tax. I would
much rather know that the $31 (or whatever it is) that I am spending for
entrance fees, etc., goes directly to support access to and management of
public lands for the benefit of my selfish interests rather than into a
general revenue pool that is divvied up to support education, social
services, ranchers, the timber industry, highways, the military, whatever.
Expecting the government to take care of my peculiar interest for me from
general revenues is, to say the least, naive, as is any belief that whining
at them when they don't will do a scrap of good. What we need are more
fees, not less, rationally administered with full accountability to the
users. Us. Let's buy some clout.

Hal Opperman
<halop at continuum.com>
----------
From: tweeters
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: hunters, birders, public lands
Date: Friday, November 04, 1994 9:43AM

I read with interest Burt Guttman's and David Wright's commentaries about
hunters, birders, and the use of public lands. I agree with both of them on
many points.

I can't recall whether I wrote something in support of hunters in this
forum, but I have been one of the people who have made comments such as
those David criticized. When I did, I was coming from the position of
trying to get birders to see hunters not as villains and killers but as
people many of whom share our ethics and care about nature. I acknowledge
fully that there are many bad apples in the hunter barrel, people who
probably don't share a conservation ethic among them, but that doesn't mean
hunters are "bad" as a group (I believe that's called prejudice).

Having made that statement, I agree entirely with David that it would be
silly to attribute more honorable, altruistic, or financially suportive use
of the environment to hunters than birders. And I hope it is clear that the
public lands hunters help to pay for include two types in our state: (1)
national wildlife refuges, and (2) state wildlife recreation areas. The
latter are also supported by fisherpersons and are extremely important from
the standpoint of habitat preservation; go anywhere in the Columbia Basin
to confirm this. Even though it isn't 1950, it's only 1994, and in fact all
that public land was set aside for "consumptive" recreation, i.e. hunting
and fishing. Maybe by 2025 (earlier if we're fortunate to have enlightened
lawmakers) there will be such lands set aside for other reasons.

The other public lands, national and state parks and national forests are
obviously for all of us, the parks not allowing hunting but the forests
allowing it. I think a wonderful solution would be to close parts of the
national forests (representative habitats in each forest, for example) to
hunting, so anyone can indeed wander around in them without fearing for
their life. Does anyone think this will happen in his or her lifetime? It's
odd if it can't, because there are certainly more nonhunters than hunters.
But are there more *birders* than hunters? I don't have figures on this,
but I continually see how few of us there are just by going to places like
Nisqually, which Burt mentioned. Last time I was there, 95% of the people
walking around the trail seemed to me to do it pretty rapidly, many looking
neither to left or right but presumably treating the walk as if it were a
stroll in a city park (and of course the same is true in the city parks I
visit). They were using nature, but what was their level of appreciation of
it? Besides the 3 people in my group, we saw one couple with binoculars,
clearly watching birds. On the last leg of the walk, from McAllister Creek
back to the parking lot, about 20 people passed us with fishing tackle. I
wonder how many hunters are using the refuge now? How many of the people
who passed us, walking rapidly and clearly ignorant of the wealth of bird
life around them in this property preserved for its wildlife value, are
supporters of environmentally valuable landscapes? If in no other way, I
guess they are by paying their refuge entrance fees.

Burt's point about wishing we didn't have to pay for the use of public
lands is a good one, but the only alternative I can see to this is a
general raising of taxes to support all the (assumedly wasteful) government
agencies that administer these lands, among other things. I'm not against
general tax increases, but it sounds as if the majority of Americans are,
and my guess is that such increases would do relatively little to help
national forests, national parks, etc. So why not pay entrance fees that
can directly benefit the land that we are entering (assuming they can be
earmarked to be used on site)? I don't really like it either (which is
certainly because no public lands had entrance fees as I was growing up!),
but I'm not sure how efficacious various alternatives would be.

Well, that was one brief stint on the soapbox before I go off to class. I
hope this is close enough to birds to be admissible on tweeters.


Dennis Paulson phone: (206) 756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
University of Puget Sound email: dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416