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Sportsmen and Women for Biden

August 26, 2020 By Tom Sadler Leave a Comment

A new political action committee (PAC) stepped into the presidential campaign arena with the launch of Sportsmen and Women for Biden. Recognizing the American outdoors cannot survive another four years of Donald Trump, this PAC is mobilizing sportsmen and women across the country to end this era of unprecedented destruction and forge a brighter future for the American outdoors by electing Joe Biden.

In 2016 America’s sportsmen and women helped swing the presidential election, and in doing so ushered in the most anti-outdoor administration in U.S. history. In key state after key state, sportsmen and women went to the ballot box and cast a vote for a candidate who was clearly not aligned with our outdoor interests. Unsurprisingly, the last four years have illuminated this reality as Donald Trump and his administration have unraveled the fabric of America’s outdoor heritage by dismantling dozens of keystone conservation laws and destroying some of America’s most important outdoor resources.

This November, American sportsmen and women have a choice. We can usher in a great era for the American outdoors by electing Joe Biden, or we can give the most anti-outdoor president in American history another four years to further his unparalleled record of devastation,” said Brian Bennett. “I created Sportsmen and Women for Biden to ensure that America’s sportsmen and women make the right choice in 2020 by sending Joe Biden back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and Donald Trump back to Mar-a-Lago.

There is no precedent for Donald Trump’s legacy of outdoor destruction. No president – Republican or Democrat – has ever demonstrated such blatant disregard for America’s sportsmen and women as Donald Trump. No president – Republican or Democrat – has ever done even close to the damage in eight years that Donald Trump has done in his first four years in the oval office. And no presidential candidate – Republican or Democrat – has ever been so committed and prepared to unleash a wake of outdoor destruction as Donald Trump is right now.

In a desperate attempt to hoodwink America’s sportswomen and women and shore up electoral support for himself and several endangered Republican senators, Donald Trump is temporarily reversing course on a few important outdoor issues,” Bennett said. “America’s sportsmen and women must not be fooled by this charade. Donald Trump is a con artist, not a conservationist. He does not care about outdoor issues beyond this election, something the last four years make abundantly clear.

With all of the chaos surrounding the 2020 election, the ballots sportswomen and women will cast this November may very well determine this election, just as they did four years ago. We cannot afford to let America’s sportsmen and women once again facilitate the demise of our outdoor heritage and future by returning Donald Trump to the White House.

It is time for America’s sportsmen and women to stand up and put a swift and abrupt end to this despicable administration. Four years of Donald Trump was four years too many. Another four years of his malfeasance must not happen. Sportsmen and women across the country must join together and fight tirelessly to send Joe Biden back to the White House.

More information about Sportsmen and Women for Biden, can be found on their website and Instagram, Facebook and Twitter pages. A YouTube channels will follow shortly.

To learn how you can help us spread the word, sign up here. To support this pivotal effort, please make a donation (not tax-deductible) here.

Sportsmen and Women for Biden is a registered independent political action committee and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee

Filed Under: Conservation, The Roosevelt Mandate Articles Tagged With: Sportsmen and Women for Biden

Connections

August 1, 2020 By Tom Sadler Leave a Comment

When I read Todd Tanner’s Fly Fishing is Ultimately About Connections, especially the part about guiding, it resonated strongly with me. Rather than a quick reply or share on Facebook, it merited a bit more commentary.

If you’ve spent much time around fly-fishing guides, or if you’ve worn the yoke yourself on occasion, you know that guides can be a close-knit bunch. Rivalries and egos aside, the vast majority of guides share a common love for the sport.”

Todd Tanner

A number of this struck me about Tanner’s column.

First, he notes that guides are a close-knit bunch. The crew at Mossy Creek Fly Fishing, where I have the privilege to guide (although this season, COVID-19 disease has robbed me of some of that), are like brothers. It is a fraternal bond that is seated in a common purpose; to provide our guests the best possible experience. We willing help each other to see that happen. And while we horse around and mercilessly tease each other, I know each would do all in their power to help me as I would them. That is a connection that I treasure, and a big part of the physic income I derive from guiding.

Second, Tanner notes our love of the sport. I have yet to meet a guide that doesn’t fit that description. Frankly, the love of sport is unavoidable. The willingness to share that love is, for me and I suspect my fellow guides as well, what gets us out on the water. We flat out dig the sport and we love to share it. I take great joy in seeing my guests succeed and come away from their time on the water with a desire to return and enjoy the experience again. You need only look at the smiles on the faces of guides when their guests succeed to know this is true.

Tanner points out, “If there’s a palpable difference between guides and the general fly-fishing community, it’s likely in the degree of sheer, unbridled passion.” Sure it can be a hassle to guide and put in the long hours of pre-game preparation and post-game resets. But it is that passion that makes me sign up to guide another trip and is fed by that physic reward I mentioned.

Finally, and Tanner touches on this as he wraps up, there is the connection to the natural world. For the better part of 25 years I have been directly engaged in advocating on resource conservation policy at the federal level. As a lobbyist and a journalist I have to connect complex public policy to meaningful, real world impacts. Guiding has made me better at doing that.

Tanner’s column goes beyond the points I note here. He explores his own connections to the sport and where they have led him. It is worth you time.

Source: Fly Fishing is Ultimately About Connections – Sporting Classics Daily

Filed Under: Conservation, Fly Fishing, Fly Fishing Instruction Tagged With: Todd Tanner

Why the Roosevelt Mandate

May 25, 2020 By Tom Sadler Leave a Comment

During this Covid spring, as these days have come to be known, I had time to reflect on the state of conservation and what the future might hold. As time permits I will use this space to gather and share my thoughts.

Roosevelt’s words from A Book-Lover’s Holidays in the Open, have always had deep meaning to me. And as we face the destruction wrought by the pandemic both in human lives and economic damage I decided to use Roosevelts words as an inspiration for some opinion writing.

Filed Under: The Roosevelt Mandate Articles

Patagonia | Saving the water

April 19, 2020 By Tom Sadler Leave a Comment

Patagonia is putting its marketing clout behind a new effort to champion water that is near and dear to our hearts.

In his article It’s All Home Water: Oregon Steelhead, Steve Duda shares the story of Jeff Hickman, a guide, outfitter and activist. Hickman’s love and concern for wild fish and the water they call home is as much a part of him as fishing is.

“Fly fishing is not only what I do for a living,” he says, “it’s my sanity.”

I can relate to Hickman and his world view because it mirrors my own. More importantly Hickman’s style of activism is on point.

 “This is not doom and gloom,” he says. “This is not me saying that the world is over, let’s all give up and get drunk. We’re at a tipping point and we all need to stand up and speak our minds and talk about what’s important to us. I think a complaint is worth a lot more than people give it credit for. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, man.”

The entire article is worth the time to read. And if you would rather just look at the pictures, there is an accompanying photo essay: Steelhead Green

Source: https://www.patagonia.com/stories/home-water-oregon-steelhead/story-79709.html

Filed Under: Conservation, Fly Fishing Tagged With: Hickman, Patagonia, Steelhead

Home Water

April 1, 2020 By Tom Sadler Leave a Comment

Editor’s note: This article also appears in From the Waterfront, the Marine Fish Conservation Network’s blog.

Isolation, self-imposed or otherwise, provides a time for reflection. Last weekend I sat down to gather my thoughts on the current state of affairs, and here is where I landed.

First off, my days are not significantly different from my regular routine. I have been working from home for more than a decade. Conference calls, video chats, emails, etc. are all pretty routine. As a side note, dogs and children in the background of calls and video chats are a sign of life and, I would argue, a reaffirmation of life.

I have a separate room for an office, the amenities are numerous and convenient, and the commute is non-existent. My guiding side hustle has taken a beating, but I don’t rely on the income, and it has freed up time for me to get out fishing on my own. I am grateful for relaxation wherever I can find it.

All and all, I can’t complain.

In times like these, we see the best and worst of human behavior. When it comes to interacting with my fellow man, I am a bit of a social dichotomy, to be frank. By nature, I am pretty gregarious; I like to interact with people regardless of where I am and what place they occupy in the world. My parents, the Navy and my friend Jim Range all helped form that mindset. In fact, it is a yardstick I use to measure people. If you look down on the help, are rude to servers or janitors and the like, I consider you beneath contempt and no friend of mine. I’m also extremely scornful of the self-important, self-entitled and greedy.

I am fortunate that either by accident or design, I wound up working in the world of conservation advocacy. It sure didn’t start that way. Over the last 30 years or so, I have been engaged in efforts to conserve and protect our natural resources and advocate for responsible management of our lands and waters and the critters, including us, who rely on them.

With a global pandemic disrupting many daily routines, I can’t help but take comfort in the notion that the things I have fought to protect are now seen as an essential element for surviving this life-threating disruption. I am not equating nature with hospitals or holding out my work as more significant or valuable than those currently on the front lines of this crisis. I am certainly not trying to pat myself on the back. Still, I firmly believe that when the dust settles, there will be a greater appreciation for some previously underappreciated assets in our national and global infrastructure. The truth is we need nature, and we need stewards to defend against those who devalue or, worse, despoil this essential part of existence on this planet.

As a journalist, reading good writing, especially in times of strife and uncertainty, deepens my faith in the many ink-stained wretches who labor to so hard to help us see the world by written word so we may better understand what is going on in places we cannot be. I also hope we will have learned to think for ourselves and not blindly follow the things that reinforce our beliefs and tribal instincts. That we look to our better angels and metaphorically build bridges, longer tables, and appreciate the struggles of others and lend a hand when we can.

I had the opportunity to enrich my reflections by reading three items that buoyed my spirits, and I will close with those in hopes they can do the same for you.

Monte Burke writes for Forbes magazine. Burke and I share a love for fly-fishing and affection for brook trout. His article “March Madness – Finding Calm Amid Coronavirus Anxiety” in The Drake magazine was both unsettling and comforting. Burke writes of his anguish about his exodus from New York City. It is wrenching to read but includes a bit of promise:

At the last minute as my wife and I packed, just before I zipped up my duffel bag, I’d thrown in a 4-weight fly rod, a reel and a box of flies. It was, at the time, merely a symbolic gesture. It was March. The fishing in the medium-sized river in Vermont would be poor if happening at all. The gear was a rather senseless thing to bring along, seeing as we required every inch we could get in the car. But I needed one totem of normalcy, a normalcy that I now realized I had taken for granted all of my life.

Burke tells of his days with the family in self-isolation and how the fly rod and a trip to the river become a beacon of hope:

As I walked home, the sun began to ease itself behind the mountain in the distance and the breeze became more insistent. It was abundantly clear that we were in for difficult times, perhaps more difficult than we can even fathom, a cruel winter that will seem endless. I am trying to prepare myself for the worst. But I decided as I neared the house, I would also start living for the spring — whether it’s actual or metaphorical — and for all of those things I once took for granted. It may be months before we’re there. It may take a year or longer. But it will come.

Land Tawney runs the nonprofit Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. Land has a warrior’s heart in the finest sense of the word. He has selflessly given of himself to the conservation cause, and he is at his best when he speaks from his heart about the outside. In an email, he wrote,

For me, a big part of keeping myself safe and healthy – mentally, physically and spiritually — comes back to the Great Outdoors. Earlier this week, I took my family to some public lands just outside of Missoula. The sun was out, the air was crisp and while there was still some snow on the ground, you could feel the onset of spring. We crumpled our local newspaper, full of virus news, and my 8-year-old son lit the fire. We roasted hot dogs and sausages over the coals and noticed the robins, chickadees and crows. Our kingdom. Our solace. It showed me once again how getting outside can help heal us – offering sustenance and a respite from the anxiety and unease in the world.

Admiral William McRaven penned an Op-Ed in The Washington Post about his SEAL training. McRaven writes,

My training class had been out of the mud for a short period of time when the instructors, looking to weed out the weak of mind and body, ordered the entire group of 55 men back into the bog. The mud consumed each man until there was nothing visible but our heads. We were all exhausted, numb from the cold and desperate to hold on. The instructors told us that we could all leave the mud — if just five men quit. It was the instructors’ way of turning us against each other.

McRaven invokes this memory to illustrate his view, one I share, that we Americans are resilient, and there is good reason for hope. He writes,

There were still eight hours to go before the sun rose — eight more hours of bone-chilling cold. Several of the students started moving to dry ground; they were ready to quit. And then, one voice began to echo through the night — one voice raised in song. The song was terribly out of tune but sung with great enthusiasm. One voice became two and two became three, and before long the entire class was singing. The instructors threatened us with more time in the mud if we kept singing, but the singing persisted. Those of us stuck in the mud believed that if one of us could start singing when he was up to his neck in mud, then maybe the rest of us could make it through the night. And we did.

McRaven believes that we will prevail, and it is time for us to start singing. I think we will if we join in that song.

Consider this an invitation.

Filed Under: Conservation, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Marine, MFCN, Reflections Tagged With: COVID-19, Land Tawney, Monte Burke, William H. McRaven

Congress needs to fix the ASMFC

February 22, 2020 By Tom Sadler Leave a Comment

In his article, AT THE ASMFC: THE COMPELLING FORCE OF LAW, Charles Witek points out the dichotomy at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission when it comes to enforcing fishing management regulations.

The good news is that ASMFC can, with the help of NOAA, force the states to adhere to the regulations. In this case menhaden in the Commonwealth of Virginia. On the other hand, with striped bass, when it comes to enforcing their own rules they come up short. Very short.

“The irony of the situation is that, while the ASMFC can use such legal consequences to compel the states to comply with its management plans, if the ASMFC itself fails to comply with the explicit terms of one of its own management plans, it faces no consequences at all.”

Worse, as Witek points out, is there is no way for the public to compel the ASMFC to act.

“And if the public can’t even compel the ASMFC to do what it had already said it would do to protect the health of fish stocks, it certainly lacks the power to force the ASMFC to do what the public expects of it: rebuild overfished stocks and then maintain those stocks at healthy levels, something that, in the 77-year history of the organization, it has not ever done—even once.”

I agree with Witek, its time we revised the legislation that controls ASMFC to make sure they are doing their job. I suspect in the near future there will be an effort started, asking Congress to amend the law so if ASMFC fails to do its job the public can go to the court and seek compliance, “judicial intervention” as Witek notes.

Stay tuned.

Source: ONE ANGLER’S VOYAGE: AT THE ASMFC: THE COMPELLING FORCE OF LAW

Filed Under: Conservation, Hot Takes & Second Hand Smoke, Marine Tagged With: ASMFC, menhaden

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Insurrection most foul

Gerson’s article, “The U.S. must punish sedition — or risk more of it” captures much of what is going through my mind at this moment.

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“We opposed Trump because we recognized that what he stood for is an existential threat to the American experiment in constitutional democracy.”

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