fly fishing, conservation and politics.
The shit show that is the Republican Caucus in the U.S. House has been building for years.
If you are curious about how it came to pass, Elizabeth Drew does an excellent job of explaining it in her New York Review of Books piece, Congress: Reign of the Implacables.
Feb. 13, 2015
Contact: OWAA President Mark Freeman
541-840-9477
Below is a summary of the position we have developed with respect to the U.S. Forest Service proposed regulations requiring permits to film on Forest Service land.
While we await a new directive from the Forest Service based on very positive comments offered last fall, there is now another venue in which fees and permits for news gathering on all public lands is being vetted.
The Bipartisan Sportsmen’s Act of 2015, introduced in the U.S. Senate on Feb. 5, includes a $200 per year permit proposal for any crews of five people or smaller while filming on all public lands. It currently does not offer exemptions for working journalists as Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell outlined in how he wants the current temporary rules applied on Forest Service land.
We maintain that lumping journalists who are disseminating information about the public’s own lands with television advertising and feature film crews’ work could lead to serious First Amendment implications and quite likely infringements.
While we are limited in what we can do in terms of lobbying on legislative matters as a nonprofit organization, OWAA members may inform their representatives and senators about their personal views on this sliver (Section 106) of the Sportsmen’s Act.
The Outdoor Writers Association of America (OWAA) believes improvements should be made to directives regulating commercial filming or photography on public land so as not to impede the important work of any OWAA member or other professional journalists. The OWAA is especially concerned about the impact existing federal regulations have on our members who are freelancers.
Based on our discussions with U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell during the Forest Service’s rulemaking “Proposed Directive for Commercial Filming in Wilderness” and a review of existing rules, OWAA strongly believes all agency regulations of this nature should specifically exempt professional journalists, working on an assignment for a media outlet or gathering information, images or footage to sell to a media outlet. Such directives must be fully communicated to the field.
First Amendment Protection
In order to address these First Amendment concerns, OWAA recommends the following language be added to regulations of this nature: “Constitutionally protected activity of journalists, as used in these regulations, includes journalists, working on an assignment for a media outlet, or gathering information, images or footage with the intent to sell them to a media outlet.”
This language would address the range of professional activities by OWAA members, including journalists on assignment – either freelancers or staffers – as well as journalists packaging a story for future sale to a yet-unidentified media outlet. This so-called “working on spec” is common, for instance, in the magazine publishing realm when publishers enter into contractual agreements only for completed works. It would include filming b-roll film for future stories not yet assigned or sold.
The specifically stated exemption is important because it best reflects the industry of today and the future. While the term “filming” may have been intended to mean movies or commercials, it incorrectly encompasses activities by virtually all outdoor media professionals working today. Even newspaper staffers routinely shoot videos, sometimes with just their phones, as an extra medium published on newspapers’ websites.
Under existing regulations, federal land managers could believe it their duty to make sure working journalists are following the filming and photography requirements before those activities occur. This could lead to, for example, a federal employee improperly requiring that a journalist apply for a permit for review to determine whether he or she considers the planned newsgathering activity as meeting public land access criteria. This therefore would become an unprecedented review of a journalist’s activities prior to publishing – a violation of First Amendment protections against prior restraint by government.
Without this clearly stated exemption, both federal agencies and working journalists could misinterpret the language and intent, resulting in inconsistent application of the rules and serving no positive end.
Consistent Interpretation
The term “newsgathering” is subject to a range of interpretations. Some suggest that it means coverage of breaking news, such as wildfires.
But the newsgathering process actually accounts for a wide array of activities, from breaking news to news-features to profiles and the collection of B-roll footage.
The OWAA also recommends the following language be added addressing the scope of the regulations so that the newsgathering definition and exemption for working journalists will be consistently interpreted by all present and future federal employees. This proposal is based upon language in the National Park Service regulations addressing this issue.
“Newsgathering activities and other constitutionally protected activities of journalists involving filming, videography or still photography do not require a permit unless:
(1) A permit is necessary to protect natural and cultural resources, to avoid visitor use conflicts, to ensure public safety or authorize entrance into a closed area; and
(2) Obtaining a permit will not interfere with the ability to gather the news or with other constitutionally protected activities of journalists.”
-end-
The outdoor communication industry has a rich history of helping the America people see the outdoors even if they couldn’t get outside themselves.
Kids curled up with flashlights and sporting magazines under their bed covers. Adults read newspapers in leather chairs while smoking a pipe and enjoying a single malt.
Magazine articles, TV shows and outdoor columns in newspapers, transported Americans into the great outdoors.
Today, OWAA members keep that tradition alive while we, as our missions says, “set the highest ethical and communications standards.”
We bring adventure, great storytelling and entertainment into the homes of the public, but even more importantly, outdoor journalists continue to play a critical role in helping the American people see the value in the great outdoors while also calling attention to what threatens it.
The history of outdoor writers calling attention to bad land or wildlife management actions is legendary. Journalist can point out how, without public vigilance, their elected officials will sell that heritage to the highest bidder.
One of the more significant mission tenets of OWAA is “encourage public enjoyment and conservation of natural resources.”
Outdoor journalists show a simple equation; healthy habitat creates recreation opportunities. And recreation drives significant economic activity. That is a message that resonates in the halls of power and is strong medicine in fighting for the protection of our natural resources.
OWAA members are the voices that show the world the grandeur of America’s outdoor resources. They are the voices that share the stories — good and bad — of our waters and woods.
Land, fish and wildlife don’t have human voices, so we must be the voice to reach the American people. My job is making sure our members have the tools and opportunities to be a loud and effective voice.
OWAA is comprised of more than 800 individual outdoor communicators covering a broad spectrum of outdoor beats, from shooting to camping, fishing to kayaking and wildlife watching to backpacking. From these diverse backgrounds and disciplines, members gather beneath the OWAA banner to hone skills, share philosophies, develop profitable business strategies and network with peers, conservation policymakers and industry trendsetters.
Eighty-seven years ago the men who started OWAA thought the work they were doing as chroniclers of the great outdoors was important enough to found an organization to perpetuate the craft.
Today, access to public lands is shrinking, habitat loss is increasing and environmental issues complex. The work we do today as outdoor journalists is as important, perhaps even more so, then it was back then.
Here are some things that recently caught my eye (in no particular order.)
As a fly fishing guide, a member of the board of directors of the America Fly Fishing Trade Association and president of the Massanutten Chapter of Trout Unlimited, I spend a lot of time thinking about water. The fact is, I make part of my living in water and without it much of what I hold dear would be lost.
Lately I have found myself drawn back into conversations about clean water and the need to protect it. EPA has a rule making underway and there are some who would like to undermine that effort. In looking around the inter webs recently, I came across an excellent report from Trout Unlimited. Rising to the Challenge shows just how important small, seasonal and headwater streams are and why they need to be protected.
TU shares a pretty simple equation (not unlike one you see often on this blog) and points out three things that make a healthy stream.
Pretty simple Venn diagram if you ask me.
The report shows “the connection between seasonal streams that may run dry at certain times of the year (i.e., “intermittent and ephemeral” streams) and historic trout and salmon habitat.”
There are maps for 14 states, including Virginia below:
Download the report and learn how you can make water your business too.
If you want to learn more about EPA’s rule making here is a link > http://www2.epa.gov/uswaters
Here is some information from the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership > http://www.trcp.org/issues/wetlands/cleanwateract#.VDHMnr51qaF
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” -Edmund BurkeReaders of the conservation topics in this blog know that I take the conservation of our public lands very seriously. At its core is the firmly held belief that access to healthy habitat creates recreational opportunity that leads to economic activity.
When those values are threatened by our elected officials or thinly veiled campaigns to discredit the good guys then we must do more than hope things will change.
To that end, below are some recent articles that shine a light on the importance of our public lands and the perils of doing nothing. Each is worth a read, but more importantly each must be seen as a call to action.
Todd Tanner’s post, Insidious: Let’s Stop Our Losing Streak from The Flyfish Journal and reprinted in Hatch Magazine is the strong medicine and dead on target.
When you think about it, none of this is complicated. If we want to save our tarpon, we need to get off our asses and fight. The same applies for our trout, and our salmon, and our bonefish, and our smallmouth bass. Nobody else gives a shit whether we’ll still have steelhead in 50 years. Nobody else cares if our snowpack melts away and our rivers run low and hot; nobody else gives a damn if ocean acidification renders our favorite saltwater fisheries bare of everything except an endless armada of jellyfish. It’s on us. Here’s a news flash: it’s always been on us…
Passion, though, has its price. We have to stand up for our fish, and for our waters. If we don’t, then we’re nothing more than parasites boring into nature’s soft underbelly, taking nourishment but giving nothing back; assholes of The Ancient Hybernian Order of Assholes. Is that a little harsh? No, it’s not. If we hope to wade into cold, clear rivers 20 years from now, and if we hope to stalk pristine saltwater flats, then we have to pay the piper. And like it or not, the coin of the realm is action.
As Tanner points out, we are our own worse enemy. We hope the same approaches that worked 20 years ago will somehow bear fruit these days. I think it is a fools errand. We need more voices raised in protest, more pitch forks and torches, more hard and pointed questions asked of our elected officials. The days when the political maxim “go along to get along” was king are dead. Long live the king.
The battlegrounds will continue to be our public lands. The attacks are nothing new and have a one-sided notion of what the public benefit is. Rarely is it of benefit to those of us who cherish the great outdoors.
In Government Property, Stalking the Seam’s Matt Copeland reminds us of the economics of lost adventure and the soul healing value of public land.
What kind of tracks does the X-Box leave, and what do they grow into? I have no intention of finding out. My son, like most kids in the rural west, is surrounded by “Government Property”, known locally as the BLM, the Forest Service and the State Sections. Management of these public lands is a perpetual controversy, the discussions of which often center on economic value. Aldous Huxley was right when he wrote of an economics driven dystopia in A Brave New World that, “A love of nature keeps no factories busy.” But it’s equally true that no factory ever built the foundation of a life. And given time to mature, the investment of a bike ride, a sunburn and few fresh scratches can yield one hell of a return.
Pity those who put such meager value of the places that Copeland writes of. Pity them and turn their asses out of elected office.
When it comes to public lands, access is the key. In We Need Our Public Lands Now More Than Ever, Hal Herring writes of the somewhat two-faced approach some in Congress take when it comes to providing access to our public lands.
While political leaders in Western states may address hunters and fishermen with loud brays of support for the Making Public Lands Public Act (who could hate such an aptly named bill?) the first real question burns: do they support the reauthorization and full funding of the LWCF? Some Congressmen these days seem to delight in declaring their wholesale, never, never, never, opposition to any new purchases of public land (they call it “adding to the federal estate”). Such an ideological stance would make a eunuch out of the Making Public Lands Public Act — there would be cases where we lose access to tens of thousands of great public hunting because some politician has an ideological disdain of using our own money to buy a few acres. In the real world of second jobs and paying for houses and kid’s boots and college bills, we don’t use one-size-fits-all ideology to make our decisions. We should not allow our elected leaders to do it, either, even way up there in the rarefied air of politics.
As a veteran lobbyist of 30 years I know better than most how the game is played. The chances of the sportsmen’s groups and the outdoor recreation community ponying up the kind of money needed to compete with industry and the large political agenda machines are slim to none and slim just boarded the train home.
There is one element of the game where we do have a chance, it is the court of public opinion. Sure it is hard work; it means writing letters to the editors, doing blog posts, commenting on BS stories and calling out elected officials when they vote against our best interest. We need to make our voices heard over and over again.
Here is an idea, how about a score card on Congress? Bob Marshall offers a very compelling case for it in his Field and Stream post Sportsmen’s Groups Should Publish a Congressional Report Card.
Yet once those disappointing votes are cast, the folks working on our behalf at sportsmen’s conservation groups have to swallow their pride and continue to treat the offending pols as if they’re sportsmen’s best friends. They turn the other cheek again and again because they know just how much more damage that pol can do if he or she gets really angry.
These votes against sportsmen’s interests have been more numerous and egregious in the last four to six years than ever before. Because they have brought funding for conservation almost to a standstill, the damage is piling up.
Veteran sportsmen’s lobbyists know irreparable harm is being done and are desperate to get sportsmen off their shell buckets and vocally into the fight.
Count me as one of those desperate veterans. The organized groups have been and continue to fight the good fight but they need more support from the rank and file outdoorsmen and women who care deeply about our great outdoors.
Marshall’s idea has merit if for no other reason than to stop fooling ourselves into thinking our elected officials give a damn about what we do. Marshall hits the nail squarely when he says “When the offending congressmen and women know they won’t be held accountable for their votes, where’s the deterrent?”
Tanner’s right too, it’s on us, it’s always been on us.
Have you had enough yet? Are you ready to start keeping score?
Speak your mind while you still have time.