| Hunters Anglers Trappers Association of Vermont |
               |
By Steve McLeod HAT Legislative Update: The 2004 legislative session was very successful for Vermont sportsmen. The Capitol Bill had more money intended for sportsmen then any other Capital bill. Here is a break down of where the money went and for what it’s being used for.
Capitol Bill: $25,000 Endangered Species Recovery Some other achievements from the 2004 session that are worth noting: HAT Lobbyist & Executive Director of Vt. Traditions Coalition HAT’s first legislative lobbying effort made significant advances for Vermont’s sporting community during the 2003 legislative session. Nevertheless, the battle to restore proper financial and policy priority for Vermont’s sporting traditions has a long way to go. HAT put together a paid professional lobbying effort within months of being formed last summer by joining the Vt. Traditions Coalition (VTC). During the past 6 months, HAT was one of VTC’s biggest financial and manpower providers. VTC is a coalition of sporting, farm, maple sugar, forest product, snowmobile, and outdoor guide groups which all pooled manpower and financial resources in late 2001 in an unprecedented joint effort to fight the threat the Champion lands fiasco and its statewide implications posed to Vermont’s rural way of life. In the 2002 legislative session, VTC focused entirely in legislation fixing the Champion mess, and nearly succeeded. In 2003, VTC branched out and tackled sporting, land use, and public access issues statewide. HAT was formed in the summer of 2002 for the purpose of providing a full-time paid legislative lobbyist for the sporting community and eventually to provide a year round professional sporting advocacy organization. While HAT’s goal is to eventually field its own lobbyist, HAT also intends to continue its participation in coalitions such as VTC. Here’s what was accomplished in 2003: NEW LEADERSHIP--- It was clear from the Champion situation that changes in the Vt. Agency of Natural Resources (ANR) were needed. HAT and VTC led the fight for new leadership. The effort was rewarded by the appointment of Elizabeth “Wibbs” McLain to head the agency, the appointment of Jonathan Woods, a career forester, as Forest & Parks Commissioner, and the appointment of Wayne Laroche, a renowned scientist and top notch Vermont deer hunter, as Fish & Wildlife Commissioner. Thus far, this ANR leadership change and other factors have given Vermont’s sporting community a better relationship with Gov. Jim Douglas than sportsmen ever had with Gov. Howard Dean. The Laroche appointment proved undeservedly controversial, because some environmental interests such as the National Wildlife Federation and Vermont Natural Resources Council unfairly attempted to get the Senate to block the Laroche appointment by painting Comm. Laroche as anti-conservation. HAT and VTC worked hard to turn out the sporting and working landscape communities to set the record straight. For a while, it looked like the Senate might block the nomination, but after a prolonged fight, the Senate approved Laroche’s nomination by a healthy margin. We believe history will prove Mr. Laroche to be an outstanding commissioner. EXPANDED LAKE CHAMPLAIN FISHING RIGHTS--- The Reciprocal License bill allows Vermont fishing license holders to fish the New York half of the lake and New York license holders to fish the Vermont side except Mississquoi Bay, Mallets Bay, and the Inland Sea east of the Champlain Islands beginning in 2004. Prior to this year, anglers had unsuccessfully fought for this legislation for nearly twenty years. Historically, the Fish & Wildlife Dept. opposed it due to fears that the legislation would reduce Vermont fishing license sales, but Commissioner Laroche departed from past department practice and supported the bill. The turnabout was spearheaded by HAT Angling Committee member Rich Greenough with the help of HAT Angling Committee Chairman Steve Boucher, HAT’s lobbyist, and numerous other HAT members. Greenough brought together a broad coalition of Democrats, Republicans, and Progressives to support the bill. Comm. Laroche, House Fish & Wildlife Committee Chairman, Rep.Steve Adams (R-Hartland), and other committee members did an excellent job of dealing with the license sale loss issue as well as other problems that had defeated the legislation in the past, and paved the way for the bill’s smooth trip through the House and Senate. CHAMPION---- VTC/ HAT proposed abolition of an Executive Order that the Dean administration created as a purported solution to the Champion situation, but which, in fact, appeared to maintain the status quo. We could not convince Gov. Douglas that the Order was bad enough to abolish. This was our biggest disappointment of the session. However, the Champion issue is not dead. If we continue mobilizing the sporting community and our allies and educating the public, we will preserve the Champion camp culture, end needless restrictions on sporting activities, ensure that the access roads remain open, and ensure continuance of abundant wildlife populations by ending the restrictions on timber management. In addititon, the fight over the vast Northeast Kingdom timber lands outside the state portion of the Champion lands is just beginning. The Land Management Plan for the 26,000 acre federal portion of the Champion lands will be hotly contested in 2005. The Nature Conservancy and other environmental groups are in the process of trying to purchase 36,000 more acres south and west of the Champion lands. You can bet they will attempt to slap the same type of restrictions on these parcels of land that they imposed on the state portion of the Champion lands. There will be more large Northeast Kingdom land purchases, and more lock off attempts beyond those just mentioned. The outcome of these issues will depend on how hard traditional Vermonters are willing to fight. If we shrug and walk away, environmental interests will score a first round knockout. OTHER LAND MANAGEMENT ISSUES---“Ecological Preserves” also known as “Old Growth Forests” a/k/a “Wilderness Areas” such as the twenty square mile preserve on the Champion lands are touted as something beautiful and special. In reality, what they mean is no access roads, no snowmobiling, no timber harvesting, and hence significant reductions in wildlife populations (including deer, moose, rabbit, and grouse) due to lack of feed and appropriate shelter. Properly managing state lands has fallen nearly twenty years behind schedule due to roadblocks by wilderness advocates, lack of funding, and lack of priority. HAT/ VTC, Rep. Adams, Rep. David Brown (R-Walden), and the newly constituted Depts. of Forest & Parks and Dept. of Fish & Wildlife led the fight in the legislature for accelerated land management to cure this backlog. We didn’t get all we wanted, but we got $82,000 for a new Land Management biologist for the Fish & Wildlife Dept. and $50,000 for the Ruffed Grouse Society to help this effort. This legislation passed in the final days of the legislative session, and overcame numerous roadblocks thrown up by some Senators and environmental organizations such as the Vt. Natural Resources Council. Vermont’s timber management efforts on state land are pitiful compared to New York and New Hampshire. New York funds 46 state foresters through timber sale revenues from state lands, and properly manages its lands without undue cost to the taxpayer. This year’s $132,000 appropriation to accelerate Vermont timber management should produce sufficient revenue from timber sales to exceed the $132,000 the legislature appropriated for accelerated management. Hopefully, this effort will enable Vermont to eventually follow in New York and New Hampshire’s foot steps. RAILROAD TRESPASS---Full-time sporting community representation is needed at the State House not only to pass positive legislation, but also to ward off negative legislation. Late in the session, well-intentioned but ill advised legislation that would outlaw fishing within 100 feet of any rail track in the state was on the brink of being approved by the House Transportation Committee. This legislation would have banned fishing at some of Vermont’s most popular fishing spots up and down the rivers and lakes of the state. HAT’s testimony and close organizational work with the Fish & Wildlife Dept., the Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs, and Reps. John Winters (R-Swanton), Mike Obuchowski (D-Rockingham), Henry Gray (R-Barre Town), Alice Emmons (D-Springfield), Janice Peaslee (R-Guildhall), Timothy Corcoran (R-Bennington), Loren Shaw (R-Derby), and John Hall (R-Newport) blocked this bill, at least for now. The House Fish & Wildlife Committee dealt the final blow. FUNDING FOR SPORTING CAUSES---In recent years, priority for funding Vermont’s hunting, fishing, farm, and forest product industry causes has taken a back seat due to the drastically increasing powers of some adversarial environmental groups, and an undermanned, insufficiently organized sporting, working landscape, and traditional recreation lobbying effort. There are hundreds of thousands of us and a whole less of them, but they had the money and organization and we didn’t. This year, things began to turn around. HAT/ VTC was able to get grants of $7,500 for the Lake Champlain Walleye Association’s portable fish hatchery, $45,000 for the Vermont Outdoor Guide Association, and $37,500 to help with increased capital needs of the Lake Champlain Fishing Derby due to its rapid growth in recent years. Rep. Bob Wood (R-Brandon), Ron Allard (D-St. Albans), and Darrell Pillsbury (I-Brattleboro) championed this effort and received the cooperation of Sens.Vince Illuzzi (R-Orleans), Dick Mazza (D-Chittenden) and Sen. John Campbell (D-Windsor). VTC/ HAT and Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie also attempted to get $50,000 for the Northeast Regional Forest Foundation to buy development rights on private forest lands so as to preserve these lands for timber production, wildlife habitat, and recreation. The Senate didn’t go along with this effort, but we were able to obtain the $50,000 grant for the Ruffed Grouse Society instead as part of a compromise in the frantic last hours of the legislative session. SUMMARY---In the past dozen years, perhaps more, Vermont’s sporting, snowmobile, agricultural, and forest product heritage has gradually been getting a beating by state government. It was not happening all at once, but bit by bit, culminating in the Champion fiasco. Last year, we set the stage for change, and this year we’ve achieved some dramatic gains in the long, slow process of turning this threat to our heritage and identity around. Without HAT and VTC, the support we’ve received from throughout the sporting and working landscape communities, and burgeoning legislative alliances with political leaders such as Reps. Brown, Adams, Wood, Democratic Auditor of Accounts Liz Ready and others, most, if not all of the above reforms would not have occurred. THE BIG PICTURE---Unfortunately, the whole ball game isn’t decided by the Legislature. Effective advocacy requires a major year round presence. Fighting off 100,000 acres of new wilderness designations in the Green Mt. National Forest, sea lamprey and cormorant control on Lake Champlain, and the effort to bring sensible land management planning and implementation to 500,000 acres of state land, just to name a few issues, are all decided, in large part, by the bureaucracy and sometimes by the courts. HAT/ VTC aggressively pursue administrative issues to the extent resources permit, and we’re doing a good job. But let’s add things up. A dozen environmentalist and animal rights organizations, many of whom are often at odds with traditional interests, have a total of over 100 paid employees and unlimited funds. Traditional interests operate on a shoestring. What do you see? FUNDING NEEDED---The sporting, snowmobile, and working landscape communities are, by far, the biggest untapped political force in Vermont. We’re also the most disorganized political force in Vermont. We’ve made painful, but significant progress. We will only accomplish permanent change if we continue to build the strength of this movement. Failure to sustain this momentum will make the changes of the last two years a mere blip on the radar screen over the long term. As our predominantly volunteer statewide grass roots effort has exploded, our administrative ability to handle this growth has become dangerously inadequate. Improved funding, administrative resources, more rank and file volunteers, and more leaders are badly needed to maintain this momentum. Donations to HAT can be sent to the following address: Don Martin, Membership Director, P. O. Box 401, Underhill, Vt. 05489 (899-3959-phone/ e-mail-DAM 3666). Annual memberships in HAT can be purchased by sending name, address, phone, and e-mail contact information to Don. Sign up today and, if you can donate some volunteer time, ask Don how you can help. See, www.hatvt.org re: membership benefits. Donations to VTC can be sent to: Ed Larson, Treasurer, 43 Court St., Montpelier, Vt. 05602 (T-224-9177). The ultimate success of this effort depends on whether the sporting community at large is finally ready to stick up for itself, and to work together statewide. Sportsmen need to get over expectations of quick fixes, and the habit of getting involved only when opposing forces threaten their own favorite fishing or hunting spot. Whether the threat to traditional use is on the southern border of the state, the northern border or somewhere in between we all need to stand united for our recreational way of life. In other words, its not just up to us: it’s also up to you. Either put your money and volunteer time where your mouth is or count on losing your recreational way of life...bit by bit...until one day you, your children, or your grandchildren wake up and its gone. End (Steve McLeod can be reached at 434-3346 or sbmcvt@aol.com) |
 |
Legislative Directory
|