Sorry, but Backcountry Hunters and Anglers is a green group, first and foremost, joined at the hip to the TRCP. Here's their board of directors, a number of them professional greens.
This is just the top two guys of BHA, the board co chairs:
Ben Long Co Chair
Ben, an Idaho native, used to be the “environmental” reporter for the Daily Inter Lake. I always wondered about Ben’s objectivity, and wondered no more when Ben left journalism to take a job with Resource Media – he “opened the first field office for Resource Media in 2001 and his primary focus has been conservation of public land, water and wildlife habitat in the western United States and Canada.”
Resource Media provides support to environmental groups in the PR arena – “From planning to implementation, our strategic communication services can power up your advocacy a notch or two.”
Resource Media is a nonprofit spin-off of Fenton Communications, which first hit the radar when Fenton bought Meryl Streep before Congress to freak out over Alar, the apple pesticide. Remember that one?
Listed RM “partners” include the Brainerd Foundation, BlueGreen (union and greens) Alliance, Idaho Conservation League, Montana Wilderness Association, Southern Environmental Law Center, Wilderness Society, Wilburforce Foundation – all environmental groups or environmental funders.
Other RM clients include George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, and the National Parks Conservation Association, that to help “advocates win a campaign to create the first Marine Wilderness on the West Coast” – which more honestly was the elimination of a family owned oyster farm within the Point Reyes National Seashore. When the 40 year lease came up in 2012, the Park Service moved to depart the operation.
From the LA Times: In 1962, Congress created Point Reyes National Seashore, a wind-swept coastline that feels remote despite its location an hour north of San Francisco. Fourteen years later, President Ford signed the Point Reyes Wilderness Act, encompassing Drake's Estero, which was designated as a "potential wilderness" because it contained a commercial enterprise.
But was the oyster company really meant to disappear at the end of its lease?
In 2011, retired legislators who helped establish the Point Reyes National Seashore told Interior Secretary Salazar that they had always intended for the oyster farm to stay in business.
"The issue of what to do with the oyster farm wasn't even under contention," former Rep. John Burton told the Marin Independent Journal. "Several things were grandfathered in, and aquaculture — oyster culture — was one of them."
So that’s what RM does, creates spin campaigns for environmental groups.
Furthermore, in 2014, the Wilburforce Foundation recognized Ben with its annual Conservation Leadership Award. Wilburforce has been a longtime champion of conservation in the Northern Rockies and a consistent supporter of Ben’s work.
{in other words, Wilburforce funds Resource Media so RM can orthcestrate PR campaigns for the groups Wilburforce funds] In making the award, Wilburforce Yellowstone to Yukon Program Officer Liz Bell said, “It’s hard to imagine what the Flathead and Northwest Montana might have been like today without Ben’s enormous talent and commitment.”
We’d be more prosperous and have fewer fires, for one thing.
Joel Webster Co Chair TRCP Director for Western Lands, supports the Clean Water rule that farmers and ranchers hate. In fact, that is a huge line item for TRCP, they pulled out all the stops for the Rule, which the president most of us just voted for issued an executive order to re-do the EPA's power grab.
And guess what, on the Outdoor Life blog is THIS:
“Hunting and Fishing Groups Leery of Weakening Clean Water Act
Without clean water, the outdoors could suffer mightily
By Ben Long Yesterday at 7:19pm
Ben Long? Really? Yep, Ben starts with visions of the apocalypse:
Take the water out of a freestone trout stream and you’ll be casting to a bunch of rocks.
Drain the wetlands of America’s prairie pothole “duck factory” and you’ve got empty skies come hunting season.
That’s why groups like Trout Unlimited are worried about a move in Washington D.C. that would gut the Clean Water Act’s ability to conserve headwaters and seasonal wetlands.
Now, THAT’s a great lede….
Ben oh so randomly quotes Chris Wood of TU, who is otherwise known as the lead dog in the Clinton Roadless Rule, 58 million acres.
Nowhere is Ben’s day job with Resource Media mentioned, he's just a simple blogger and reporter.
