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DENTRY: Real anti-hunters finally are being exposed

Published November 2, 2007 at midnight

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A government agency broke the speed of light Tuesday - bureaucratically speaking. In a flash, the Bureau of Land Management discovered its nerve endings work in something faster than geologic time.

The stove was searing. Sportsmen, conservation groups and Granby residents were outraged by BLM's plans to lease 31,000 acres in Grand County, including land around Hot Sulphur Springs, to gas drillers.

Last week, the agency fielded a volcanic eruption of protests over plans to develop prime elk and deer wintering habitat at the headwaters of the Colorado River. In less than a week, BLM actually heard the shouting and flinched. It withdrew all of Grand County from a lease sale scheduled for Thursday.

The agency also dropped from the sale about 26,000 acres of sagebrush steppe in North Park - headwaters of the North Platte River and some of Colorado's richest habitat for sage grouse, pronghorn, waterfowl, deer, elk and moose.

Other public land in North Park, however, will step up to the auction block Thursday. Still up for industrial grabs is a huge block of BLM land northwest of Cowdrey and one east of Arapaho National Wildlife Refuge.

Remaining in the deal for drillers Thursday are nearly 130,000 acres in Jackson, Moffat and San Miguel counties.

The good news is that many hunters and anglers finally are mad as hell and won't take it anymore. After the loss of 4 million acres of public hunting and fishing range in the West to the current drilling frenzy, some realize who the anti-hunters really are.

The most venomous anti's aren't little old vegans or gun snatchers. They are fat cats and their big-government paramours.

If you hunt, fish or belong to Ducks Unlimited, you are on their hit list. Don't worry about someone coming to get your guns. When the fat cats snooze, you'll be left hunting mice in the garage.

Consider the example of Pinedale, Wyo., at the headwaters of the Green River, where mule deer herds have been sliced in half since drillers turned that formerly gorgeous landscape into something resembling smallpox.

Ducks Unlimited actually is on big industry's hit list. That's because DU is one of dozens of sportsmen's groups that are members of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.

TRCP, a conservative sportsmen's coalition, has become a leading force in the public lands conservation movement. Its rough-riding protests have convinced the once-immovable BLM to remove habitat-destructive leases in Utah, Wyoming and now in Colorado.

The extractive industries fear TRCP enough to haul out the Bush administration's old propaganda millstone: If you aren't for us, you are a traitor.

In August, the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States, a drillers' trade organization, fingered about 30 of the traitorous groups.

If you are a member of these groups, IPAMS said in a message to sportsmen, you should know that this Theodore Roosevelt-umbrella group of yours stands accused by industry of being "environmental obstructionist."

Here are just a few of the bad obstructionists: Ducks Unlimited, Pheasants Forever, BASS, Beretta, Sturm Ruger and Co., Izaak Walton League of America, Quail Unlimited, Whitetails Unlimited, Trust for Public Land, Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association, Trout Unlimited, North American Grouse Partnership, Boone and Crockett Club, American Sportfishing Association and American Fly Fishing Trade Association.

The list should have included, believe it or not, George W. Bush - although he probably isn't a member of that obstructionist group named after the iconic Republican president and guardian of public lands.

Under fire from conservation- minded sportsmen grown tired of seeing public rangeland ravaged, Bush issued an executive order in August commanding agencies like the BLM to give priority to wildlife habitat and the enhancement of hunting in any land-use plans.

Anyone who thinks that's for real probably believes elephants can fly and Iraqi oil is paying for the war.