Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 27, 1990 TAG: 9005270320
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MIKE LEGGETT COX NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
With the numbers of hunters dwindling and animal-rights advocates on the offensive, the weapons have been chosen and the strategies are being written for the battle over hunting in the United States.
Hunters, of course, traditionally have adopted a bunker mentality, digging in and waiting for the fight to come to them, figuring that tradition - and having "right" on their side - would keep on winning for them.
David Keene, a Washington, D.C.-based political consultant and hunting enthusiast, decided that wasn't enough. He's drawn a line in the dirt of the arena and is asking hunters to join him behind it. Keene is in the process of forming the American Hunting Rights Action Committee, to serve as an information clearinghouse and education base for the hunting community.
"I got involved in it initially because I'm a hunter and I'm concerned about that," Keene said. So far, hunters have failed to develop a spokesman solely for themselves.
"Most of the groups that we have, from the NRA to Ducks Unlimited to the Izaak Walton League, all have somewhere as a part of the agenda a concern for hunters rights," Keene said. "But none of them, for reasons of necessity, have the hunters rights question at the top of their agenda, and the result is that no one is really spending the effort and the resources to counteract these animal-rights people."
Keene said the ultimate goal is much more expansive, leading to the organization of such groups as the Responsible Use of Animals Coalition in Texas, but that the immediate need is for hunters to educate and mobilize themselves for the attacks that are coming.
"At this point, I guess we could to some extent consider ourselves lucky as hunters in that most of their [animal-rights activists] criticism has been leveled at the medical research community, the furriers and people like that," Keene said.
"But there's been plenty for us and if you read their journals, if you look at what they're saying, not only are they hostile to hunting and fishing, but they intend to take us on with ever-increasing levels of activity in the next few years."
Study after study is showing a decline in the number of Americans who hunt. Urbanization of the United States obviously is having a much greater impact than simple economics. "When fewer people have any real connection to the land in this country, you have a situation in which both understanding of why people hunt and the role hunting plays in wildlife management and everything else, the simple feel for it has diminished," Keene said.
The development of the anti-hunting movement has been an outgrowth of that change, Keene said, polarizing a minority on either end of the hunting question. "The fact is the broad majority of Americans are now sort of the battleground over which the attitudes of hunting are being fought," he said.
"And the animal-rights people are dominating the fight for them," he said. "They are not just disrupting hunting activities as they have in Connecticut or going to court to cancel hunting seasons as they have in California, but they also have begun a grass roots effort to really influence public attitude."
Keene plans to use AHRAC to develop the same kind of grass roots momentum for hunting with designated speakers and legal consultants who understand the issues dealing with the media. "The way the court system works in this country, if a significant enough minority starts to feel very strongly about something the way the animal-rights people do, then they're going to have impact on public policy," he said.
"They can appeal to a broader majority that doesn't have any strong opinions, and there's a real danger they could win arguments in a piecemeal sense," Keene said, "to get lands closed to hunting, particularly public lands or to shorten seasons beyond the way they ought to be for conservation reasons in certain areas."
Some states have been targeted for full-blown referendums on banning hunting altogether, Keene said. California has a June election that would outlaw mountain lion hunting, even though there is a healthy population of the animals.
"The ultimate battle is a much broader battle," Keene said. Medical researchers and agriculture specialists have their own problems. Keene told of a Florida man, owner of a horse-drawn carriage, who has been picketed for two months by activists who claim he's exploiting animals.
"The advantage I see in organizing hunters is, one, it's needed, but, two, of the various groups you're talking about, the hunters are relatively easy to identify," Keene said. "They identify themselves as a fraternity, so to speak, and particularly in the past couple of years they have a growing perception that they have a problem."
Keene said he hopes to see AHRAC pull together as many as 100,000 members at $15 each by the end of the year and to begin having some impact in the political and public arenas.
Not only does he want to have speakers ready in every state, but Keene hopes to have attorneys, a legal coalition, willing to speak for hunting in the courts where necessary.
by CNB