Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 13, 1995 TAG: 9508150002
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The Secretary of the Interior toured the tackle show, posed for pictures with the winners of the CastingKids competition and helped weigh the fish of pros Stanley Mitchell and Dion Hibdon.
``I'm having the time of my life,'' Babbitt said at the weigh-in, where he praised B.A.S.S. and its founder, Ray Scott, for their role in conservation and the promotion of outdoor recreation.
Why come to the Classic when a few weeks ago he snubbed members of the Appalachian Trail Conference after being billed as the keynote speaker at their convention in Harrisonburg?
``He said he was too tired to come,'' said one disgruntled ATC member.
Numbers may be the real reason. There were a little more than 1,000 at the convention in Harrisonburg. In Greensboro, attendance of the Classic weigh-in swelled to more than 20,000, not counting the multitudes who came just to tour the tackle show.
Numbers are important to politicians. They also are important to leaders of any environmental movement.
B.A.S.S. has more than 600,000 members, making it one of the largest outdoor organizations in the country. BASSMASTER Magazine reports a readership of 3.8 million. There are 30 million Americans who fish for bass, helping make fishing one of the country's top three participatory sports and a $30 billion annual industry.
``It gradually dawned on me that bass fishing is really where it's at,'' Babbitt said.
B.A.S.S. officials, naturally, were grinning. Babbitt was a big catch. And he was far enough from his trout-fishing friends in the West to be safe.
Babbitt hadn't just shown up in Greensboro wearing his checked shirt and khaki pants and sneakers to be one of the ``good old boys.'' You had to think about it for a moment, but he was doing something important, something vital, something Teddy Roosevelt did. He was trying to bring together diverse outdoors groups, trying to show bass anglers they have something in common with Sierra Club members. He was even favoring B.A.S.S. to do it.
``For every member of the Sierra Club there are probably 1,000 bass fishermen,'' he said.
In reality, there are many more. But that's not the point. What Babbitt was saying is the bass angler and the backpacker have more in common than they may realize. So do the hunter and the hiker. All of their activities, from the edge of town to the edge of space, center on a sound environment.
Rather than taking advantage of their common ground, ``Wildlife and sportsman groups have seen themselves as adversaries,'' Babbitt said.
There's even feuding within these polarized groups, as members elbow one another in an effort to reach the podium or pocketbook for a favorite project.
In Greensboro, Babbitt was telling outdoorsmen to hook into ``the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt.''
Roosevelt, you'll remember, was a conservationist who saw no conflict between setting aside park land and bringing home trophies from a hunt. And he was a Republican.
Babbitt, a Democrat, shared the weigh-in spotlight with Ray Scott, a Republican and fishing buddy of former President George Bush. He told the crowd Scott had done more for boating- and fishing-access funding than anyone in Congress. He also shook hands with Mitchell - the fishing pro, the logger and the vice president of Mitchell Timber Co. - and congratulated him on his catch.
Roosevelt He was a Republican, too. Babbitt is a Democrat.
Partisan politics shouldn't be a snare when it comes to doing what is right for the environment and promoting outdoor recreation. Babbitt said he checked his politics at the door when he came to the Classic.
by CNB