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Hunting season is a reminder of the value of our public lands

Wednesday, September 12 at 10:31 AM

This Speakout has not been edited.

By Sean Cosgrove

The leaves are beginning to turn, and the smell of fall is in the air. This time of year always reminds me of the autumn days I spent hunting with my dad when I was growing up. My family’s annual deer hunting trip was a tradition convened with several other families and planned months in advance.

The close bonds my father and I share today were developed decades ago, rowing a flat-bottomed boat over a skim of marsh ice, freezing in a duck blind in the morning, and building a campfire large enough to ward off the chill and wetness of an early autumn snow.

I can’t help but wonder if I’ll get the chance to create similar memories with my own young kids. We should have plenty of time to get into the great outdoors, since the oldest is only three years old and the youngest a tiny infant. But I can’t count on having the best places to go or the ability to access them.

Our last remaining wild lands are rapidly disappearing. And they face growing threats every day from special interests—mining, timber, and oil companies that stand to make a quick dollar from cutting roads through our forests and clogging our streams with waste.

The places near my old hometown where I camped, hunted and fished with my parents and siblings have been squeezed by poorly planned development.

Year after year, fathers, sons, and families from across America head to wild places like the Roan Plateau to rest, relax, and share hunting traditions.

But today, much of the West’s best hunting ground—places like the Roan—is threatened by unchecked development by oil, gas, and other industries.

By Department of Energy estimates, there is enough untapped oil in the Rocky Mountain West to sustain our nation at its current rate of consumption for just three months. Three months. We could replace three months worth of oil through simple fuel efficiency measures. And the oil and gas industry can’t even keep up with drilling in the areas it already has access to: More than 70 percent of areas in Colorado that are permitted for oil and gas aren’t even being drilled.

When you look closely at a map of the United States, you can see that the vast majority of our public lands are already open for development of one kind or another. The handful of untouched pockets in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and Alaska are some of the last places left to experience the West the way it was when Lewis and Clark set eyes on it.

I want my kids to be able to see that America. There’s a lot we can do to ensure that our children and grandchildren still have places to hunt, fish, camp, and hike decades from now. But it will take vision and decisive action to protect these places from the special interests that stand to make a quick dollar from our shared public lands.

So, this hunting season, I’m going to be thinking about the forests and streams where I used to hunt and fish with my dad. And I’m going to work as hard as I can to protect those places for my kids and grandkids.

Sean Cosgrove is a senior forest policy adviser for the Sierra Club.

READER COMMENTS

This is the season that all of the "SMALL" little minded men go out to murder the wildlife on our public lands.
The only reason these people do this is because they are small IN THE AREAS THAT MAKE THEM FEEL LIKE BIG MEN when they get a rifle in their hands.

Posted by J W on September 26, 2007 09:46 AM