Sportsmen defend global warming as fact

The hot button issue of global warming takes roots in Bigfork with the formation of Conservation Hawks, a non-profit group of hunters and anglers that aims to protect the future of hunting and fishing.

Conservation Hawks is focused on what they say are the biggest issues facing hunters and sportsmen in the long-term. Things that would reduce fish numbers in streams, reduce stream flows, dry up ponds, reduce game numbers and affect their migration patterns.

“Things that would prevent our grandchildren from being able to follow in our footsteps,” board member Todd Tanner said. “We coalesced on climate change as the biggest.”

The change being that the earth’s climate is warming.

The group launched late last week and is based out of Bigfork with Tanner at the head and six other board members from Montana and Utah.

Tanner is an outdoor sports writer for Sporting Classics and a self-named hunting and fishing enthusiast. Before becoming a writer he was a fly-fishing guide on the Henry Fork outside of Yellowstone for five years, starting in 1992.

The idea is something that’s been germinating in the back of Tanner’s mind for years. After a year of dedicated planning and pulling from his connections in the outdoor world, Conservation Hawk’s came to fruition. The aim is to take the controversial issue of climate change to the forefront of the minds of outdoorsmen through education.

Science says the planet has been steadily warming since the 1950’s. The Environmental Protection Agency points to the culprit mostly likely (90-99 percent chance) being human emissions, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The majority of conservationists and environmentalists agree the only way to curb the warming trend, at least somewhat, is through government regulation.

The science of global warming has long been under the public microscope and there are those out there who disagree with the science. The issue on whether or not global warming exists has become a largely political fight.

“Our point of view is that it shouldn’t be a political view,” Tanner said. “It’s essentially a scientific thing.”

A July 2011 poll done by Rasmussen Reports asked 1,000 people if they though it was likely that scientists have falsified global warming research.  Forty percent thought it was very likely and 29 percent thought it was somewhat likely—that’s 69 percent who believed the facts behind the science of global warming are not true.

But to Tanner and his conservation constituents, that’s simply not the case. Global warming is a fact. And he only needs to look to his own experiences over his hunting and fishing lifetime to bring those facts to light. Ponds that were once full of water, have dried up. Streams aren’t flowing at as high a rate as they used to. Snow pack is lower, snow is falling later in the year. Deer and Elk populations stay up at higher elevations during hunting season because there isn’t enough snow to push them down.

These are experiences he knows other hunters and fishermen share. He thinks education will help those sportsmen connect their experiences with that of global warming.

“We have faith in sportsmen in that they can see what’s actually happening,” Tanner said. “If they’re given the facts and shown that they exist than they will do the right thing.”

The right thing in the new non-profit’s eyes is to give a collective voice to sportsmen that appeals to senators and congressmen across the United States and calls for change. If only to protect the future of the sports they love.

“I would far rather be proven wrong than right,” Tanner said. “But I don’t see that we’re wrong.”