You don't have to agree on everything to unite on some things

One of the ways that the Progressive Review differs sharply from conventional liberals is that we believe alliances should be built issue by issue rather than by declared political identity. This not only serves the cause of the issues but helps otherwise antagonistic groups learn how to work together on some things. It is an approach that has become unpopular as liberalism has become less of a movement and more of a religion. Here's a good example we came across recently: 

Ted Williams, Audubon Magazine, 2005 - "Environmentalists don't reach out to sportsmen," remarks Chris Potholm, founder and CEO of the Potholm Group, a polling and strategic-advice company that has engineered 60 environmental referenda victories in 30 states. Every time Potholm hauls sportsmen and environmentalists together, he's marshaling a minimum of 65 percent of the population—"an absolutely irresistible political juggernaut that can win anywhere," he says. For example, enviros are united in their contempt for the ultraconservative, anti-environmental, pro-coyote-control, access-at-any-cost  Sportsman's Alliance of Maine, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't work with it toward common goals.

Five years ago, thanks in part to Potholm, they did just that, winning a ballot initiative that got the state a $50 million bond issue for the purchase of wild land. When the Potholm Group first polled voters, only 38 percent were in favor. After a brilliant TV ad campaign featuring No Trespassing signs and a Maine guide paddling his grandchildren in a canoe, the measure won with 69 percent of the vote.

By far the biggest obstacle facing environmentalists who seek to forge alliances with sportsmen is the hook-and-bullet press. Aldo Leopold's lament more than half a century ago is truer now than then: "The sportsman has no leaders to tell him what is wrong. The sporting press no longer represents sport, it has turned billboard for the gadgeteer." Today owners of some hook-and-bullet magazines not only publish billboards for gadgeteers, they are the gadgeteers. For every publication such as Field & Stream—which, under a new editor, has recently taken to running honest articles about real issues—there are a half-dozen that run disinformation aimed at boosting circulation and ad revenue by playing to readers' fears about the dreaded and ubiquitous "antis." In terms of journalistic integrity they're right down there with the supermarket tabloids.

Herewith, a strategy for leveling the field. First, leave your personal values out of it. It's okay to detest blood sports; it's even okay to detest people who engage in blood sports. But it's not okay to sacrifice vanishing fish and wildlife to make political statements. There are plenty of real enemies out there without concocting new ones. If you truly want to save and restore fish and wildlife, you'll welcome and recruit help where you find it. If you have a hard time working with people you consider morally tainted, consider that virtually no game species is hurt and most are helped by legal hunting and fishing, and that powerful, ruthless special interests depend on and perpetuate the rift between environmentalists and sportsmen.

Adopt the philosophy of Winston Churchill, who, when questioned about throwing in with Stalin, replied: "I have only one purpose, the destruction of Hitler, and my life is much simplified thereby. If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons."

Second, as the NRA has figured out, alliances depend on communication. Wherever you live in the United States, there is a local rod and gun club or a nearby Ducks Unlimited chapter. Join and attend meetings. If you don't hunt or fish, tell the members so. But also explain that you want to help them protect fish and wildlife habitat. You can't restore or create a wetlands for ducks (which is what Ducks Unlimited does) without also benefiting thousands of other creatures, from otters to marsh wrens to avocets to turtles. If there isn't a good project you can collaborate on, come up with one yourself. Your participation and support will deeply touch members, because they feel unloved and unappreciated and have repeatedly been told that enviros and animal-rights zealots are one and the same.

Finally, choose your battles wisely.

A good example of an unwise battle is trapping. Sportsmen ardently believe (often with good reason) that the ultimate goal of anti-trappers is to ban fishing and hunting. With rare exceptions trapping is a humane issue, not a management issue. Leave it to the animal-rights folks. My wife, Donna, is the conservation advocacy coordinator of the Massachusetts Audubon Society (independent of and older than National Audubon). In 1996, much to Donna's anguish, her organization joined with ardent anti-hunting groups in a successful effort to outlaw quick-killing bear traps. Since then the state's beaver population has increased from about 18,000 to 70,000.

Flooding of streets and cellars is now a major problem; and animal-control agents must be hired to catch beavers in "humane" traps that immobilize them all night so they may be clubbed to death in the morning. We've converted a resource to a pest.

The real damage in Massachusetts, however, has not been to property but to the potential for alliances with sportsmen. When Donna started stumping for the Massachusetts Rivers Bill—which would bar development from 200 feet on either side of perennial streams—she was informed by sportsmen that they would oppose it. If an anti-trapping outfit was for rivers, then, by God, they were against them. After the bill passed, Donna talked to sportsmen at every opportunity, telling them why natural floodplains are in their best interests, about new fishing and hunting opportunities in and around the cleaned-up Blackstone River system, about wild brook trout populations desperately in need of protection, about her own fishing with me.

She publicly defended hunting, explaining the need to control the gross irruption of white-tailed deer that is wiping out forest understories throughout the East and, with them, rare plants and shrub-nesting birds.

She attended rod-and-gun-club dinners and drank beer with members. Eventually, she was asked by a local club to help release snowshoe hares purchased from Canada as part of a press event promoting an alliance.

On a cold winter night Donna and I, accompanied by club members and a reporter and photographer from the Worcester Telegram and Gazette, lugged the hares up onto conservation land Donna and I had helped our town of Grafton purchase from a developer, and which—because sportsmen had assisted—Donna had posted with signs that welcome hunters. When the moon shadow of the last hare had melted into the snow-draped pines, Donna got a big kiss from the club's president. I can't report that the alliance is strong statewide, but at least there's a foundation.

Ted Williams sits on the Circle of Chiefs of the Outdoor Writers Association of America.