Posted on 04/17/2006 2:00:24 PM PDT by girlangler
Sierra Club Director Resigns to Protest Hunting Prize posted April 17, 2006
Sierra Club Director Paul Watson, one of the 15 National Directors of the Sierra Club, has resigned today from the National Board of the Sierra Club.
He was elected to the Board of Directors in 2003 for a three year term. His term ends May 17th, 2006.
Saying, I wont fade quietly into the night, Watson tendered his resignation on April 17th, which is a month before his term expires to protest the use of Club resources to finance a sport hunting trip to encourage hunting.
Watson was not notified of a contest posted in January 2006. The contest is an essay competition entitled Why I Hunt?
http://www.sierraclub.org/huntingfishing/whyihunt/
The first prize is a $12,700 hunting trip to the Sportsmans Lodge in Alaska. Additional prizes totaling $3,000 will also be awarded.
It appears to me that the Sierra Club should have better projects to spend $15,700 on than sending some nimrod to Alaska to shoot wildlife, said Watson. Last year they turned down my request for a $5,000 grant to assist the rangers in the Galapagos National Park deal with poachers."
Watson last year protested the posting of pictures of Sierra Club leaders posing with their trophy kills on the Sierra Club website. Each year, the Club is spending over two hundred thousand dollars on hunter outreach programs despite the fact that less than 20% of the Sierra Club membership are hunters. target="_blank">http://www.sierraclub.org/huntingfishing/whoweare.asp
Watson, who has been a Sierra Club member since 1968, thinks the Club is forgetting its role as a conservation organization. This is John Muirs Sierra Club, he said, It is not supposed to be the Sahara Club. You cant love nature with a gun.
Watson will not be attending his final Board meeting in San Francisco on May 17-20th.
I have no intention of attending a meeting of a hunting club, said Watson. I wonder how many of the Sierra Clubs 750,000 members know and approve of killing animals with their contributions?
Perhaps Watson is forgetting hunting's role in conservation.
You are kidding, right? In 1905, in response to Teddy Roosevelts environmental movements, the powers that be, removed all predators from the Kaibab Forest. Hunting was not permitted. Deer numbers went from 4,000 to 40,000 in a few short years and most of them starved to death after they ate every blade of grass and twig on the North Rim.
Web Search it for more details.
It is what is (or was when I took Ecology many years ago) a J-curve. The population rises steadily until it peaks where the population are destroying the food source(s) faster than the source can regenerate, and then drops precipitously. The same thing is occurring on Isle Royale with the wolf population.
Check out this biographical sketch of Watson:
http://www.activistcash.com/biography.cfm/bid/3370
"Paul Watson is one of the fathers of environmental terrorism. The group he founded and leads, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS), is a pirate organization that sails around the world, terrorizing fishermen. Wearing a long bowie knife and carrying AK-47s on board, he threatens to ram any ship that wont give in to his demands. Watson was a founder of Greenpeace, but the group banished him in 1977 in disapproval of his violent tactics. He is a board member of the Sierra Club."
I believe what you say is true but they did want to conserve some of our specific environments.
Yup, one and the same.
http://www.activistcash.com/biography.cfm/bid/3370
Hunters and fishermen are the best "conservationists" we want wild and clean places to hunt, fish and to pass down to our children.
In Brown County State Park here in Indiana, deer hunting was prohibited for a long time.
My first visit there was eye opening. Thin, starving, barely alive deer would walk right up to your vehicle looking for a handout! It was pathetic.
You could have hunted them with a loaf of bread and a ball-peen hammer.
Even when the condition of the deer became well known, attempts to thin the herd were met with tremendous opposition.
Sometimes the people who think they are doing the most good for wildlife are really doing the most harm. They're just too ignorant of nature to know it.
Sounds like we were pretty close, as I just got back from my yearly Lake Barkley (KY) fishing trip. We slayed the crappie (for a change) and I also found a spot where I caught 20 rock bass while fishing for crappie. It was a good year and the weather was great the entire week, not very common this early in April. You've got to love it when you are pulling out just when a nasty front is rolling in.
A large one recently was disbanded because of such a clause (can't remember its name).
If only the Ford Foundation and others like it had such a disbanding clause. (Can you imagine how Henry Ford would feel if he were to come back and see what his money has established?)
It's really hard, having to do all this fishing. But somebody has to do it right?
It's just a little old obsession I inherited from my Daddy. When he passed away he left me more than all the gold and silver in the world -- he taught me how to enjoy the simpelist things in life, like outwitting a fish, sitting out under the stars on a summer night, and cooking over an open fire.
And as long as I have these things, I'll have him here beside me.
Don't know where you live, but if it is anywhere in the South, right now is about as good as fishing gets :)
You just described my typical/favorite leisure time activity.
Actually, now I think I do remember reading something about that. Thanks for bringing it up, think I'll read what I can about it again.
Sounds like a good reference to use when writing/talking about the animal rights freaks.
Dang, they actually had animal rights idiots way back then:)
WIKIPEDIA...... WHO WROTE THE PIECE?
IF THEY CAN DESTROY AN ORGANIZATION, THEY CAN CERTAINLY COVER THEIR TRACKS.
Sorry I have been so preoccupied, but I do appreciate your pings. It won't be long now until I return to my beloved roots, which you understand. A recent trip out there just reminded me how much I have missed over the past few decades.
. . . the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS), is a pirate organization that sails around the world, terrorizing fishermen. Wearing a long bowie knife and carrying AK-47s on board, he threatens to ram any ship that wont give in to his demands."
Sounds to me like I need to take him to a Tennessee Bear Hunters Association meeting. They'd neuter that wanna be bad guy real quick like.
Good to hear from you. Thought maybe I'd made you mad somehow.
I'll give you three guesses on what meal we were served up on Kentucky Lake :)
How bout fried crappie, cole slaw, hush puppies, WHITE Navy beans and sweet tea.
I saw a road sign that said 50 miles to Fulton, KY. This was the Kentucky Outdoor Writers Association meeting, and the tourism folks there sure were good to us. They all talked and acted just like us hillbillies.
I have a LOT to tell you about. I pretty much set up the details of the meeting and had the woundedwarriorproject.com marketing director and a warrior there to do a presentation. There wasn't a dry eye in the audience.
Shakespear Fishing Tackle folks were there, and a lot of other good folks. My new and most important project is the wounded warrior project. I'll send you some details about it later.
I talked to your friend in Hot Springs, and didn't have the details worked out yet then, but now I am officially working as a liason for them to recruit the fishing and hunting industry into their outreach program for wounded veterans. Their presence at the Kentucky Lake meeting set the wheels in motion, and a lot of good press/networking went on.
And we turned two young Marines into anglers. I fished on the boat with the marketing director, and watched him transform right before my eyes, as he caused a fiesty bass to attack a popping bug topwater lure.
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