One to Watch at The Sierra Club
Paul Watson, a Board of Directors member at The Sierra Club, wants anti-hunters to control the nation's largest environmental group

By Jim Shepherd, publisher, The Outdoor Wire

While traveling last week, I received an email from one of the leaders in the outdoor community. It was sent to me as "deep background" - a journalistic term of art that means "you need to know this, but forget who told you."

After checking the story (what journalists should do before printing anything), it was, indeed, a story we should keep on our radar screens. It's yet another example of how anti-hunting and fishing opponents have changed tactics after they have seemed to realize they are no longer being permitted to legislate by litigation. While we have seen victories against nuisance litigation, unreasonable reallocation of funding and other tactics, there are still many other avenues open to them.

This latest update concerns The Sierra Club, the nation's oldest, largest, and arguably, most effective grassroots environmental group. With 700,000 members, it packs a wallop with two key groups: legislators and the media. And, if you read between the lines, it's headed for a more confrontational activism.

From now until 2006, Paul Watson, one of the world's best-known environmental activists (or "terrorists" depending on your viewpoint), is a member of the Board of Directors for The Sierra Club.

Watson has been described by activist/actor Martin Sheen as one "by far the most knowledgeable, dedicated and courageous environmentalists alive today" - and he is.

A founder of Greenpeace, "Captain" Watson has tried a variety of confrontational tactics to stop those he opposes. Some of those tactics are the straightforward methods employed by all activists. Others seem to be a bit more in line with Wounded Knee in 1973 (where he, by the way, was involved as a medic for the Native Americans) - ramming ships and firing shotguns at fishermen. But, he packs quite a punch from his home in Ketchican, Alaska.

He's looking to expand that wallop with The Sierra Club.

At the Animal Rights 2003 conference in Los Angeles, he explained his strategy:

"One of the reasons that I'm on The Sierra Club board of directors right now is to try and change it. ... we're only three directors away from controlling that board. We control one-third of it right now. And once we get three more directors elected, The Sierra Club will not, no longer be pro-hunting and pro-trapping and we can use the resources of the $95-million-a-year budget to address some of these issues."

Watson is a man who believes strongly in the moral correctness of his positions. He is a man who is unafraid to take risks to reach his goals. Likewise, he is a man who has seen his efforts not only successful, but lauded by the majority of the nation's media.

That's not a political statement, nor a condemnation of either "Captain" Watson, nor the media that applauds his work. It is a simple observation that a radical viewpoint is trying to take control of the voices of nearly three-quarters of a million Americans who, by and large, want the same things as the outdoor enthusiasts who hunt, fish, and otherwise harvest the wilds: clean air, clean water, sensible conservation practices and a balanced, protected environment.

In all candor, I don't disagree with many of Watson's positions. I do, however, take issue with his methods - and the stated attempt to "hijack" The Sierra Club.

The reasons are fairly fundamental. First, I don't believe any radical position represents a broad base of Americans - we are not by our very natures radicals. Second, and maybe more importantly, I believe that when an extreme position is taken, the intractability of that position makes confrontations unavoidable.

It would seem that where the environment is concerned, none of us - regardless of our individual viewpoints and positions - is as smart as all of us working together. Of course, that's probably a fairly extreme viewpoint to some who believe their position is, by their mere endorsement of it, the only correct one.

See also:

Sierra Club: Ever More Radical. By the Center for Comsumer Freedom, Sept. 4, 2003.