Going into last September's Trout Unlimited National Meeting, just about everyone was wondering what – if anything – would happen with TU’s access policy. While some members of the Board of Trustees, supported by CEO Charles Gauvin, had been advocating to prohibit state councils and chapters from becoming involved in issues where public access advocacy and private property rights were in conflict, TU’s National Leadership Council – its grassroots state representatives - had overwhelmingly opposed any change.
[The existing Access Policy had been developed by a task force made up of both volunteer leaders and trustees, and had been ratified by the Board of Trustees in 2006.]
The proponents of the ban on access involvement argued that access wasn’t part of TU’s mission. They were also concerned that local involvement in property/access disputes would alienate existing and potential TU donors – at precisely the time when TU’s strategic plan called for the organization to grow substantially to achieve its mission. There’s something to be said for this point of view; contributions from individual donors have resulted in some impressive achievements. And with membership growth flat despite continued and costly direct mail efforts, donations from wealthy individuals and perhaps even corporate entities seem a logical source for growth. As might be expected, wealthy potential donors often own, or have friends who own, prime angling real estate.
On the flip side, some members see the hard line on access as the abandonment of one of the key values of TU’s grassroots. In local circles, TU chapters and councils have long been involved in efforts to expand public access for license holders.
As it turned out, the pre-meeting anxiety was unnecessary. The 2006 Public Access Policy remains intact. And the National Leadership Council, passed a resolution – later approved by the Board of Trustees - to establish an NLC working group to study both access issues and programs that promote expanded public access through agreements with willing landowners.
Unfortunately, the dialogue over the past several months left more than ruffled feathers. It also gave a lot of people – many of them outside the TU family - the impression that TU was giving up on all forms of public access advocacy to appease a wealthy donor base. And that is simply not true.
The fact is, Trout Unlimited has not, nor has it ever contemplated abandoning its longstanding advocacy of increasing public access by working with state and federal agencies and willing landowners. No kidding.
The proof can be found in sections of the 2006 Access Policy that no one had proposed changing:
To develop, if financial resources are available to do so, TU programs for working with state and federal agencies to create programs for the voluntary purchase from private landowners of public access rights to rivers, streams, and lakes, and programs for the restoration of rivers, streams, and lakes on private property with a public access component.
And…
To collect, and if appropriate help develop, tools for the use of TU chapters and councils to promote programs for expanding voluntary access to private lands for fishing, and to improve access to federal and state lands for fishing.
Through this ordeal, one truth seems to emerge. Laws governing stream access vary from state to state. Because of this, conflicts between private property and public access also differ from state to state.
TU’s Stream Access Working Group, also established by the 2006 Policy, is charged with studying those differences and consulting with and advising chapters and councils when intervention in a property/access dispute is a possibility. (A separate TU committee is charged with approving litigation involving chapters and councils.)
The bottom line: Trout Unlimited, its state councils and chapters can and will continue to work with government agencies and willing property owners to increase public access to our streams and lakes.
Tom Krol
Click here to read the 2006 TU Access Policy