I like it. PETA is a threat. There are way to many of them. We all really do need to join forces. And not let PETA stop fishing. It is a great thing. A world without fishing....would suck. There would be nothing to do but homwork.. YUCK !
willierower
04-16-2001, 01:36 PM
jkfrabel,
When I was in middle we had one class a day that was called "Intermural discoveries". You had many different subjects to choose from. There was different arts, wood working, music etc. The subject I chose was rod building an fly tieing. The teacher that put on the class was a very advid hunter and fisherman. He taught many more things than just how to build a rod or tie a fly. He taught us respect for the fish and environment. He taught us ethics and responsibilities. The teachers name is Vic Brockett.
I would like to see more teachers like him in our schools today. I dot have any children,But I have friends that do. I hear abot some of the things they try to kids these days. It ****** me off when hear about teachers telling the kids hunting is cruel and mean. I thin that is wrong. Teachers are intitled to thier own opinions like anyone else. They need to keep some of thier opinions to thereselves.
On way to battle P.E.T.A. is to do the same things that day do. We need to volunteer our time and go into schools and educate the kids about fishing and all outdoor recreation. We need to telll them there is more to fishing than just catching a fish. We need to teach them about how we as anglers do more for the wildlife than any other group of people.
Im sure most schools would let people in to do this. I know that the Lebanon school district does. They allow people in after normal classes are over for the day.
maybe we should start looking into doing this. It shouldnt be to hard to put a plan together.
If anyone thinks this is a good idea and thinks it might work. Let me know!
Hey I think its a great idea. I go to St. Helens High School and Im pretty sure the other schools around here like the grade schools would not mind people comming in and talking to them. They might just learn somthing images/icons/smile.gif
jkfrabel
04-17-2001, 12:45 AM
I just read an this in the Sunday Oregonian...
An angler's manifesto
Those who treasure the tradition of opening day, take fishing pole in hand and unite against the threat of animal rights activists
Sunday, April 15, 2001
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By RICHARD LOUV, special to The Oregonian
Every year in Oregon, opening day for trout season takes place in late April. This one won't be the state's last. But that day may be coming.
Technically, the concept has lost some of its meaning. Many of the state's lakes and some streams are open year round. Nonetheless, thousands of anglers cherish spring's premier outdoor celebration. No matter how bad the weather may be, on April 28 they'll cluster like hatchery trout at feeding time at snow-free Henry Hagg Lake near Forest Grove and along the banks of unusually balmy Century Drive lakes southwest of Bend. The more adventurous will head for the frigid lakes of the High Cascades -- Wickiup, Odell, Crescent and others that might be ice-free.
The traditionalists just can't stay home.
Part of the reason is kids. For generations, Oregon dads and moms took their children out on opening day, teaching them a ritual to revere. It would be a day of cold, young fingers extracting hooks from squirming trout and warming around plastic cups of steaming hot chocolate; a day when kids would get soaked, then fall asleep in the back seat on the way home. They would arrive smelling of fish and covered with scales and filled with memories that would remain as vivid as the spring songs of Canada geese flying low over the ponds.
The Department of Fish and Wildlife has been de-emphasizing opening day; still, the tradition survives. But a serious threat to fishing awaits -- the animal rights movement.
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Two years ago, Dawn Carr and Gill the Fish, a 6-foot-tall, costumed fish mascot, launched an assault on dozens of schools around the country.
"Only one school let us in," reported Carr, anti-fishing campaign coordinator for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Undeterred, she and Gill stationed themselves near school property. There, they passed out literature and told kids about the evils of fishing. The attack continued last spring.
In one incident, declaring fishing "the final frontier of animal rights," activists distributed a news release announcing plans to dump sedatives into Texas' Lake Palestine. The goal: ruin a fishing tournament scheduled for April 1. Several newspapers ran stories about the threat, missing the fact that the release mentioned such names as April Phule and Jo Kizonu. No joke.
Silly tactics? Sure. But PETA's overseas counterparts have adopted methods now being considered by American activists: throwing rocks into popular fishing waters and sending scuba divers to spook the fish. Protests in England and Germany have produced fishing bans on a number of lakes and streams.
Instinctively, most anglers dismiss such tactics. "Don't rise to the bait," they say, "Don't give these people the attention they crave."
But PETA is well-financed and growing; it claims a national membership of 700,000 -- about equal to the number of licensed Oregon anglers. As the organization thrusts its aggressive campaign into schools, as it discolors the public image of all anglers, as it attracts media attention anyway, we no longer have the luxury of turning away -- not only because of animal rights activists, but because of greater pressures: pollution, watershed destruction and the slipping popularity of fishing among the young.
So the moment has come for another kind of opening day: the formation of a united front dedicated to the preservation of fishing.
It's time for an angler's manifesto.
Preserve angling; save fish.
Next time someone attacks fishing, ask: If fishing were outlawed tomorrow, what would be the fate of our watersheds? Who watches the lakes and streams, the hidden branches of lost canyons and forgotten slopes more closely than anglers? Who knows those waters better?
"A persistent error of many of my (anti-angling) students is to claim that they do not 'intervene' in nature," says Michael LaChat, professor of ethics at Methodist Theological School of Delaware, writing in the "Salmon Trout Steelheader Magazine," published in Portland. "But their shoes, cars, houses, pets, children and even their vegetarian preferences directly and indirectly cause the death of animals. . . . By omission or commission, we are predators as well as conservers."
Anglers have a symbiotic relationship with fish, he says; we share incentives to be their stewards. Indeed, many of Oregon's anglers give thousands of hours in volunteer work to streams and watershed restoration. And nationally, anglers contribute billions of dollars directly or through angling fees and fishing gear excise taxes to support hatcheries, stocking programs and habitat restoration.
Fish (probably) do not feel pain
Anti-anglers insist fish feel a pain parallel to our own. Neurological evidence shows that fish do not have brain structures comparable to the human neocortex. Therefore, fish are unlikely to consciously experience pain stimuli.
What fish do have are "wonderfully developed systems for avoiding or escaping from threats that are outside the limits of their typical habitats, and thereby create physiological stress," says John G. Nickum, a zoologist and chair of the American Fisheries Society's committee on the use of fish in research.
Even if what fish feel can be called pain, the sensation likely stops short of what humans consider suffering. As California fisheries biologist Brian Curtis wrote many years ago, the brain of the fish "fails to provide a home for the conscious association of ideas, and therefore robs pain of an imagination to work on."
As for the more radical conviction shared by some animal rights advocates, that fish are "experiencing subjects" with belief systems of their own, that position is even less provable.
Good fishing is an ethical act
Animal rights activists don't own the franchise on morality.
Long before PETA arrived on the stream, anglers were arguing about ethics. Today, we debate about creating fishing moratoria on heavily fished waters or no-wading zones to protect spawning areas. Catch-and-release is widely practiced. (Based on the assumption that fish feel pain as humans do, PETA calls this "catch-and-torture.") Some bass tournament anglers now champion "paper weigh-ins," where the catch is recorded on a score sheet and immediately released, thus eliminating the need to keep fish in live wells. These discussions, among anglers, are fierce and evolving.
Other anglers believe that catching and eating is the most ethical kind of fishing. As to that, PETA maintains that fishing is unnecessary because vegetarianism is a reasonable option. Being a vegetarian is an honorable choice, but it's not the only one.
Is our culture's increasing emotional and intellectual detachment from the source of our food honorable? All Americans -- including non-vegan vegetarians who eat fish -- should be aware that fish are not born plastic-wrapped, that they once lived and that their sacrifice nourishes us. Nothing teaches that ethic, particularly to the young, as effectively as fishing for your dinner.
Fishing is not trivial
PETA claims that sportfishing is trivial. Angling's contribution to the economy isn't trivial -- $1 billion in Oregon and $108 billion nationally, according to the American Sportfishing Association's most recent annual figures. More importantly, the ritual of fishing connects many of us to something larger than ourselves. Yes, fishing is fun. But it also binds the generations, and it offers healing.
"I almost hate to say fishing. I'd rather call it water treatment," says Margot Page of Vermont, a fly-fisher who serves on the board of Casting for Recovery, a program for breast cancer patients. She points out that fishing programs for troubled kids and the mentally ill are enormously effective. We go to the water, she says, for "solace, for understanding, for cleansing, for rebirth."
If that sounds vaguely religious, so be it.
Future generations deserve to fish
Our most important goal should be to preserve fishing for our grandchildren. Despite recent growth, the upswing in fishing has flattened. Sales of fishing licenses now lag behind population growth -- particularly among young people. Yet, never before have children been in more need of direct experience with nature. One sixth-grader says the reason he prefers to play indoors is because "that's where all the electrical outlets are."
If we allow PETA, environmental degradation or any other force to prevent kids from fishing, we only accelerate that process -- hurting children today and degrading future care for the environment.
Yes, fishing is messy -- even morally messy -- but so is nature. No child can truly know or value the outdoors if the natural world remains under glass, seen only through binocular lens, television screen or computer monitor. To begin to fathom the paradoxes of wildlife, the beauty and horror of nature, the sweetness of life and the necessity of death, children must get their hands dirty and their feet wet. There is no other way. And no better instruction than fishing.
Anglers of the world, unite
What can we do? Quit fighting with other anglers. That would be a start.
Too often, America's fishing cultures tend to view each other with disdain, if at all. During my research for my book, one well-known steelhead fly-fisher of the Northwest refused to be interviewed because he didn't want his words appearing in any book that included bass tournament fishers. If the enemies of fishing wanted to divide and conquer anglers, they couldn't do a better job than anglers have done to themselves.
But what if, say, on opening day, 2002, something truly extraordinary were to be announced -- that America's 44 million sportfishers had joined forces? Our ranks would then comprise one of the nation's most powerful lobbies -- perhaps the largest -- championing the protection of nature, the preservation of fishing, and continuity of one of our most important cultural traditions.
Unlikely? Stranger things have happened. Conservative Ray Scott, father of the bass tournament culture, and liberal Robert Kennedy, Jr., a founder of Riverkeeper, which helped save the Hudson River, have joined forces to fight the Coast Guard's nasty habit of dumping toxic batteries in good water.
In the worlds of fishing, cross-cultural campaigns -- although still rare -- work. In November, voters in Virginia and North Dakota quietly and overwhelmingly voted to make hunting and fishing constitutionally protected rights. They weren't joking. They weren't wishing the threat would go away. They were writing their own manifesto.