Bad thing about windows of opportunity is that there’s always a flip side. They also slam shut, sometimes as quickly as they come open.
Which is why timing is so important to outdoor enthusiasts regarding the impending change at the Colorado statehouse.
As governor-elect Bill Ritter begins assembling his lineup of administrators, a process that will place hundreds of new operatives in key positions, sportsmen and the agencies that represent them have a rare opportunity to influence a process that will impact their activities for years to come.
In his successful campaign, Ritter made much of his concern both for the environment and the recreationists who generally fared badly during the baleful eight-year tenure of his predecessor, Bill Owens.
An avid fly-fisherman who truly seems to understand the outdoor world, Ritter has the potential to be the most sportsman-friendly governor in recent history. Certainly the campaign promises he made suggest this.
Thing is, Ritter and his advisers will be tugged this way and that by various special interests who well understand the value of getting in early licks when a new administration is setting its template. Outdoor enthusiasts should take nothing for granted. It’s imperative to jump into the game, and do it quickly.
Seldom has there been so much to gain, such a broad opening to reverse glaring ills that hang like a millstone around our collective necks.
Partisan politics aside, we now have a governor allied with a general assembly that collectively appears to be more philosophically aligned to rank-
and-file sportsmen than to the commercial interests that made such ominous inroads during the past eight years.
As a case in point, we have the insidious shift that gave ranchers the right to sell landowner preference licenses in competition with public hunters on public land.
More than anything in the history of Colorado big game hunting, this practice has promoted a divisiveness often manifested in blatant abuses by landowners and outfitters.
A prime item of business under the Ritter administration should be to restrict big game preference licenses to the property of the landowner to whom they are issued, which was the intent of the original legislation 25 years ago.
Nothing could be more fair: If someone harbors big game on your property, then he has something viable to sell; if he doesn’t contribute to the welfare of the animals, then he certainly doesn’t deserve a windfall of high-dollar licenses.
One hears talk of legislation to correct the situation, but this poses the danger of a reversal with a different group of politicians years down the road. The only permanent way to cure the ill is through ballot initiative, a process that requires considerable energy and money. But that’s the only way to fix the problem once and for all.
Colorado’s logbook of wildlife-related laws also includes numerous other measures that should be altered to reflect profound demographic shifts. Sportsmen have pressing needs relative to access and opportunity that badly need to be addressed.
Action should be taken to re-establish a separate legislative committee on wildlife and parks, breaking the current arrangement that subjugates game and fish affairs to agriculture, more often an enemy than a friend.
To these ends, and many more, the time is ripe for sportsman groups to promote candidates for key positions while reminding both the administration and the legislature of its promises and obligations.
In a similar vein, the window is open for the Colorado Division of Wildlife – badgered and bludgeoned by the Owens crowd – to reassert itself as a more powerful force in environmental affairs.
The time for action already has begun to expire. That wonderful window even now may be starting to swing.
