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Norman,
OK - This is the first of a two-part series about environmental concerns facing anglers. Today, Randy Blaukat discusses apathy among his fellow pros and offers some suggestions with how to make professional fishing more environmentally-friendly. On
Wednesday, Rick Clunn will offer his views on environmental awareness and discuss how his approach to sharing those views has changed over the years.
The intersection between professional sports and politics has never been an easy one, particularly when an athlete is inclined or encouraged to challenge the status quo. For every Muhammad Ali who risks his livelihood to stand up for a cause, there are countless others who shy away from the challenge. For example, Michael Jordan, when asked to offer his support to a Democratic challenger in a highly contentious North Carolina political race, declined to do so, reportedly saying that “Republicans buy shoes, too.”
And therein lies the rub. Even if an athlete feels strongly about a particular issue, his fans’ loyalties or beliefs may be exactly the opposite. Taking a stand will almost inevitably alienate some portion of the fan base, so even for the athlete who discounts Charles Barkley’s hypothesis that pros should not be role models, there involves a certain calculus in the decision to express a controversial belief.
For a Michael Jordan, the decision to speak out could result in tens of millions of dollars in lost income. Without discounting how substantial that may be, the truth is that even if he were to lose that income Jordan would still have eight or nine-figures in taxable income each year. For a professional angler to take such a stance is far more risky. With no guaranteed salaries and few if any million dollar endorsements, the wrong move might push a BASS or FLW pro out of the sport entirely.
Blaukat Stands Up
Randy Blaukat is comfortable with his place in the sport, but wants his fellow anglers to fight for a casue that he believes “everybody can get behind.” Accordingly, he has decided that he can wait no longer to make his views known. He believes that the political apathy among anglers with respect to environmental issues is not shocking, but disturbing.
He has been vocal about such issues since the early 1990s, but for the first time he’s made a public request to his peers to get involved. Blaukat has certainly received criticism for his views in the past – when he used to write letters to the editors of newspapers near his Missouri home, he was the subject of “tremendous flak.”
“I had to get an unlisted phone number,” he said. “People sent dirty letters to my parents and cousins. I guess that’s to be expected. It doesn’t really surprise me.” He added that he has not run into resistance from the tournament organizations for his stance on the environment, but is sure that he’s viewed with skepticism or disdain from some corners of the industry.
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He noted that in most sports, the decision to take a political stand is divorced from the field of play. Support for a particular candidate or position usually does not affect the sport itself directly, but in fishing the opposite is true: failure to address environmental issues in a timely fashion will quickly and directly ”undermine the very field they plan on.”
Blaukat was quick to emphasize that this position is not about support for a particular presidential candidate or for one of the two major parties over the other. “The worst thing we can do is to label one of the political parties as ‘environmental’ or not. We are all in this together.” Accordingly, he sees an opportunity to encourage all anglers to push their preferred candidates to address these issues head on. |
“I would just suggest to the angler to research the environmental voting records of the candidates you are interested in online. This will tell you which ones will fight for our sport by voting and creating environmental legislation to keep our air and waters clean for our grandchildren.”
Uphill Battle
He is tremendously bothered by the fact that more fishermen don’t take environmental issues seriously, but having been around the sport for over two decades he knows it’s going to be a tough battle to win.
“The reality of the situation regarding the world of pro fishing is apathy among the anglers,” he said. “For the most part, they think environmental problems are being ‘handled’ by other people. A lot of these anglers are all for supporting candidates that profess supporting ‘sportsmen’s rights’ like the second amendment and private property issues, but could care less about the environmental positions and voting records of the candidates.”
He believes that much of this apathy is a direct result of the pros’ focus on their on-the-water performance: “For the most part, I see pro anglers as being very focused on their own personal dramas regarding the tournament world,” he said. “This leaves little time to become educated on the environmental stances of the candidates they tend to support.”
But he said that busy schedules and competitive endeavors don’t excuse their lack of concern. On the contrary, he believes that fishermen have both a vested interest in and responsibility to address environmental issues.
“The positions politicians take on environmental issues should rank at the top of their list,” he said. “The very future of the industry and the sport they love depends on it…literally. It’s all about long-term sustainability of our sport, not just the next five or ten years, but the next 200.”
Blaukat also recognizes that his own lifestyle is not environmentally “pure,” but is taking steps to minimize his impact:
“I know my carbon footprint is large, due to the fact I burn so much fuel driving 30,000 miles per year and spending half the year on the water. But I try to make it up in other ways. My wife Susanne and I live in an off-grid solar house. Our second car is a hybrid. We recycle. I drive five miles per hour under the speed limit when going to tournaments.”
One other concession he has made in furtherance of his beliefs is to run a four-stroke Yamaha outboard on the back of his Ranger. He said that he remains competitive with the cleaner engine on the back of his boat and he’d like to see other competitors adopt its many advantages.
Act Now
Blaukat is not an alarmist, but said that the time to act is now, before the situation becomes irreparable.
“It’s just like with global warming,” he said. “We can’t put ourselves in a situation where we don’t accept that it’s true until the water comes up in the house. We have a natural tendency not to want to face these situations.”
“These are slow-growing threats,” he added. “Our generation may not see (the outcome) but the next may be slammed by it.” |
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But there are already some environmental effects that directly impact anglers. He cited mercury contamination of our waters as one example that hit home for him. While fishing with Aaron Martens on Logan Martin last week, he caught a few crappie and wanted to keep a few to eat. “But both of us remembered that Logan Martin, like most our lakes and rivers in the United States, is polluted with mercury poisoning. Aaron made the comment the fish were ‘toxic.’”
“Coal plants are responsible for this,” he explained. “In addition to poisoning our water and fish, children are especially hit hard by it. Almost 700,000 children born in the U.S. each year have some level of mercury poisoning in their bodies. This leads to a list of diseases, but the big ones are autism and loss of mental cognition. Of those 700,000 children born with mercury contamination each year, most of the will have an IQ loss of five to seven points as a result.”
“This is insanity in my opinion, to have a pollution-based economy at the expense of our grandchildren’s natural world,” he continued. “Yet I see many anglers supporting the very candidates who are responsible for them not being able to take their kids fishing and bring some crappie home because they are not safe to eat. I feel as an American this is a violation of our basic rights to clean air and clean water.”
He immediately rejected the notion that some environmental sacrifices must be made in order to promulgate and enforce stricter environmental legislation and regulation: “The excuse I get when I talk to some anglers about it is that a lot of them feel that stricter environmental standards are bad for the economy. That is a myth. In one hundred percent of the times, good environmental policies by the government is good economic policy.”
He added that economic analysis must be expanded to better include factors such as job production and “preservation of the value and assets of communities.” Such analysis, he believes, would disarm and defeat candidates “who treat our planet like it is a business liquidation and try to convert our natural resources to cash as quickly as possible, regardless of the long-term consequences to our lakes we fish tournaments on.”
While he questions some anglers’ motivations and politics, he was quick to add that he doesn’t hold a personal grudge against any single angler or group of anglers. “I’m not trying to say that anyone is a bad person,” he said. “But the only way we can make our sport sustainable is through the legislative process. Our country is so divided – there are social conservatives and social liberals. There are financial conservatives and financial liberals. Everyone can get behind this. The environmental problems we face currently are many, but each of us can do our part.”
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