*Editor’s Note* – This is a press release sent to me about an effort by the Center for Consumer Freedom, to expose the fact that some hunting and angling organizations are actually environmental groups who often get their funding from environmental and “left-wing” organizations. I welcome the fact that CCF is exposing this for the purpose to stop promoting environmentalism at the expense of game management, but this is nothing new. Many of us in the outdoor community have been harping about this for a long time, only to be told by many sportsmen, brainwashed to think these environmental groups are good for wildlife and game management, that they are our friends. It’s time to wake up and know who is buttering your bread and why. And while we are at it, drop the left/right paradigm nonsense.
For Immediate Release
January 30, 2014
Center for Consumer Freedom
Contact: Banks Woodruff
(202) 463-7112
New Website Exposes Self-Proclaimed “Sportsmen’s” Groups as Camouflaged Radical Environmentalists
Wealthy Environmental Foundation Money Funds “Green Decoy” Groups Who Claim to Speak for Sportsmen
Washington, D.C.—Today, the Center for Consumer Freedom announced the launch of GreenDecoys.com, a website devoted to exposing radical environmentalists camouflaged under outdoor-sounding names whose real objective is to serve the interests of their wealthy backers. Five groups of particular interest are the Izaak Walton League of America, Trout Unlimited, Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, and Bull Moose Sportsmen’s Alliance.
The website is available here.
CCF researchers spent weeks investigating the financial and personnel backgrounds of these “green decoys” and discovered many connections with organizations and financiers infamous for environmental activism. As illustrated in the accompanying infographic, common financiers include such left-wing grant-making titans as the Pew Charitable Trusts; the virulently anti-gun Joyce Foundation; and the Hewlett and Packard Foundations, multi-billion-dollar groups that give tens of millions to environmentalist causes.
Click image to enlarge or see it here.
As to their false public impressions, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, for example, has been described in the media as “Republican-leaning.” However, it then received $1.2 million to form a group benefitting liberal labor unions, the so-called Union Sportsmen’s Alliance, which seeks to draw members away from the National Rifle Association. The Izaak Walton League, which describes itself as an angling group, receives money from the left-wing Packard Foundation, which has given over $50 million to Planned Parenthood.
The backgrounds of high-ranking officials in these groups also call into question their commitment to what are generally identified as “sportsmen’s” activities. Backcountry Hunters and Anglers executive director Land Tawney, for example, ran the liberal political action committee (PAC) calling itself the “Montana Hunters and Anglers Leadership Fund,” which spent $1.1 million against Republican U.S. Senate candidate Danny Rehberg in 2012 and received several hundred thousand dollars from the League of Conservation Voters, a liberal environmentalist group.
“These self-anointed sportsmen groups posture as advocates for the hunting and fishing communities, but their funding tells the real story,” said CCF Senior Research Analyst Will Coggin. “Given the millions they collectively take from radical activists, it’s clear they serve an environmentalist master, not America’s sportsmen.”
