Access means a lot of things to a lot of people. For the purposes of this article I'm going to define access as the ability for the average sportsman or woman to access areas to ply their trade, be it trapping, hunting, or fishing. In general, if you can hike, ride, or boat into an area and legally trap, hunt, or fish, under this definition, you have access.
Contrary to popular belief, access is not just a Western issue. I think a lot of people view it as such, because they have a lot of physical inaccessibility and that is where the access movement started. However, here in the East we have access issues too. Most of the access issues here are due to town by-laws preventing certain activities on public lands.
In the western part of the country, large parcels of public lands have been landlocked by privately owned parcels. There are no public easements, roads, or trails to get into those areas. All states have lakes and ponds that may have no public right of way to provide access to fishers. In the eastern states, there are towns that have public town owned lands that do not allow hunting or trapping.
Public lands are for public use and therefore, YOU own them, and therefore you should be able to access them for trapping, hunting, and fishing. After all, you not only pay income and property taxes, but you also pay the additional taxes created by the Pittman-Robertson Act and the Dingell Johnson Act, so essentially, you're actually paying MORE taxes than the average person.
For larger access projects, I encourage you to support groups like The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. These groups have done some pretty amazing things when it comes to gaining access to these lands. I actually have the honor of interviewing a gentleman from the New England branch of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers this weekend and that will be one of the first blog posts I will be creating on the upcoming website.
I recently read of a closure of a state park in Maryland. It's been shut down to the public so that the state government can go in a cull the deer population. So tax payers are paying for the state to kill deer because somewhere along the line, folks in that state decided it was a good idea to ban hunting on state parks. That's probably the most blatant failure of access I've seen in the East.
Most smaller projects deal with town lands. These lands are generally managed by a Committee or Commission which operates out of the town hall. Interestingly enough, these groups are usually made up of volunteers that are willing to donate a night or two a month to go over proposals and plans for conservation properties owned by the town. One of the best ways to get involved in creating access to town lands would be to have hunters, trappers, and fishers volunteer to be members of those groups.
Either way, if we want these things to improve, we have to get involved. Whether we are donating money to access groups, or volunteering on a conservation commission, or just writing little stories to inspire folks, we all need to play a part. If we all did just a small part we could accomplish so much.
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