Unfortunately, now that the Republican-majority Congress is back in session, I expect they'll be a deluge of similar bad-news about rollbacks and attempts to hand our rivers, forests and virtually anything of value over to industry.

I wonder about teh motivation of folks like Lobo when they make comments like _ "One of your friendly environmental groups, PETA, is on a very aggresive campaign to end all fishing."

PETA is certainly NOT an environmental / conservation group. Their cause is 'animal rights' which has only the most tenuous link to conservation.

I've been involved in various fish and forest conservation groups for nearly 20 years and I can say with certainty that conservation organizations - even the most radical ones - are no threat to fishing.

Finally, I too have spent a lot of time thinking about why conservationists and sportsman haven't united for greater effectiveness. The conclusion I've reached is that while they share a common interest, be it rivers or fish or wildlife, for example - they have very different world views.

Briefly, I'd say that fisherman are primarily interested in 'using' the resource while conservationists focus on stewardship and sustaining functioning bio-systems. There IS a substantial overlap between these two groups - when threats arise coalitions are often formed. But I believe it's their differing world-views that keeps them apart.

For this same reason, this is why on these Boards you often see such venom directed at even FISHING conservation groups like Washington Trout, Trout Unlimited, etc.