9377 ‎(2)‎

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 9377
• Author: Colorado Water Workshop.
• Title: 16th Annual Colorado Water Workshop.
• USFW Year: 1991.
• USFW - Doc Type: Western State College.
• Copyright Material: NO

Fishery Cooperative. They wrote a statement of purpose,
developed a long-range plan, and identified major problems.- For
each of these concerns (including habitat-, public awareness and
education, and the economics of the fishery), the group
identified specific solutions and assigned people to get the job
done.
The Cooperative has not, in two years, been able to
accomplish any sweeping changes in the lake's fish population.
But it has made some modest gains, including a habitat survey on
private and public lands surrounding the lake. Various groups
within the Cooperative have funded spawning habitat improvement
projects on streams that flow into the lake. The Cooperative has
proposed developing a Lake Pend Oreille Center to heighten public
awareness of fishery issues.
whether the Cooperative will succeed in improving the
fishery remains to be seen. Everyone familiar with the
Cooperative's goals can point out major obstacles between here
and there. But these same people also see real potential in the
group's work. When Ned Homer talks about the lake's capacity to
produce very large trout, he implies that the lake will only see
such trout if a variety of groups at least as diverse as those
in the Cooperative could agree to support such an outcome, and
the regulations to accomplish it. This would not be an easy.
consensus to reach, since some of the groups would have to give
up some of what they now like to do in order to let some fish
grow-that big. But Homer's point is that if a number of groups
with a cumulative membership in the thousands could agree on such
a goal, it would give agencies like his the backing they would
need to adopt and enforce the necessary regulations.
Tom Mehler makes and sells fishing tackle in his shop on the
lake, and serves within the Cooperative as a spokesman for
charte.rboat fishermen. "Sportsmen's groups have never been good
at communicating let alone working together," he says. "The
Cooperative is improving communication, although working together
still comes hard." At the very least, Mohler believes that the
Cooperative has helped various lake users identify commonly
perceived problems and agree about some facts. "It isn't always
easy to get the agencies to unveil the facts," he says, "but in
this working relationship, the facts do come out-and agreements
about what you don't know."
When he talks about this, Mohler sounds almost exactly like
Tom Ruffanno.explaining how the meetings between Bitterroot
irrigators and anglers changed over time, Instead of mistrusting
every shred of one another's evidence as just more propaganda,
they got to the place where they could agree on what they needed
to know, and how to go about finding it. This is a deceptively
simple step toward better communication. Facts are supposed to
be objective--they should look the same to all sides. But in
highly polarized natural resource debates, where experts for each
side put the most favorable spin on the facts, opponents
instinctively mistrust each other's data. And an agency, which
might be thought to be the coldly neutral party, turns out simply
to be mistrusted by everyone. But in any process like the one
followed by the Cooperative or by the fishermen and farmers in