It’s time to count on accountability

“Personal responsibility” is a buzz phrase that can be tapped to bolster nearly any point of view. Regardless of whether you’re for or against something as hotly debated as new taxes, you can start with “personal responsibility” to make your case.

While everybody seems to nod at this phrase as it’s preached from church pews to political campaign stumps, the results come up short.

Even on the common ground of the great outdoors.

Consider this:

Nordic skiers flock to Mount Spokane by the thousands each winter to enjoy the 30 kilometers of groomed cross-country trails. Yet only about a dozen volunteers were helping clear the brush from those trails last weekend in the annual multiweek effort to make them groomer-ready when the snow flies.

Dayhikers leave their tracks on the Iller Creek Trail beneath Tower Mountain nearly year round, yet only 15 volunteers worked on Saturday and Sunday to jumpstart a multiyear project to reconstruct the badly eroded trail.

Birdwatchers are ballyhooed as the largest wildlife recreation group in the nation – increasing in participation from 2000 through 2006 by 8 percent to 47.8 million Americans while hunting and fishing declined in popularity by 4 percent and 12 percent, respectively, over the same period.

Yet the on-the-ground contributions of birdwatchers to the welfare of the birds they love is miniscule to the 793,000 members of Ducks Unlimited, which has raised $2.7 billion since 1937 to conserve 12.3 million acres of wetland habitat.

Sportsmen have an understanding of the roots of their sport that translates into volunteer labor and fund-raising for wildlife habitat. But a recent survey makes it difficult to raise the larger group of hunters and anglers to laudatory status.

The survey conducted earlier this year by the Washington Fish and Wildlife Department found that:

•75 percent of elk hunters were not members of any wildlife interest group to promote wildlife conservation and habitat enhancement, even though the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation has local roots in communities throughout the state.

•65 percent of deer hunters had no formal association with wildlife conservation groups.

•62 percent of bird hunters were unattached to organized groups that benefit wildlife.

•42 percent of waterfowlers were unassociated.

Duck and goose hunters clearly have cause to put a feather in their hats. The survey reveals them as standouts in taking personal responsibility for helping to sustain and perpetuate wildlife habitat.

While 41 percent of the waterfowlers surveyed said they belonged to DU, 70 percent of them at least belonged to some sort of conservation or habitat-supporting group.

Mike Jones, state organizer for the Mule Deer Foundation, travels around Washington organizing fund-raisers and helping put the group’s limited funds to the best use for wildlife.

Recently, Jones said he was trying to scrape up the last $6,000 he needed to help the state Fish and Wildlife Department act quickly on an option to buy a parcel of land next to a critical big-game winter range near Yakima.

“If that land is developed, roads would be built and it would interfere with the elk migration and marginalize the winter range,” he said, noting that Washington can’t afford to lose another acre of elk and mule deer winter range to development.

Gracious. If all of Washington’s 46,000 licensed deer and elk hunters chipped in, that deal could have been secured for less than 15 cents apiece.

Taxes, license fees and government can’t do it all. Not even close.

But whose responsibility is it to join the group and ante up the money and volunteer labor to perpetuate the sports we love?

Get involved: Here are some ways to start:

•Spokane Nordic Ski Education Foundation needs more volunteers to clear brush from Mount Spokane ski trails Saturday and again on Oct. 25. Meet 9 a.m. at Selkirk Lodge. Contact: Sam Schlieder, 926-7783, or Art Bookstrom, 624-9667.

•Washington Trails Association is organizing the effort to rebuild the Iller Creek Trail near Tower Mountain. Contact: 599-1280 or www.wta.org.

•The Inland Northwest Wildlife Council has a wide range of fisheries and wildlife conservation activities. Contact: 487-8552.

•The Ducks Unlimited regional director is Bernard Brown, (509) 782-1049, e-mail bbrown@ducks.org.

•The Mule Deer Foundation’s state contact is Mike Jones in Spokane, 922-1268, e-mail mdj_mdf48@hotmail.com.

•The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation Eastern Washington director is Mike Hale, (509) 826-5571, e-mail mhale@rmef.org.

That’s a start.