\n<\/p>\n
Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, the upstart conservation organization that coined the \u201cPublic Land Owner\u201d movement, recruits members at trailheads and pint nights, and made caul fat<\/a> cool, has a new leader.<\/p>\n Vermonter Patrick Berry last month was named chief executive officer of BHA<\/a>. He succeeds Land Tawney<\/a>, whose 10-year tenure as CEO was marked by rapid growth, increased relevancy, and a reputation for disrupting the gentility of the conservation establishment.<\/p>\n Before joining BHA, Berry served as president and CEO of Fly Fishers International<\/a>, focusing on strategic planning and conservation advocacy. He is the former director of the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department and has a deep background in institutional giving and environmental policy. Berry is no stranger to BHA\u2019s headquarters in Missoula, Montana. He spent nearly a decade in the state working as a graduate student, trout-fishing guide, commercial fly tyer, and artist. While Berry will keep an office in Missoula, he will continue to reside in Middlebury, Vermont.<\/p>\n Berry<\/a> joins BHA at a transitional time in the organization\u2019s life. As it enters its third decade, BHA is without many top-level executives. John Gale, BHA\u2019s vice president of policy and government relations, accepted a senior executive service position with the BLM. Katie McKalip, long the voice of BHA in her role as vice president for external affairs and communications, took a similar position with Ruffed Grouse Society in October. And Tim Brass, BHA\u2019s state policy director and the organization\u2019s longest-tenured staff member, left early last year for the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. Tawney left BHA in July. Senior volunteers said that he had lost confidence of the board.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the organization has struggled to manage meteoric growth. The non-profit that found early success by being small, scrappy, and irreverent grew fast during the pandemic, adding chapters, leaders, and whole new programs to appeal to veterans, college students, and late-onset hunters. BHA has more than 350,000 members and supporters and chapters in 48 states, Washington, D.C., two Canadian provinces, and one Canadian territory. BHA\u2019s membership trends younger, hipper, and more physically active than that of many conservation groups. Maybe because BHA\u2019s advocacy for wilderness protections has been considered a camouflaged fellow traveler of environmental groups, BHA has been labeled a \u201cGreen Decoy<\/a>,\u201d along with Trout Unlimited, Izaak Walton League of America, Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, and others by right-leaning organizations for \u201cpushing a radical environmental agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n A number of BHA members observed that Tawney was an effective start-up CEO, capable of bottling the collective energy of BHA, which he described as \u201cgrassroots badassery\u201d that appealed to a younger, vocal, and more ethnically and economically diverse membership than its peers in the non-profit conservation arena. But the same members noted that Tawney struggled to take BHA to a more stable next era, one that didn\u2019t depend on bonfires, bro hugs, and shank meat<\/a> to sustain itself.<\/p>\n Berry acknowledges the challenges created by BHA\u2019s rapid growth, and intends to damper the blaze slightly as the outfit reconsiders its roots and invests in its structural health. A dedicated spaniel owner (Berry runs two English Cockers and three English springers, all decorated field-trialers) he slides into a dog metaphor.<\/p>\n \u201cA puppy doesn\u2019t really need much,\u201d he observes. \u201cYou get a leash and a training bumper and that gets you through their first phase. But as that puppy gets older, you need additional training stuff: a place board, an e-collar if you\u2019re into that sort of thing, maybe a training table. And then you get to where you\u2019re managing a mature dog, and you might need a flight pen for birds, you have to cultivate relationships with farmers for access, maybe you invest in a trailer. You have to keep up with what its needs are.<\/p>\n \u201cWith BHA, we have this dog that has grown a lot and its leaders have to mature ourselves in terms of what we do to support that growth. That\u2019s a natural part of an organization that grows, and for the last few years trying to keep up with that growth was Job One, and it was plenty. At a fundamental level, BHA grew faster than it could mature. We now have to catch up to ourselves and create the ability to support all these chapters and build systems around them.\u201d<\/p>\n But Berry says that doesn\u2019t mean BHA will rely on middle managers to navigate growth. Instead, he says \u201cour next steps are baked into our past.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m very enthusiastic about BHA maintaining its role as point of the spear on conservation policy issues at the local and national levels,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s no expiration date on the value of accessible public land just as there\u2019s no expiration date on people trying to exploit politics by selling off or compromising our public land. Thanks to our members and volunteers, we are more relevant now than we\u2019ve ever been.\u201d<\/p>\n One of BHA\u2019s strengths has been its influence at local and state levels in addition to shaping national conservation policy. The organization was among the most vocal proponents of the landmark 2020 Great American Outdoors Act<\/a>, which increased access to federal public land and funded long-overdue infrastructure needs in federal parks and refuges, and was a leader in successfully lobbying Congress to permanently fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund<\/a>. BHA was a leading advocate for permanent protections for Minnesota\u2019s Boundary Waters and Alaska\u2019s Bristol Bay, and has been an outspoken supporter of the creation and enlargement of national monuments, including the controversial Bears Ears National Monument<\/a> in Utah. Earlier this week, BHA filed an amicus brief<\/a> in Wyoming\u2019s corner crossing case<\/a> that could open millions of acres of federal land in the West to recreationists. On the state level<\/a>, BHA has been active in both shaping conservation policy and contributing volunteers to public-lands access and habitat work.<\/p>\n All that work will accelerate under his watch, Berry says.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople should understand my ironclad commitment to the fundamentals of the organization that got us here,\u201d he says. \u201cBut we\u2019ll be making a distinction between BHA-HQ-level priorities and the necessary variability of priorities on the local level. That\u2019s a balance that BHA will always have to strike to ensure that the organization remains one cohesive community even with those local and regional differences.\u201d<\/p>\n Maintaining that balance has sometimes divided its members along regional lines, says a longtime volunteer who spoke on the condition of anonymity. He is hopeful that a native Northeasterner might be able to grow BHA in that direction, and that Berry\u2019s background in fisheries might also broaden its appeal. But both dynamics are fraught.<\/p>\n \u201cHow to broaden the appeal of the organization, particularly in the East, without sacrificing the focus on the West where the majority of the public land resides is something that everyone is hoping there\u2019s a plan around,\u201d says the volunteer. \u201cMore important might be the identity of BHA as a whole. In my mind, and in the minds of a lot of our members, the core of BHA is in the name \u2014 Backcountry Hunters and Anglers \u2014 and kind of in that order.\u201d<\/p>\n Berry stresses that the group will continue to focus on iconic Western wilderness landscapes, but he advocates for a more elastic definition of backcountry.<\/p>\n \u201cNot everybody can afford the money or the time to go to the Bob Marshall or Frank Church [wildernesses] or Alaska,\u201d he says, \u201cbut there\u2019s a mosaic of town forests and wildlife management areas and refuges in almost everybody\u2019s backyard, no matter where they live. We have the opportunity to bring in more people to our community by helping them understand and celebrate the backcountry as they define it.\u201d<\/p>\n Berry is excited to turn the organization\u2019s advocacy to stream access, but to promote the notion that \u201cbackwaters\u201d can be as aspirational and inspirational as \u201cbackcountry.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a meaningful frontier of work to be done on stream access around the country,\u201d he says. \u201cWhether it\u2019s a state law, or a single landowner who blocks access to a public waterway, we\u2019re going to be paying attention to impediments to access to our public aquatic resources. In a lot of communities around the country, BHA will continue to be relevant and create a bigger community and influence because of stream access issues.\u201d<\/p>\n But Berry says BHA\u2019s main strength is to appeal to hunters and anglers who are turned off by dogma associated with the polarized discussion around hard-core environmentalism on the left and gun-rights absolutism on the right.<\/p>\n \u201cSo much of what is happening in this country is defined by the extremes,\u201d he observes. \u201cIn conservation, you have anti-hunters \u2014 anti-sciencers, I call them \u2014 who are trying to control what happens on public land. They are living in a fantasy world where they don\u2019t understand how the natural world works and how important hunters are as partners to natural-resource managers. On the other side you have too much of the hunting community that\u2019s been defined by the gun-rights community. There\u2019s an overlap, but they\u2019re not the same thing. Somewhere in between are people who like to be outside, hardcore hunters who don\u2019t want to be tied to the negative perceptions of the gun-rights community and anglers who are unapologetic tree-huggers who don\u2019t want to be tethered to the preservation community. Those are our people.\u201d<\/p>\n Berry notes that BHA\u2019s ability to coalesce around centrism is both durable and curiously perishable.<\/p>\n \u201cFor some reason people seem hellbent on making their tent as small as possible by putting up litmus tests and barriers to participation,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s not the way to create a movement. BHA is the home for everybody and anybody who is tired of being defined by the periphery and wants to be part of a bigger community where there are common values and shared interests.\u201d<\/p>\n BHA\u2019s long-time volunteer says the organization\u2019s ability to walk the line between those distracting poles is based around that personality of Tawney\u2019s \u201cgrassroots badassery.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAs a group of unapologetic hunters with a heterogeneous base, BHA has never looked like a typical rod-and-gun-club but was able to fend off the Green Decoy attacks because of the authenticity of the membership and leadership. It was the only game in town that could bring a lifelong elk hunter and a trout bum and a hunting-curious newbie all together at the same bar to have a good conversation and build an advocacy base for the resource. The enthusiasm of volunteers is what has driven BHA\u2019s relevance and ability to punch above its weight.\u201d<\/p>\nManaging a Mature Conservation Org<\/h2>\n
A Turn to the Middle<\/h2>\n