Dennis Anderson: Access vs. habitat

On the eve of the state's stream trout season, anglers here -- bait, hardware and fly -- can thank river lovers past and present that Minnesota's flowing water is as readily accessible as it is.

Stream admission is a big deal here, as it is in other states. If the Department of Natural Resources hadn't made it a priority over the years to ensure as much access as possible to the state's waters -- including its cold-water streams -- fewer Minnesotans would fish trout.

Meaning fewer would know or care about Minnesota's fragile cold-water ecosystems. And fewer still would work to ensure their continued health.

Trout-water access has become a hot topic in recent months, as Trout Unlimited's national leaders have struggled over whether to restrict chapters nationwide from weighing in on local stream-entrance fights.

To engage in such battles, the thinking goes, distracts the organization from river and stream stewardship, which should be its primary -- and perhaps only -- mission.

Not so fast, says many a grass-roots trout angler. Not all of us can be wealthy and own both sides of a prime trout stream; our own private water, as it were.

Indeed, the fight within TU has morphed into a conflict more philosophical than practical. In the end, a middle ground that accommodates the interests of the majority -- landless, run-of-the-mill TU members-- with concerns of wealthy TU donors who own land will be found.

The bigger question is whether the nearly countless threats to the nation's rivers, streams and creeks will be beaten back at a time when ever fewer people are close enough to the land, and understand it sufficiently, to care for it.

Who, for example, would argue that fishing, hunting and other land-based traditions are not threatened by our increasingly urbanized society, and that without sufficient numbers of participants in these pastimes, the "dirty work" of conservation will go wanting for volunteers?

In this context, the TU access debate can be seen as a metaphor for all that threatens our resources, water and land alike. It's no more complicated than this: Fewer participants means less conservation means more trouble for the environment.

I agree that TU shouldn't make river access a priority. Conservation is the higher calling. But neither should it shrink from an access fight when the greater good for water, trout and anglers is at stake. Sustaining fishing, after all, is as important to the future of trout as clean water and cold springs.

"I also come down on the side of habitat," said Jon Jacobs, a Twin Cities area TU leader. "But if you give away the water that flows through these feudal estates, what's next? Won't we even have the right to comment on the health of that water?"

Added Jacobs: "As the old saying goes, 'A secret river has no friends.' "

True enough.

But as important as angler access is to the future of the nation's trout streams, angler recruitment -- the point needs to be stressed -- is no less so. Nor conservation education. Nor, particularly, conservation leadership.

Therein lies an important lesson: For today's cold-water angler to become too mired in a stream access debate that conveniently touches all-too-familiar hot buttons -- rich vs. poor, for example -- is to forsake a greater obligation to do what's necessary to sustain angling.

Thereby sustaining clean water.

And fish.

Dennis Anderson • danderson@startribune.com