The Good fight
Written in collaboration with Bud Nyack. Originally published in The Quill.
How to Be an Informed Stakeholder
I was recently listening to a discussion about how an ordinary individual can be an informed stakeholder when decisions are being made about cold-water fisheries and riparian areas. The processes that lead to these decisions are increasingly shaped by professional stakeholders who are able to operate at a scale most individuals and local participants cannot match. Whether the decisions made affect water use or fishing regulations, these decisions are often influenced by coordinated emails, media networks, and large distribution lists, and a small number of skillful actors can create the appearance of widespread consensus.
It is easy for individuals to feel unqualified to engage. People have limited bandwidth, and both the science and the legal and governmental institutions involved in making decisions that affect the environment have their own languages, protocols, and procedures that can seem to exclude everyone else. The language of fisheries management, in particular. can feel like a closed system. Terms are used without explanation. Reports assume familiarity with sampling methods and statistics. Most people may understand what a creel survey is or how electrofishing works, but when a Lincoln-Peterson index is used to expand a small sample into a population estimate, they are lost. And they are facing institutions that are shaped by established laws and precedents and procedures and that must respond to financial constraints, political pressure, and a number of genuine interests other than conservation. Public comment meetings are one way individuals can engage, but they can take hours, often require physical attendance, and yield only a few minutes to speak. It is not surprising that they are often half empty.
In the discussion I overheard, one person said, “I usually defer to my state fishery and wildlife agencies—they’re the experts,” but then someone else raised the point that official public statements often differ from what biologists say. Local biologists are indeed often among the best sources of information, but they are rarely the ones making decisions or public statements. Most learn quickly that dissenting is a good way to stall a career. Their role is not to set policy, but to collect data and produce reports for others to act on. Their perspective is usually available only through those reports, which are often difficult to access. How is someone who is not a biologist or an actual part of the institutional decision-making process able to make any kind of personal judgment?
Well, if you are a fly fisher, you are paying attention to your local water, and that means you are already a stakeholder. If you do not engage, someone else will. A fly fisher who wants to participate as a stakeholders in decisions affecting the environment just needs the tools to do so.
Influence over public-policy decisions is never a given. It is constructed. For stakeholders making arguments in favor of the natural environment, the raw material out of which influence over decision-making is constructed is data. Public opinion is formed by making arguments based on good information and by debunking deceptive claims, and the governmental institutions whose decisions affect the environment are required to base them on objective evidence. For fly fishers, gaining access to this material and understanding how best to use it means listening to the biologists. For most fisheries, that means reading and understanding reports, management plans, and creel surveys. These are written in technical language, but that barrier is not insurmountable. The DEC’s Fisheries Dictionary defines the terms used in its reports. Once you are familiar with the language, the next step is to look at stock assessments and management plans, which show long-term trends in abundance, recruitment, and mortality. Creel surveys and effort data then provide context for how pressure on the fishery is changing over time. Even without a technical background, patterns begin to emerge. You may not know the mechanism, but you can see what is increasing, what is declining, and the period it is changing over. When something does not make sense, or contradicts what you are seeing on the water, ask why. Changes in sampling methods, frequency, or coverage can create trends that are not actually occurring in the fishery. Biologists are often willing to clarify these discrepancies, and those conversations can be as valuable as the reports themselves.
You also need to know where to look for the data you need. Most Catskills waters fall under Area 3 (Lower Hudson Valley) or Area 4 (Capital Region/Northern Catskills). Rivers such as the Delaware cross regions and states, which complicates things further. Sampling is divided by region, not watershed. Reports may exist, but not be digitized. Offices may not know what exists or where it is. Sometimes the responsible agency is in another state. In other cases, sampling has been contracted out. What appears to be a lack of data is often a lack of access to it. When you call, be clear about what you need. Be concise. Be respectful. Even if they do not have the answer, they will often point you in the right direction. If you would like to get a detailed response from a biologist, your best chance is usually to reach out by email. Your odds are even better in the winter, when biologists are more likely to be in the office rather than out supervising fieldwork.
But your own experience matters, too. Studying fisheries science does not grant omniscience. It gives you a way of seeing, and thinking like a biologist does not require a degree. It just requires understanding that every species is part of a system far more complex than any individual can fully grasp. As Aldo Leopold wrote in A Sand County Almanac:
“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”
Threats to the natural environment are consistent and well funded. They prosper by repetition and the ability to take limited or misinformed input and amplify it into something that appears far larger and more unified than it is. Individual stakeholders can seem powerless in the face of such forces, but while decisions affecting environment are made in impersonal institutions and settings, they are made by people who can be and are persuaded by individuals engaging them directly with well-informed arguments. A letter signed by hundreds of people across the country can carry weight only with those present in the room when actual decisions are made. When present are people who actually live in the community and understand the situation being discussed—when individual stakeholders show up armed with the facts—they will be heard.
