While efforts to promote angling by Colorado’s Trout Unlimited chapters are commendable and uncontroversial, readers should be aware that the activities of Trout Unlimited’s national headquarters are far less so (Journal, Sept. 25). TU’s national office has taken tens of millions from radical environmentalist and left-wing foundations, laundering their anti-energy agendas under the cover of support from “sportsmen.” The national office’s board is stacked with prominent liberals and Democrats, including a former congressman, numerous former officials of various environmentalist groups, and a former senior staffer in Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office. No wonder then that TU was chosen by the liberal Pew Charitable Trusts to seed the even-further-left, Big Labor-allied Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.
The national office of Trout Unlimited may make a big statement about being about preserving fish and streams for anglers, but its real objective is to keep the big streams of left-wing money flowing into its coffers. Local TU activists should be concerned about whether they are being used as pawns for wealthy foundations’ ideological agendas.
Will Coggin, Environmental Policy Alliance
Washington, DC