WADING THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

BY CHRIS SANTELLA

BillHorn may be the most effective fishing and conservation advocate you’ve never heard of… and he’s not a bad writer, either.

Bud Hodson, long-time owner of Tikchik Narrows Lodge in the 1.5 million-acre Wood-Tikchik State Park in the Bristol Bay region of Alaska, recalled the first time he encountered Bill Horn. “Back in 1989, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared that they would now only issue one-year permits. Without the guarantee of a longer permit, it wasn’t feasible to invest in a Beaver float plane. Someone put me in touch with Bill. With his help, we petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to allow five-year permits. They were permitted. Even then, Bill knew how to work the system.

“Some years later, I happened to be in Washington, D.C. Bill said, ‘Do you want to have lunch with the Director of Fish and Wildlife Service?’ So we did. I had the sense that Bill knew everybody.”

From his high school days in New Jersey, Bill Horn was fascinated by politics. After serving as president of his high school debate team, he pursued a degree in political theory at American University. “I knew early on I wanted to go work on The Hill and play politics,” he recalled. An attraction to fishing came even earlier. “My family made its first visit Halls Fish Camp on Florida’s Marathon Key for a vacation in 1954,” Horn continued. “But my mother was petrified of the bridges leading to the keys, so we started going to Islamorada instead. My dad was a sailor, and I used to hang around on the docks. I saw the snappers, cowfish and little ‘cudas. They fascinated me. I had to figure out how to catch them. No one showed me. I did it on my own.”

The first fusion of politics and fishing conservation came while a high school senior. “There were plans for the Army Corps of Engineers to build a dam in the Delaware Water Gap, Tocks Island,” he continued. “The dam would have covered up my favorite trout stream, Flat Brook. I wanted to do something on the ground, and I joined Trout Unlimited. Two years later, in college, I contacted the TU office in downtown D.C., and I started as an intern. Eventually I was being paid $2/ hour. I made my first appearance before a Congressional committee in early 1972 to testify against funding for the dam. Later that spring, a group of us from TU visited Nat Reed [then Assistant Secretary of Fish, Wildlife and Parks at the United States Department of the Interior], to make sure that Bristol Bay’s salmon habitat was on Interior’s radar. I came away thinking that this was the coolest job in the world… but it would be a pipe dream for someone like me to think I could ever hold that office.”

Thirteen years later that office was his.

Horn landed a job with the U.S. House of Representatives Republican Conference, working under John Anderson (R–Illinois) and David Stockman (who went on to serve as Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan). “One of my jobs was to put out a legislative digest, basically a cheat sheet of brush with Alaska, the beginning of a connection that’s spanned almost 50 years. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline was an important issue at the time, and he was asked by his bosses to bone up. A few years later, he made his first trip to the 49th State. “Some new land conservation legislation was coming up [what would eventually become the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act], and Don Young, the representative from Alaska, was concerned that it might cause problems for a proposed gas pipeline. He wanted me to monitor the situation. One day he asked if I’d ever been there. I said I hadn’t. Soon I was on a charter plane with the rest of the Alaska Lands Subcommittee.” On that trip he befriended a fellow traveler, Lloyd Meeds, a congressman from Washington State who shared Horn’s passion for fishing. “Lloyd later encouraged me to go to law school. I went at night, and it took four years.”

The last two of these years, he was also serving as Deputy Undersecretary for the U.S. Department of the Interior. Bill Horn is not afraid of a little hard work.

All good politics are forged from compromise. Through his years in the public sector, and as a lobbyist and an attorney, Horn has shown a special ability to find the sweet spot that satisfies—or at least ameliorates—all parties. “Bill is someone who can see where people’s interests and values overlap,” said Lauren Oakes, an ecologist and human-natural systems scientist who’s an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Earth System Science at Stanford University and a Conservation Scientist on the

Forests and Climate Change team at the Wildlife Conservation Society. “I met Bill in Dillingham when I was working as Alaska Program Officer for Trout Unlimited, back in 2007. “We were working to organize testimony for a bill under consideration that would have supported protection of the Bristol Bay fisheries. It was winter, and there weren’t many places to stay in Dillingham. We were all bunking in a fishery warehouse, and we lost power. I wasn’t long out of college and was used to roughing it, but here was this successful attorney from D.C. working right alongside us, drafting testimony by candlelight. It was quite a juxtaposition. Bill could engage on the complex legal issues and language but also understand how to bring a lot of different people together around a shared interest. He’s a kind and considerate person.”

One of Horn’s greatest negotiation coups came when he was serving as Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife,

BILL COULD ENGAGE ON THE COMPLEX LEGAL ISSUES AND LANGUAGE BUT ALSO UNDERSTAND HOW TO BRING A LOT OF DIFFERENT PEOPLE TOGETHER AROUND A SHARED INTEREST.

Department of the Interior. “The Collier family owned a huge amount of land adjacent to Big Cypress National Preserve and the Everglades, over 100,000 acres,” Horn explained. “They knew it was valuable for Florida panther protection, and thought the Department of the Interior would like to buy it. The problem was, the Reagan Administration was being very tight-fisted on domestic appropriations, especially for land. It occurred to me that there must be other ways to secure land beyond seeking appropriations. What if we used other federal assets to fund acquisitions?”

It just so happened that the Bureau of Indian Affairs (another branch of the Department of the Interior) was closing the Phoenix Indian School. The property comprised roughly 100 acres north of downtown Phoenix, and Horn thought this might be of interest to the Colliers. It was. The swapping idea wasn’t completely unprecedented. Horn had negotiated a few deals like this in Alaska with Native corporations. But because this was an interstate deal, congressional approval was necessary. “Arizona Senator [Barry] Goldwater hated the legislation. He said it was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard, the idea that good property in Phoenix would be given up for swamp water. But then John McCain was elected to the Senate. He and Arizona Representative Mo Udall both became backers.”

The Arizona-Florida Land Exchange Act was enacted on November 18, 1988. Over 108,000 acres of land were passed from the Colliers to the Department of the Interior, with 85,000 acres added to the Big Cypress Preserve; 15,000 acres designated to create the Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge; and 7,500 acres added to the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge.

“Bill Horn has done more to protect the Everglades than anyone I know,” said Dr. Ross Boucek, Florida Keys Initiative Manager for Bonefish & Tarpon Trust, a science-driven conservation group based in Miami, Florida. “As BTT’s Vice Chairman, he’s helped us shape many policy stances and navigate the political waters. He’s this high-powered lawyer, but he’s so humble and easy to talk to, you’d never know it. And he probably knows the tarpon waters around the Keys as well as anyone, and is equally good at the back of the boat as on the bow.”

Horn has also served on the Board of Trustees for Trout Unlimited; as U.S. Commissioner of the U.S.–Canada Great Lakes Fisheries Commission; on the National Academy of Sciences Everglades Restoration Review committee, and on the Board of Directors for Friends of the Teton River, among other conservation activities. “Bill’s approach shows that ‘conservative’ and ‘conservation’ stem from the same root word,” Amy Verbeten, Executive Director for Friends of the Teton River, ventured. “Conservation can become a very politicized issue in the West, especially in a time of rapid demographic change. The pendulum can swing wildly, depending on who’s in power. Bill has helped us find universally appealing ways to move forward. He can find the fundamental principles that everyone can agree on.”

Though Bill Horn spends more and more of his time fishing and hunting (winter and spring on Marathon Key, summer and fall in Tetonia, Idaho), he still keeps his hand in the legal and lobbying game. “Bill is the antithesis of slick and morally flexible individuals that many people associate with the title ‘K Street Lawyer-lobbyist,’” said Mitch Butler, a partner in the D.C. lobbying firm Natural Resource Results, and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior. “He comes fully prepared, tells you the political benefits of a piece of legislation, what he wants for his clients and has the answer to every single question. I can’t remember how many times Bill provided me with sage and helpful mentorship. He truly was more like a colleague than an outside advocate.”

Butler shared a memory that highlights Horn’s avuncular nature. “Due to attrition and a great deal of luck, I was asked to serve as a Deputy Assistant Secretary while still in my 20s: I’d gone from giving Capitol Hill tours and answering phones to undertaking policy oversight and helping manage a multi-billion-dollar budget and thousands of people, nearly all of whom were more experienced than me, in just four years. Bill saw that I was in over my head and stressed out. He said, ‘You need some nature therapy. I’ll pick you up on Saturday. Bring a 3-weight.’ He drove us up to a little spring creek in Pennsylvania, Falling Spring. It was in the middle of a suburban area, but had wild browns and rainbows. It was a wonderful bit of conservation work. On the way home, I asked who had orchestrated the protections. It turned out Bill had been President of the Falling Spring Greenway for 20 years that raised millions of dollars for land acquisitions along the stream as well as major restoration work.”

In the last few decades, Bill Horn has turned his talents to writing. “I never thought of myself as a writer, but found that I was reading a lot of crap in the fishing magazines. I thought I might have some interesting stories and observations to share.” After placing a few pieces in Florida Sportsman and American Angler, he decided to try a longer piece about the annual “Tarpon Camp” he hosts each spring in Marathon. “I sent it to Gray’s Sporting Journal, and it was shot down immediately. I reworked into a book, got an introduction to Nick Lyons, and he recommended it to Jay Nichols at Stackpole Books. Soon after, it was published as Seasons on the Flats. Another flats-oriented book followed in 2021, On the Bow: Love, Fear, and Fascination in the Pursuit of Bonefish, Tarpon, and Permit His latest book, Crimson Wave, takes him back to Alaska and Bristol Bay. “A story built around sockeyes had been in the back of my mind for

10 years,” he shared. “There’s so much interesting geology, such rich human and natural history. I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy the place as an angler, but also be engaged with the region’s issues from a public policy context.” The book blends excerpts from Horn’s angling journal with an overview of Bristol Bay’s complex ecosystems and some “behind the scenes” tales of how policies protecting the area came to be. “I’ve fished Bristol Bay every year for 40 years,” he added. “I’ve fished every major river system at different times of the year, and have worked for many lodges, bush pilots and other stakeholders in the region. I found myself thinking, ‘How many anglers have flown into the lodges, enjoyed the experience and flown home, without every knowing how close we’ve come to losing this?’ My hope is that this book will provide a broader understanding.”

As an early reader of Crimson Wave, I can say it does, in a distinctly Bill Horn way. With great detail, empathy and modesty.