Being a relative newcomer to tree climbing I missed the contentious stuff that happened on the TCI message board last year. I don't really know the history but apparently it's enough to prevent some of the leaders in the rec climbing community from participating or at least make them wary of being involved in a guidelines creation process.

Check out this thread on TCC to get an idea of where people are coming from. Joe Maher has published some good comments in the TCC blog pages.

What can be done to bring more of the tree climbing community leaders into working on the guidelines? Have they been invited or is it assumed that they have to speak up if they want to contribute?

Signed,
Admittedly naive on the background politics
a.k.a -moss