Jim Beers

Have you noticed how "the environment" and "animal rights" aren't hot
political topics as we grind out the final weeks of this election cycle.
Feel good about that?  If you do, you haven't been paying attention.

At the State level, Governors are clipping environmental coupons at a steady
rate. In California recently, "Standing on a wide gravel bar with the Bear
River flowing gently by him, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the
Sierra Nevada Conservancy bill Thursday to the sound of bipartisan
applause."  This involves more government controls over 25 Million acres.

At the Federal level, while the Senate fiddles and the House toys with
"sound science" as a remedy for Endangered Species damage to the nation, Federal agencies exercise growing powers at frightening rates.  The big land managing agencies (Bureau of Land Management, US Fish and Wildlife Service, US Forest Service, and National Park Service) reduce their natural resource management programs as they simultaneously close more public lands to uses and access, claim more private and State property, propose increasingly massive spending programs to expand their power based on contrived theories, and reduce State agencies and State governments to little more than local power outlets for Federal power.

So what do we do?  We complain and tell each other and the bureaucrats (who are amused by our audacity) and "our" politicians what we "don't" want them to do.  Don't buy more land.  Don't license dog breeders.  Don't outlaw
hunting bears with dogs or with bait.  Don't List the abundant sage grouse.
Don't dump toxic sludge at night through a National Park into the Potomac
River.  Don't close the State roads through Manassas Battlefield Park.  Don'
t allow mountain lions in populated areas.  Don't introduce wolves or allow
them to decimate big game herds and the hunting they produce.  Don't let the Federal government prohibit Florida from hunting their own black bears that are causing numerous car accidents and depredations at a yearly rate of over 800 incidents.  Don't let the Federal government tell States how to regulate boating (i.e. manatees).  Don't have the Federal government "control" California mountain lions to protect California bighorn sheep when
California voters refuse to control their own mountain lions.  Don't
continue to employ State University professors that propose introducing
dangerous predators in populated areas.  Don't ignore the impact of
predation by marine mammals or terrestrial predators when identifying
factors depressing and frustrating recovery of fish stocks, livestock, game
animals, or pets.  Don't allow the Federal government to ease more land or
cooperate with quasi-private land acquisition organizations like The Nature
Conservancy.  Don't pass Invasive Species legislation or justify "native
ecosystems" with legislative recognition.  Don't implement Wildlands Project
objectives by allowing Federal acquisition and easement of "wildlife
corridors" or funding acquisition and regulatory expansion of "conservation"
programs based on "ecosystems" or "native species" or any other such
contrived nonsense.  Don't allow the UN to tell us how to manage our plants
and wildlife or our rural areas or communities or private property or any of
our natural resources.

Don't, don't, don't; we feel like we are doing some good, the bureaucrats
ask for more people and money to "handle" bothersome public "input" and the politicians assure us they will take it all into consideration as they head
out the door for the semi-annual photo-op at "a wide gravel bar with the
Bear River flowing gently by" or the rim of the Grand Canyon with some young female in a Smokey-the-Bear hat smiling alongside.  Bottom line: this stuff keeps on rolling over us.  It is like property taxes in my County (Fairfax);
they are based on annual "appraisals" that shoot up each year.  When we ask why our tax bills jump like California jumping frogs, everyone (bureaucrats and politicians) shrug and say, "I didn't do anything." Even without new laws or an activist Federal Administration, the mechanisms are in place and working methodically to destroy this Nation as we have known it.

A suggestion seems in order.  If you believe, like I do, that "our" elected
politicians at the Federal, State, and Local levels "control" spending and
the laws that is part of the answer.  If you believe, like I do, that
bureaucrats are more unaccountable and unresponsive to public interest the
farther removed they are from the people they affect that is another part of
the answer.  If you believe, like I do, that State governments, Local
governments, and citizens are the best protectors of communities, families,
and their total environment that is another part of the answer.  If you
believe, like I do, that the Federal government has it's hands' full with
foreign policy, national defense, actual interstate commerce, and that it
should limit itself to those specific Constitutional responsibilities then
that is the rest of the answer.

Imagine telling current and potential State and Federal politicians what we
want them to DO, not what we DON'T want them to do.  It takes more nerve and an ability to dismiss bitter criticism from the environmental extremists and animal rights radicals and all their surrogates.  It takes nerve to
criticize otherwise friendly politicians about their inability to see (like
German civilians in the 30's) what is going on around them.

Here are a few DO'S to start you thinking:

- Do divest the Federal government of much (1/3 to 1/2) of the lands they
own.  States can care for them at less cost and with more access, use, and
self-financed management; private ownership can revive struggling rural
economies that send their young people away in droves; and the revenue
generated and Federal money saved would boost our national economy.  Also the billions of dollars in "maintenance backlog" claimed periodically and opportunistically by Federal agencies would become a thing of the past.

- Do repeal the Marine Mammal Protection Act.  Federal authority over high
seas mammals would be unaffected and States could begin to manage sea
otters, seals, sea lions, manatees, polar bears, and other marine mammals in State waters to compliment State programs for boating, sport fishing,
commercial fisheries, recreation, salmon reproduction, etc., etc.  Federal
authority (presumably) would then be free to intelligently consider high
seas marine mammals as any other sea animal regarding impacts on fisheries, the marine environment, and foreign policy (CITES, whaling nations, sovereign rights of 3rd world nations, etc.)

- Do repeal the Wild Horse and Burro Act.  These resident animals are best
managed and controlled by State authorities.

- Do stop the easing of private property by the Federal government or any
tax breaks for private organizations that limit the use of private property.
Their purposes should compete fairly with other potential property uses and
Federal acquisition should be the tool of preservation of true "national
treasures" and be utilized only rarely after a rigorous justification
process.

- Do repeal the Endangered Species Act and then consider a VOLUNTARY
approach by the Federal government to States and the citizenry to identify
what the Federal government suggests are their concerns and for which
VOLUNTARY cooperation is sought by offering incentives for cooperation.

- Do repeal the Animal Welfare Act.  Federal interest in animal treatment
should not exceed interstate commerce regulation.  Commerce means COMMERCE
not every animal rights fantasy that can be tacked onto Federal Commerce
Regulation.  Chicken factories, feedlots, hog conditions, dog breeding, duck
flocks, etc. are best regulated by State governments.  If interstate waters
or interstate air are diminished, Federal intervention is justified.
Otherwise, State responsibilities can be financed by business taxes as
opposed Federal regulations financed by everyone.

- Do prohibit the naming of any public work or public facility (Park,
Refuge, etc.) after any politician.  Removing this incentive may curb the
desire of politicians to run to every "wide gravel bar" or canyon rim they
pass.

- Do pass legislation (we have to give them an item or two to brag about
"passing") requiring all US delegations to the UN to represent US
Constitutional values in all of their actions or dealings.  That includes
everything from the 2nd Amendment to private property rights, States rights,
and local options for things like hunting, pet ownership, animal use, human
activities, and land use.

I could go on all day but you get the idea.  Advocating positive things
doesn't mean we have to give up "stopping" more roadless areas, or the use of Federal inspectors by animal rights organizations, or the loss of more
land to sage grouse Listing, or silly but dangerous concepts like "animal
guardianship" or tolerance for deadly predators in populated areas.  It only
means taking a few minutes to identify the "root" cause (ESA, AWA, MMPA,
etc.) that is causing all the trouble you are facing.  Talk up and propose
the only real positive answer to your problem.  Tell it to allies and then
tell it to your politicians (Federal, State, and Local) and those who would
challenge them. The answer to the dilemma of top-down oppression may lie
with County Commissioners and mayors jabbing State politicians who may then begin to stand up to their Federal cousins.

If anyone laughs and says, it isn't possible, tell them that a lot of people
said the same thing about Parliament and the King in the early 1770's.  Our
Constitutional system can be made to work and rectify the mess we are in.
Telling our politicians positive things WE WANT DONE and then holding them accountable is the best way I can think of to stop this slow backing up
toward the precipice.

Oh, and if anyone grabs their ears and drops their jaws and asks, what about the environment and the animals?  Tell them this old wildlife biologist said that the animals and the plants and the environment and most important all of us were much better off with resource management, animal ownership, and human uses.  We can improve things if we just apply the common sense we were born with and the lessons of history that we are ignoring like the herds of seals in the mouth of the stream we want to take the dam out of and bar agriculture in the watershed of to "save" the salmon.