No, this isn't about thinking the UN Peacekeepers in Lebanon
are anything
but excuses to let the bad guys put their stuff back together for the next
push on Israel. Nor is it about thinking the UN or "Europeans"
can dissuade
Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Nor is it about Senator McCain and
the
White House agreeing on workable prisoner interrogation methods or a
workable fence between us and all those workers we are told we need. No,
this is about hunting and our friends that look out for us. They are
looking out for us like Neville Chamberlain (the British Prime Minister at
the time) "negotiated a "peace" agreement with "Mr."
Hitler after the
Czechoslovakian invasion and just before the Polish/French Anschlauss by the
German Air Force, Panzers, and associated infantry and SS Troopers. When
Chamberlain got off the plane, waved a piece of paper and trumpeted how he
had obtained "Peace in Our Time".
Negotiations to have any chance of success require equals, each committed to
attaining a level of accommodation satisfactory to them when certain losses are
balanced by certain gains. These conditions rarely exist in nature,
only in the heads of dreamers and those with hidden agendas. Show me a
person who says such negotiations gave satisfactory results and I will show
you a man who worships, lives, and speaks differently than his mother and
father. But I digress.
The Neville Churchill award for 2006 (is there a "Conservation"
Organization
out there to sponsor this say with Bass Pro or Cabelas?) goes to the
managers of the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the US Department of the
Interior staff and managers that oversee them. (Many copies of the award
will need to be printed, framed, and signed by either the Executive Director
of the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies [the "renamed" lobby
group
of the State Fish and Game Departments] or an Executive of say the Defenders of
Wildlife or perhaps PETA).
Here is the write-up for the Award.
Earlier this year the Fund for Animals, a group known for their concern for
animals when it can eliminate hunting or trapping or fishing or any other
renewable use of natural resources, sued the US Fish and Wildlife Service to
stop all hunting where it is taking place on National Wildlife Refuges
because "the Economic Analysis for Hunting on National Wildlife Refuges did
not consider the System-wide effects of hunting, only the effects on
individual refuges".
Now as we all know effects of things on the Refuge System (or Park System or
Forest System) are as real as the necessity of predators in "Thuh
Ecosystem"
or the effect of the magic wand by which Mickey Mouse made mops dance in
Fantasia. Nonetheless the US Fish and Wildlife Service and all their
anti-use and anti-management types (from the Management Authority and
"Scientific" Authority to all of the scattered hires of the past few
years)
said that rather than going to court they would "negotiate" with the
Fund
for Animals. (You know, they will come to "love" us and
"understand" us once
they see how nice we are).
As did Hitler, the Fund for Animals gladly entered into "negotiations"
with
all the commitment of Iranian "negotiators".
So here is where the award comes in. Not only did the US Fish and Wildlife
Service agree not to open any new refuge hunts until they reach an
"agreement" (everyone knows this to date) but they have recently
decided
(everyone doesn't know this yet) to not open 7 other Refuges to hunting that
were not part of the suit originally and were already slated for hunting
this fall as part of their "negotiation strategy". The
announcement is
being "wordsmithed" even as you read this. To quote a once
famous but now
forgotten bureaucrat "to make omelettes, you must break eggs".
If this Administration and the Republican Congress and a House Resources
Committee and a Senate Environment and Public Works Committees with Chairmen
like Pombo and Inhofe let bureaucrats perpetrate this sort of thing, is there
any hope? If the US Fish and Wildlife Service can sell out hunters and
hunting like this and the National Park Service can close State highways and
the US Forest Service can turn itself into one massive Wilderness/Fire
System under this Administration, what hope is there under Democrats or the
"moderate" Republicans lining up for the Presidency at this time?
Ask yourself about "your" conservation organization lobbyists in
Washington
or your State Fish and Wildlife Agencies that have been AWOL through all
this. Hunting, like pet ownership and fishing and ranching and logging and
the common sense basis of out future are each dying of a "thousand
cuts"
delivered one at a time.
If this US Fish and Wildlife Service Director doesn't get a big job with
some animal rights or environmental outfit when he "retires" it won't
be for
lack of trying. All he needs is a video of him getting out of a plane and
grinning wildly as he shakes a piece of paper in the air.
Jim Beers
26 Sep. 2006
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- This article and other recent articles by Jim Beers can be found at
http://jimbeers.blogster.com (Jim Beers Common Sense)
- Jim Beers is available for consulting or to speak. Contact:
jimbeers7@verizon.net
- Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist,
Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow.