by Jim Beers
Back
in high school I must have walked that path 200 times. From where I
would beach my rowboat or my canoe, the path wound through the narrow marsh
and crossed the pasture to the foot of the ravine that split the high ground
that paralleled the river. During the summer it led up and through two
farms and then into what was to me, in those days, a "vast" northern
Illinois woodlands complete with nesting woodcock and morel mushrooms.
During trapping season it led up to three ditches where I caught several
mink and a bunch of raccoons. During the hunting season it was the road to
hours of pheasant and rabbit hunting as I wandered cornfields and hedgerows
and ditches that occasionally even yielded a mallard or snipe as a wondrous
bonus in my canvas bag.
I was a senior in high school wondering what lay ahead after high school
when I beached the canoe one morning and headed up the path carrying my
Remington Wingmaster. As I approached the ravine, I happened to look down
at the frozen ground and there it was. As fine an Indian arrowhead as ever
I did see. It was what we called a bird point and it was made from a white
stone that almost looked like ivory. It was stuck in the ground so I took
out my knife and carefully popped it out of the frozen soil.
As I held it in my hand and looked at the outline left in the soil I
marveled at how many times in the past month I had walked right by it as it
obviously was sitting in the middle of the path in plain view. For years I
kept it with my tie tacks and cufflinks where it would occasionally remind
me of those days of my youth. About 10 years ago I had a rural Virginia
jeweler mount it as a pendant for my wife.
The bird point came to mind recently when I was reading Mad Duck, an online
waterfowl management publication that specializes in asking tough questions
about the failure of Federal waterfowl managers to maintain sustainable
waterfowl populations. Bureaucrats evidently strongly dislike the Mad
Duck.
When I recently wrote an article for them about how the Federal funding and
personnel for waterfowl management have been squandered in recent years I
received four e-mails from government employees essentially telling me I
should be more careful about who I write for, Mad Duck was not reputable.
In the 15 March Mad Duck, Mr. Howard N. Ellman, a San Francisco attorney and
cofounder of Madduck made the following observation about waterfowl habitat
(wetlands) easements. "Private landowners took the money offered by
Easement purchasers in exchange for committing their land to habitat."
He
(Ellman) "has personally reviewed dozens of these documents and only one of
them gives the landowner the right to terminate the Easement IF HUNTING
BECOMES ILLEGAL." Even though my first Federal job was as a wetlands
biologist in North Dakota and I had served as Chief of refuge Operations in
Washington, this fact that the Federal habitat Easements were fought for and
paid for by hunters and how if hunting is eliminated millions of such Eased
acres just revert to the control of anti-hunters had, like that Bird Point
years ago, been right there in plain sight as I went over and around it
without seeing it.
The vast majority of all the National Wildlife Refuges and Refuge acreage in
the contiguous 48 states were authorized by Congress for waterfowl
migration, wintering, and/or breeding habitat. The reason for this is that
waterfowl have been a Federal responsibility since 1917 AND THEY ARE A
MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR PER YEAR HUNTING RESOURCE which is also the main reason
that they (and many other non-hunted birds) became a Federal responsibility
upon ratification of the Migratory Bird Treaty with Canada in 1917. After
this date Federal acquisition of waterfowl management areas for National
Wildlife Refuges was an annual affair in the Federal budget and thus was
born the Refuges we know and love today.
In the 1960's millions of dollars per year were spent by the Federal
government in the upper Midwest and other key waterfowl production areas to
purchase Wetlands Easements from farmers that would agree not to "burn,
drain, or fill wetlands" of importance to ducks and geese. While
there was
lots of rhetoric about groundwater and soil quality (in surrounding areas)
and wet areas in periods of drought, those Easements on millions of farm
acres and millions of wet spots from those flooded once every seven years
for a week or two to semi-permanent marshes were encouraged, bought, paid
for, and justified for WATERFOWL PRODUCTION FOR HUNTABLE SPECIES. Indeed
many such sloughs were purchased at isolated locations and became units of
the National Wildlife Refuge System and are to this day known as WATERFOWL
PRODUCTION AREAS.
Mr. Ellman's observations about (I assume) California Easements is true in
spades about all those National Wildlife Refuges and Wetland Easements and
Waterfowl Production Areas across the US. THERE IS NO PROVISION FOR RETURN
OF THOSE LANDS OR THE EASEMENTS IF HUNTING IS MADE ILLEGAL. Think about
that for a moment. When hunting is banned (like England), the
environmentalists and animal rights outfits take over control for their own
purposes since the hunters are no more and increasingly Federal and State
agency employees and appointees are neutral about or opposed to hunting.
These areas then become (like Yellowstone was for wolves) the Federal hole
to introduce Endangered species or begin Invasive Species Eradication
(remember it is only the ones they decide to go after) or Native Ecosystem
renewals that are opposed by Counties or States or communities or groups of
citizens like farmers or ranchers. The areas become sites for all manner
of
Federal mischief from enforcement of water flow changes from road work to
restriction of grazing or certain farming practices because of the latest
bizarre interpretation by some Washington-based government Solicitor.
Waterfowl are no longer a consideration anywhere because they are just
another bird like cormorants or buzzards and hunters are sleeping in.
Think this is nuts or absurd or rantings? When the Clinton appointees at
US
Fish and Wildlife Service were stealing $40 to $65 Million from the excise
taxes earmarked for state fish and wildlife agencies in the 1990's (to use
to introduce wolves into Yellowstone and other things Congress refused to
fund) they were also trying to yank the Refuge System and the Waterfowl
Production Areas out of the business of "supplying" hunters. How
you ask?
They were trying to rewrite the Refuge Plans and Master Plans to change the
primary purpose of the Refuges from the Congressional authorization language
(waterfowl breeding or waterfowl migrating or waterfowl wintering habitat)
to NATIVE ECOSYSTEMS. That meant no dikes and no water control and way
less
marsh and (just like Forest Service and BLM Wilderness) blobs of unmanaged
lands that produce only fires and funding excuses for bureaucrats and
University professors. The Director in those days is now a top official at
the Defenders of Wildlife. They were unsuccessful because they got caught
up in the scandal of using funds earmarked for State agencies and the
hunters raised enough stink about the refuge changes to get the whole thing
junked. The next time, if hunters become like their English cousins - no
more, it will be a snap to make those Refuges and Waterfowl production Areas
and Wetlands Easements the means for unfathomable Federal mischief under
some Green appointees and Green bureaucrats.
So when you try to tell your grandkids that your duck stamps or your
political pressure or your old duck club buds were responsible for that
marsh or that Native Ecosystem behind the high fence, don't be surprised
when they laugh and tell you that's funny because their teacher told them it
was named after the President of the Humane Society and the Executive
Administrator of the Defenders of Wildlife because they were the ones that
put it there. Such a prize is just one of the things these radicals expect
to get when they succeed in outlawing hunting and it will happen if we don't
understand who our enemy is and fight him and her both smartly and all the
way.
Jim Beers
7 May 2005
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