This is about "saving" and "protecting" the
important things in our lives.
No, it isn't about "Wilderness" or "Native Species" or
"Wildlands" or
"Endangered Species" or any of the other imaginings that many of our
fellow
citizens think are more precious than our (not their) rights, traditions,
and form of government. Truth be told, all of such recent
"emergencies" are
but tools that radical groups to use to gain power over the rest of us.
The
vast majority of us would be far better off without millions of acres in
"Wilderness"; or a government bent on "fighting" plants
and animals
(Invasive Species) that some professor says are out of place; or a
government using lands set aside for multiple uses (US Forests, BLM lands)
or waterfowl (US Refuges) or Parks to introduce wolves, strangle rural
communities, destroy rural economies and the use and management of both
renewable and energy natural resources. Anyone remember when
"Endangered
Species" meant "Species" and something that was about to become
extinct?
No, this is about the important stuff like hunting and fishing and habitat
management for sustainable uses from timber to bird hunting and frogging.
The biggest threat to our outdoor traditions and rural economies is the
transfer of legal authority over more and more of our lives and our
activities from the jurisdiction of our State government (where the US
Constitution placed it) to the Federal government. Just as in the
monarchies of Europe from whence we came, when power over day-to-day matters
is lodged in a central government, powerful forces will exercise that power
for their own benefit at the expense of the rest of us. While the
Founding
Fathers were familiar with Kings and Dukes and Earls controlling European
land for themselves and mutilating poachers and trespassers, today we are
faced with bureaucrats feathering their own careers, politicians keeping the
reelection machinery running, professors keeping the grant money flowing,
and hostile environmentalists and radical animal rights groups steering it
all for their ends at our expense.
What can we do? One of the most important things we need to concentrate on
doing is to keep our State fish and wildlife agency under OUR control.
The
last ten years have seen wholesale name changes from names like Fish and
Game, and Fisheries Commission to things like Maryland Wildlife and Heritage
Service. This signals the shift from "game" and
"fisheries" work to
everything from "monitoring" "the environment" to
"categorizing" all the
land and money needed to "restore" the "Native Ecosystem".
Simultaneously
our State agencies are closing fish hatcheries, ignoring sport fish
restoration needs, letting deer management slide, and preparing to declare
pheasants and brown trout as the equivalent of killer bees and brown tree
snakes. All this is being accomplished not only with license sales money
and excise taxes from hunting and fishing gear but also with increasing
amounts of Federal Appropriated funding both through and directed by the US
Fish and Wildlife Service. Many State employees, foolishly in my view,
anticipate a future where hunting and fishing will disappear and the Federal
Congress will (just like Highway funding) fund the State agencies under the
direction of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. As an example today the
Federal Highway "strings" dictate what plants may and may NOT be
planted
alongside roads and no State objects because all State Highway employees are
not only dependent on Federal funding for salaries but State politicians
measure State Highway employees by how quickly they get "every penny due
the
State".
The State fish and wildlife agencies' national lobby group in Washington is
the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (IAFWA).
They
control millions of dollars, much of it from the excise taxes and from other
Federal grants even though they are a Washington lobby group. They just
"established two new committees". "Under the (sic, new) Energy
and Wildlife
Policy Committee there are two subcommittees", "Wind and Energy, and
Global
Climate Change". The other "new committee" is "Invasive
Species".
Additionally, they just announced a new Executive Director who is a former
lobbyist that occupied a manufactured and duplicative political Deputy
Director job in the US Fish and Wildlife Service for four years. When he
left for another temporary political job in the Interior Department the
manufactured job disappeared behind him. Consider these "new"
directions
for State fish and wildlife agencies and where the "new leadership"
selected
by the State Directors will take them and your State fish and wildlife
agency.