By Jim Beers
It was during the early 1900’s that Federal and state governments began to
hire employees and organize concerted programs to actively manage fish,
wildlife, and plants. Birds and fish were managed to provide sustainable, annual
harvests for recreational and commercial purposes. Large mammals were managed to
provide citizens with sport and meat year after year. Small mammals were managed
to provide fur or winter meals to rural families and urban residents who enjoyed
hunting or trapping. Trees were managed to provide sustainable timber products,
wildlife, erosion control, grazing, and a pleasant landscape. Streams were
managed to provide fish, recreation, power, drinking water, irrigation, and
commercial transportation while minimizing the damage caused by floods or
droughts. Songbirds, amphibians, and plants were studied and categorized by
Universities and groups of citizens like the Audubon Society influenced other
citizens to provide for these lesser-known species as citizens went about their
daily activities.
It was during the middle part of the century that the Federal government hired
more employees and began to purchase, proclaim, and “protect” land units on
a regular basis. Wetlands were bought and made “National Wildlife Refuges.”
Battlefields and places of beauty or wonder were bought and proclaimed
“National Parks.” Woodlands were bought or reserved from the Federal
landholdings in the West and proclaimed “National Forests.” Western
grasslands and what were fairly termed wastelands were not turned over to the
states as was done in other states and eventually were proclaimed BLM (for
Bureau of Land Management) grazing lands. These last were leased routinely for
grazing, mining, and other uses while the others on a scale from the Forests to
the Parks allowed many (multiple) to limited uses.
Up to the 1970’s, Federal employees, Federal statutes (laws), Federal
regulations, and Federal and state programs all recognized that they existed to
manage the natural resources on these landholding for the wise and sustainable
uses of citizens. The employees were trained by Universities to do this job and
governments hired and promoted based on proven performance to manage natural
resources. The plants and animals are termed renewable natural resources and
oil, gas, coal, and minerals are called non-renewable natural resources. All
were managed and harvested or extracted using the best management practices
known at the time.
When the public accepted the Endangered Species Act and the Animal Welfare Act
in the early 1970’s things changed dramatically. The future for US Department
of the Interior employees (where the Refuges, Parks, and
A parallel development took place in the US Department of Agriculture that
manages the National Forests and administers the Animal Welfare Act. The future
for employees left management and use programs and became focused on eliminating
uses and cooperating with the socialist-oriented, no-use power-brokers like the
Sierra Club, Wilderness Society, the US Humane Society, the Natural Resources
Defense Council, and the Animal Protection Institute. As happened at the
Department of the Interior, promotions and bonuses were given for eliminating
management and uses and new employees hired from the power-brokers assured that
new and old programs reflected this change. Again, Executive Orders and
Proclamations imposed Roadless Areas, de facto Wilderness’, and prohibitions
on natural gas extraction in the midst of power shortages and mideast terror.
The recent growth of the Federal government, the astronomical increases in the
Federal budget for these Departments, and the modifications of national rights
and jurisdictions from private property to states rights due to these two laws
and these two Departments is a matter of record known to all. The Federal and
state bureaucrats who have witnessed the effect on their employment, careers,
and power know that this expansion can go on for a long time but like the
changes I mentioned during the last century there is the “Mother of all
Government Programs” on their horizon. They plan to enlist all the “usual
suspects” from the last thirty years to help get them there. The University
professors, the power-brokers, and the reelection-obsessed politicians will all
help willingly to get their piece of the action.
This next and apparently unlimited guarantee of budget increases, employment
increases, promotions, bonuses, and most-importantly power increase is something
called the RESTORATION OF PRE-COLUMBIAN ECOSYSTEMS. Its’ greatest features are
that it is both impossible and immeasurable. Never mind that it is also foolish
and nonsensical. However, if the “general public” et al, can be made to
believe in or accept the fallacies of the Endangered Species Act (like the
“need” or desirability of wolves or the wisdom of eliminating logging and
entire rural communities for imaginary effects on owls or lynx) they will
believe anything. Goebbels fed the Germans ever-greater lies, just like getting
a dog to eat more and more over time, and it apparently worked. The bureaucratic
“success” of the past thirty years has illuminated a darker future for us
all.
The American public accepts the lie that the plants and animals that were
“here” in 1492 AD were somehow designated (certainly not by God, but then by
who?) as the best or highest or only such plant or animal to be at any given
location today. Never mind that millions of us living incredibly different lives
make that impossible. Never mind that the pre-European
No, and you can take this to the bank per an old wildlife biologist, there is
nothing sacred, good, or desirable about Pre-Columbian Ecosystems or treating
any plants or animals differently based on their time here. Sure, keep out new
ones as best you can based on what we know. Sure eradicate or redistribute some
plants or animals based on their effects or on the needs of people. Sure let the
Federal government do their job regulating import, export, and interstate
commerce while states administer all the plants and animals within their state
as they see fit. But don’t, whatever they tell you, accept the notion that the
Federal government has any mandate for the silly, immeasurable, never-ending,
unimaginably expensive, and impossible task of restoring Pre-Columbian
Ecosystems.
That said, there is a big push to do just this today. All of the proposed bills
before Congress that have a Title or Section that mentions INVASIVE SPECIES does
just that. If the Federal government proclaims a mandate to attack INVASIVE
SPECIES it automatically tells the Courts and every bureaucrat that ONLY NATIVE
(Pre-1492 AD) SPECIES are to remain everywhere in the
If you can, tell your Senator, tell your Congressman, and tell your state
representatives that you do not want the Federal government responsible for
anything except the import, export, or interstate commerce involving new species
that may harm the current natural or commercial environment of the
This is already longer than I planned, but I will be writing more about the
current rush of activities here in
Jim Beers