Enough with the Politics
Wildlife Councils are the alternative to failing R3 initiatives
In Kentucky, the state senate is considering a bill to move the Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources from the Governor’s Tourism Cabinet to the Department of Agriculture. As well, the bill gives Agriculture to appoint the members of the Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Commission. Whether the bill succeeds remains to be seen, but the sponsors aren’t re-thinking their positions despite unified opposition from citizen hunters and anglers, the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation, Safari Club, Boone and Crockett, Pheasants Forever/Quail Forever, National Wild Turkey Federation, Trout Unlimited, and a host of other organizations.
In Nevada, Vermont, and Oregon, opponents to consumptive use are gathering political support to load fish and wildlife boards with appointees who neither hunt nor fish. Ideally, the push seems to be favoring outright opponents of consumptive use. Boiled down, the argument is that agency directors and commissioners need to be more representative of state residents (and less representative of the only ones who actually pay for conservation – hunters and anglers).
Unquestionably, one negative outcome of ‘representation’ is a growing over-emphasis on ‘outdoor recreation’ while dismissing the American business model of user-supported traditional conservation. According to Adam Bronstein of the Western Watersheds Project:
“The North American Model of Conservation, which has guided fish and game agencies since the turn of the 20th century, is outdated and no longer an appropriate and workable framework for wildlife management in this age of extinction.”
Apparently, that there’s no funding for this new expansive approach is unimportant. The unspoken assumption is that hunters’ and anglers’ dollars can be reallocated without objections from the taxed community.
In any other context, general unfunded mandates at the expense (and possible loss) of the folks who pay is expressly ‘inequitable’, and therefore wrong. Likewise, in any other context, “something which is morally wrong cannot be politically right” (Madame Chang Kai-Shek).
Adding injury to insult, other threats to the conservation enterprise have been growing. Consider the following statistics:
- The average ‘lifespan’ for a director of a state fish and wildlife agency is 3.3 years – hardly long enough to learn the job.
- Roughly 50% of state fish and wildlife agency directors are political appointees, meaning that politics is likely the critical feature of appointments and experience or expertise is optional.
- Growing numbers, like the Director of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (a nurse), have no professional experience or training in whatsoever in natural resource management.
Predictably, some (or many) will argue that top managers don’t need to understand the specifics of their portfolios. Yet there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary. Boeing, for example, has been run by accountants and not engineers since merging with McDonnell-Douglas in 1997. How’s that turned out for them?
Admittedly, fish and wildlife management have always been politically-influenced. Yet, at least most of the time, there’s always been at least a little daylight between political agendas and what DNRs churn out.
This too seems to be changing.
In Colorado, wolves and wolverines are being re-introduced as apparently interchangeable ‘symbols of wilderness’. The former reintroduction is occurring over the overwhelming objection of rural residents, hunters, and tribes. In the case of wolverines, reintroduction plans are plodding ahead even though essential boreal (alpine) habitats are shrinking. Obviously, the fact that wolverines are ‘native’ to Colorado is more important than the fact that wolverines depend on a habitat type that’s disappearing in the Centennial State and might be lost altogether. In a similar vein, Colorado is shortening or closing cougar hunting seasons despite abundant and solid evidence that current seasons aren’t having any measurable impact on numbers or sustainability.
Purely political decisions aren’t restricted to the Intermountain West.
Consider Michigan. At their March meeting, the Natural Resources Commission approved a quiet period for coyotes ‘to protect mothers and pups’ from April 15 to July 15. On the face of it, this seems ‘humane’, except for the fact that the dates for the quiet period are apparently arbitrary. The science clearly shows that the only time pups need moms is from about March 15th to the beginning of April (i.e., entirely outside the newly established quiet period).
According to the press releases on the subject, the change was because of “public perception and potential future impacts to their hunting and trapping opportunities”. Perhaps, and there’s no doubt that the change will be celebrated by predator and animal rights advocates. Yet the change isn’t scientifically coupled to the fundamental justification offered by the Commission (pups dependent on moms). Absent other plausible explanations, the simplest is that the ‘quiet period’ reflects the current political Administration’s attitudes towards hunting.
To be clear, biologically, it makes no difference whether there’s a closed season or not. Recreational coyote hunters and trappers kill far too few coyotes to make any difference at the landscape level.
But what does make a difference is that pure politics (and assumptions about public attitudes) were the decisive factors that guided decision-making.
That’s a departure every conservationist should protest.
Fish and wildlife resources are too precious for them to depend on political caprice – regardless of which political persuasion is trying to drive the bus.
It’s fundamentally wrong to substitute the fabricated alternative facts and whimsical thinking when it comes to the one thing that still makes Michigan stand out compared with other Midwestern or Eastern states, that being our well-managed and abundant natural resources.