Wildlife refuges suffer heavy job losses

AP on Yahoo ^ | 3/15/07 | Matthew Daly - ap

[Eska]

No offense, but what woke me up was being only white boy in village for a year; everyone needs that experience to see both sides; you realize everything is much more complex than I thought it was (from my white suburb perspective).

Naw, not going native, still reg repub; actually like hunting/fishing/eating with them; but stay out of everything else; especially the booze. Bottomline is I don't look down on them anymore like most of us do; they sense that and treat me accordingly.

[ExtremeUnction]

About 221 refuges will be unstaffed after the staffing reductions are finished, Eisenhauer said.

Has anyone ever been to one of these refuges? Maybe once, unless you are a duck hunter. But they are just HUGE endless bodies of water with a bit of land and roads thrown in. I mean, it doesn't look like they need that much maintenance. There are a lot of birds flying around, but they seem just fine.

[Eska]

I can be going from door to door in the village in 5 minutes, how close they are to me. Our Indians up here were stoneage 50 years back, they still live off what the river provides; maybe that's what is different.

Ya know, you'll never see any of the good that's there just driving by; just see the bad.

[JustaDumbBlonde]

I spend quite a bit of time on my local NWR -- we own property that abuts the rufuge -- and I know much of the staff personally. This particular refuge is not as you describe. While it has many bodies of water, much of the refuge is forested. Currently, there is limited logging in progress which funds the refuge to some extent and creates new areas of habitat for wildlife. There is quite a bit of 'management' involved in the operation of this land.

Having said that, there are employees at the refuge who are totally useless and we would be well served if they found employment elsewhere. Staff reductions locally are being handled through attrition.

[Voltage]

Will the wild animals be able to cope without humans to guide them?