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Posted on 12/23/2010 5:14:53 AM PST by marktwain
The Washington State Parks Commission scheduled a special public meeting this morning in Olympia and the agenda was all about budget troubles and Gov. Christine Gregoire’s proposal to merge that agency with the Department of Fish & Wildlife, creating a super-agency dubbed the Department of Conservation and Recreation.
What good is a public meeting held at 10 o’clock on a Wednesday – that’s a work day for hunters and anglers who still have jobs, no thanks to the Obama “stimulus” package – when the genuine public really cannot attend? As posts on two popular outdoor forums, Piscatorial Pursuits and Hunting Washington, seem to suggest, a segment of that “public” is none too happy with this merger discussion.
There is a fear within the “hook-and-bullet” crowd – you know, the people with guns and rods whose license, tag and stamp fees, along with the federal excise taxes they pay on firearms, ammunition and fishing tackle who pay the freight for fish and wildlife management – that this proposed merger will push them farther away from the table, and out of a political loop that seems to treat them as a necessary evil.
The Washington Wildlife Recreation Program is not funded and is reduced by $70 million. However, RCO received a $20 million appropriation for Puget Sound clean-up. State Parks typically received more than $20 million in grants that it would not receive in 2011-13.-Parks Commission agenda item
This column wrote about the merger here, and at the moment, there is not much holiday cheer about the prospect of seeing the dedicated funds for fish and wildlife being mixed into a budget that just might place sport fishing, and certainly hunting, way down on the priority scale.
However, the money outdoorsmen and women, the "consumptive users," spend and contribute to the state’s economy is probably paramount on the minds of cash-strapped lawmakers (many of them the same people whose tax-and-spend policies have put us in this fiscal mess) looking for every drop of blood they can squeeze out of the blaze orange and camouflage turnips.
According to a 2009 report quoting data from 2006, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service said that 764,000 Evergreen State sportsmen and women spent $4 million a day, translating to $1.4 billion, on their hunting and fishing endeavors. They added $639 million in salaries and wages, and paid $163 million in federal taxes and another $123 in state and local taxes. The “ripple effect” of hunting and fishing amounted to $2.2 billion, and that was four years ago.
For FY 2011, the USFWS apportionments to Washington State for Wildlife and Sportfish restoration total $11,128,301 – our share of those special federal excise tax revenues mentioned above – with $5.844 million coming from hunters and shooters and $5.28 million from anglers.
Outdoorsfolk who dislike the proposal argue that merging them into one mega-office will dilute the functions of the individual departments. For example, anglers once represented by the Department of Fish and Wildlife would share their new department with hikers or campers that might not be supportive of sport fishing.—Seabury Blair
Kitsap Sun outdoor writer Seabury Blair suggests in his Dec. 20 column that hunters and fishermen are “willing to accept” this merger plan as “a sign of the times.” He must be thinking of Rod Serling’s “Signpost up ahead” that reads Twilight Zone. Blair, according to his column, concentrates on the “non-consumptive” outdoor experience with an emphasis on hiking. Maybe he’s listening to the wrong people. I’m just sayin’.
Once hunters and anglers have a chance to digest all of this, they may get a little upset. Fishermen may wonder why there are weeds instead of steelhead or salmon smolts growing in dried-up rearing ponds up on the Teanaway and Chewuch rivers that I photographed earlier this fall. They may figure, as did a respondent to Blair's column who identified himself as "Merlin," that this is strictly bad news for their outdoor tradition.
Their ire won’t be quelled when they see an item on today’s Parks Commission agenda that states, without elaboration, that under Gregoire’s proposal, “The Washington Wildlife Recreation Program is not funded and is reduced by $70 million. However, RCO received a $20 million appropriation for Puget Sound clean-up. State Parks typically received more than $20 million in grants that it would not receive in 2011-13.”
“Follow the money, folks. What will happen with this proposal is they will take the money generated from fishermen and hunters and throw it into a big pot. Instead of using it to improve those activites (sic) for the paying participants, they will take it an use it on hikers and bicyclist (sic) and others that don't pay anything. Don't be surprised if they use the money from hunters to bring wolves in to the State to destroy the hunting. I KNOW how the liberals operate.”—‘Merlin’
As this column has noted previously, hunters began sensing their declining importance to the Olympia bureaucrats when the name of the Department of Game was changed several years ago to the Department of Fish and Wildlife, when it was merged with the Department of Fisheries, which managed commercial fisheries.
This new super agency mentions neither fish nor game in its title, but only “Conservation” and “Recreation,” two terms that telegraph to hard-core hunters that their seasons and opportunities are about to be further reduced, and that they’ll be taking an even more distant back seat to programs aimed at hiking, camping, and “watchable wildlife.” The WDFW is really big on “watchable wildlife.” Maybe that's why some sportsmen sarcastically refer to the agency as the Department of NO Fish and WATCHABLE Wildlife.
I like watching wildlife through the crosshairs of a 3-9X scope, and unlike other “outdoor recreationists,” people just like me pay millions of dollars annually in license and tag fees, and federal excise taxes for that opportunity. We have earned a place near the head of the table, not somewhere in the corner begging for table scraps.
What good is a public meeting held at 10 o’clock on a Wednesday?
Not an accident.
....in 1937 hunters lobbied Congress for the Pittman Robinson Act...it collects 10% excise tax on hunting/fishing items...that money was mandated to help preserve hubnting/fishing....Clinton started sharing the money with the Sierra Club....and they promptly used it to try and stop hunting on federal lands...that was the start of government dollars being used against us sportsmen....it has only gotten worse since then.
....our hunt club has several youth hunts a year...exposing young people to hunting is our best hope for preserving this part of American heritage IMHO.
Say WA? Evergreen State ping Thanks for posting. Foundations like Wild Life and Sierra Club are “herding” us out of our own land. The Clinton, Udall, Gore, Babbitt, Richardson, Wirth, Iches...administration signed off millions of land to conserve the land aka land resources for the rich. Soros has been doing the same thing in the eastern countries. The first thing Obama did when he took power was “conserve” millions of acres and he just repeated the same a few months ago. We will eventually be “herded” into urbania and then it’s all over.
As the elimination of the old Dept of Commercial Fishing and transition to the Dept of Fisheries (coupled with the elimination of the International Pacific Salmon Fisheries Commission (IPSFC), and then to the Dept of Fish and Wildlife spelled doom for commercial salmon fishing, so this transition will spell doom for sports fishing.
While the former was mostly eliminated by backroom deals by governors from Ray to Locke, the later will be accomplished by Gregoire with a thousand cuts...
When the sporties cheered the Boldt Decision, they lost. When the tribes cheered their victory in WA v. Fishing Vessel, they lost.
When the State rejected Jack Metcalf’s 1988 “Salmon Enhancement in the State of Washington”, everyone lost.
The powers on the left = the Pew Foundation, G. Soros, the Ford Foundation, the Sierra Club, the Audubon Society, American Rivers et al, and the many NGOs purporting to serve conservation.
urbania = King County
Sir,
I suggest that you immediately do some heavy research about the United Nations, Agenda 21 Program. You will then fully understand what the Wild Life and Sierra Club, Obama, Clinton, Udall, Gore, Babbitt, Richardson, Wirth, Iches are doing to the WORLD.
Please read #8. I feel you should learn what’s actually going on in your town, city, county, state, and country by doing the same. You’ll also be able to recognize the little things that your local government does that supports Agenda 21 Program. When you understand why they are doing it, you’ll be able to fight it much better.
All of this crap was implemented in the 70s in Washington State. I already fought it -— we lost. That was 35 years ago. There was no Internet then. We were cut off and isolated, scorned from media to pulpit. Some of us died in the effort. The rest of us were destroyed economically and many lost their families as a direct result.
You need to follow the money, and all the efforts by many many people to stop this horror - which have been going on for at least 30 years.
The Agenda 21 Program is current news. Ask your City Manager, as if you are a supporter, if he follows the Agenda 21 Program and he will proudly tell you he does.
Back in the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and 80’s there was different names for all of these programs. Now they have all been grouped under the title of Agenda 21.
Every movement that pushes rural people or those who enjoy the countryside towards living in the city is a part of Agenda 21. Every squeeze that promotes bicycle riding, light trains or high speed trains is a Agenda 21.
Educate your neighbors and their kids about it. Fascism and socialism are the goals of the UN.
Stop with the civics crap!
And take the time and make the effort to learn more about the origins and history, as well as the people who have fought this before you were born, evidently. Else you are risking alienating the allies and knowledge you will need to fight them.
Control is the goal of the UN, Learn it, love it, leave it.
Sorry I offended you but there’s lot’s of FReepers who don’t know squat about Agenda 21.
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