Wisconsin Conservation Congress meets next Monday
Let me say at the outset that I am not and never have been opposed to hunting. Deer hunting, that is. In a well-regulated manner and in proper locations.
In recent years the State of Wisconsin, influenced heavily by hunters and trappers, has expanded the types of hunting and trapping allowed, the locations and times these activities can take place, and the age at which young people can participate, among many other things. To give just one example, although the population is still tenuous, as soon as the Gray Wolf was delisted as an endangered species a proposal to allow hunting was passed. |
The fate of Wisconsin’s natural resources is indeed left up
to hunters and trappers, for the most part. This is because hunters and
trappers make up the overwhelming majority of participants in the annual Conservation Congress, which is the most influential public hearing on DNR policies and
regulations.
DNR policies affect everyone who enjoys the natural
resources of Wisconsin: hikers, birders, canoeists, kayakers, skiers, etc. The
hunters and trappers are always well represented at the Conservation Congress
and they have a right to be there. But other voices need to be heard as well.
How about yours?
I plan to be there, but it will take a lot of voices to
balance those who represent hunting and fishing interests.
Please attend:
Wisconsin Conservation Congress
When:
Monday, April 14, 2014 @ 7:00 p.m.
Where:
Nathan Hale High
School Auditorium, 11601 W Lincoln Avenue, West Allis
(This location is for
residents of Milwaukee County. If you live in another county, please attend the
appropriate meeting: DNR spring hearings locations.
Among the questions
on this year’s ballot are the following:
· Question
#48: Do you support legislation to
allow hunters to enter private property without asking permission, to
follow their packs of dogs?
· # 36: Do
you support the legislature authorizing the DNR to start a tundra swan hunt?
· # 35: Do
you support the legislature authorizing the DNR to kill our 75 rare white deer statewide?
· # 45: Do
you support the DNR dropping any hour
restrictions for trapping statewide in state parks and all publicly
purchased lands, so trappers can be out trapping all night?
· # 43:
Children of any age can trap. Do you
support the DNR making it easier for
children of any age to trap by allowing them to trap mentored by an adult present, since
they are not old enough to understand or attend a trapping course?
Thank you to Patricia
Randolph, who blogs at Madravenspeak, for the above information.
I encourage you to read the fair and balanced article about
the upcoming Conservation Congress from
the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “Have your say on state's natural resources.”
Deceptively called a "hearing", ALL THE POWER IS IN THE ELECTION. Every county will have two hunters running for the two positions - a 2-year and a 3 - year position. These are the ONLY delegates representing the entire public in the SOLE ADVISORY to the legislature, DNR and Natural Resources Board.
ReplyDeleteWe need to diversify this delegation if we want to preserve biodiversity, natural predators, and mid-range predators and build a first time democracy after 80 years of killing special interest control.
Since delegates create and screen questions - it is rare that humane proposals reach the questionnaire. So for 80 years, with ALL delegates from the killing enthusiast crowd, now the really hard core hounders and trappers, the trajectory has been to torture and running dogs on all wildlife by running dogs to kill coyotes year-round, statewide night and day. Hounds are loosed on trapped animals in the wild and in fenced enclosures.
THIS IS YOUR ELECTION. All the power is in attending every year and finding grassroots balanced, scientific, humane candidates who care about living wilderness at a time of massive ecosystem collapse, extinction and climate change.
It is absolutely essential that this engage the active voting public in Wisconsin to balance and eliminate trapping in all public lands which is raping out our indigenous wildlife for the Chinese and Russian newly rich. Teaching very young children that it is fun to bludgeon and crush trapped animals for money. Life as commodity for killing.
It is absolutely essential that we get fair funding and representation into the corrupted system that, funded on killing licenses, is just a killing business with a Natural Resources Board legislated to hunter/trapper/hounder activist control. For democracy and a living healthy Wisconsin, we need to replace killing licenses with general public funding and fair proportionate use of our land and enjoyment for wildlife watchers who are the majority. Even Aldo Leopold who died 65 years ago, and who presided over bountying out the wolf, said that nature and wildlife in Wisconsin should be funded by general public funds and democratic full citizen participation.
Our wild innocent neighbors are bearing the brunt of a million of them mangled in traps, bled out with crossbows, and farming the deer and turkey and duck populations for killing like cows.
Think about grabbing a friend and running in your county. One night a year - if you win, it is a paltry four meetings a year - two of them in your county, one committee meeting in Steven's Point and one annual meeting central in the state.
This governs our everything - and now they want your private land. Wake up - this truly is the most important ELECTION in the state. And you can vote on the usual hunter /trapper power grabs as well.