Field & Stream Mag Attacks Bush's Environmental Policies

[kpete]

Field & Stream Mag Attacks Bush's Environmental Policies
by JPZenger
Thu Apr 13, 2006 at 11:56:19 AM PDT

A major article by a columnist in Field and Stream Magazine attacks the Bush Administration policies for their effects on hunting and fishing.

http://www.fieldandstream.com/...

Here's an excerpt:

"...the policy has prioritized drilling over other uses on federal lands, while relegating long-standing conservation mandates from the 1960s and '70s to the back burner. For example, in Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico, the Bureau of Land Management has approved over 75 percent of the energy industry's applications for exemptions to work in critical winter range, heretofore closed to protect wildlife--sage grouse, mule deer, and pronghorns, in particular (the Federal Land Policy Management Act of 1976 gave agencies the means to close critical habitat). The BLM has also continued to issue drilling leases while in the process of writing new resource management plans that still await public comment. In addition, the Bush administration is working hard to eliminate Wilderness Study areas--set aside for their scenic value as well as their importance to wildlife. Most disturbingly, Congress is now debating a national energy bill that would codify the policy ...

The results of these actions--billed as promoting national energy security--have begun to turn vast tracts of the western United States into industrial landscapes. The winners are the energy companies, which have been able to acquire their leases for as little as $2 per acre. The casualties are big game, upland birds, cold- and warmwater fisheries, the traditional interests of hunters and anglers, and the economic welfare of communities whose livelihoods are based on outdoor recreation and ranching. The Powder River Basin in northeastern Wyoming and southeastern Montana--approximately 13 million acres of prairie, escarpments, and mountains--provides the starkest example of how the Bush administration's unbridled energy policy is running roughshod over our public lands. The BLM's final environmental impact statement for the area calls for about 66,000 new coalbed methane (CBM) wells (about 14,000 have already been drilled in Wyoming; several hundred in Montana), 26,000 miles of new roads, and 52,000 miles of new pipelines.

more at:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/4/13/145619/675

[xultar]

1. OK it is official. The tide is turning.

[DUHandle]

2. Not so fast

[pscot]

3. Pretty gutsy stuff

for this particular magazine. I'm sure it will make a lot of their readers mad as hell.

[jmowreader]

4. Hunters and fishers are two groups we REALLY would do well to approach

There is one immutable requirement for all hunters and all fishers.

WILDLIFE.

If there's no wildlife there's no reason to go out in the woods looking for it.

If there are no fish there is no reason to go to the water.

There's lots of dissing of hunters and fishers among the left...this is the wrong way to go. The Bush administration is the ENEMY of everyone who uses wildlife--whether to hunt them or just to look at them in their natural habitats. These people know this. Why aren't we welcoming them?

[against all enemies]

5. Don't get to optimistic. I visit a fishing website and these assholes

still think Bush is the greatest. It's god damn depressing. They aren't bright enough to understand. If you want to know who belongs in that 38% that still think Bush is doing a good job, look no further than your hunters and fishers. Why do you think they like to fish so much? Something to outsmart. And I do fish, makes me ill to think about my pears.