TEAMING WITH WILDLIFE ROUND 2
Rick Blom (rblom@blazie.com)
Fri, 20 Feb 1998 16:53:57 -0500
Norm Saunders, Dave Mozurkewich, and Tom Loomis have responded with
varying degrees of enthusiasm for my comments, and I have gotten two
private e-mails as well. I do not want to drag this out too far, but there
are one or two poimnts I would like to respond to. I hope many others will
jump in.
A couple of respondents have chided me gently for my complaint that
we are being asked to buy a pig in a poke, to support a bill whose main
provisions are not yet solidified. I know that legislation gets changed
right up to the minute of the vote (and afterwards many times), and I have
not been politically naive since Nixon was a pup. My point is that the
proponents of this measure have been recruiting support by saying what the
bill will do, although it is not written and it may not do what we have
been led to believe or hope. I admit that the uncertainty of the language
was a minor consideration more than a year ago when I first opposed this
tax in print and in public debate in New York and other places. It was only
later, when I learned of the efforts to include hunting and fishing
provisions and that the staff of people like Senator Murkowski were
involved in drafting the language, that my unease became greater. The staff
primarily in control of the draft language is not typically sympathetic to
the environmental lobby, but they have demonstrated a strong sympathy to
outdoor recreation interests, including hunting and fishing. There is
little evidence that bird watching and environmental interests are having
much influence on the final wording. State goverment interests may be, but
there is no evidence that they share our goals and every reason to believe
they would accept virtually any language that opened the money tap.
Confounding the reader with badly written arguments is an art form
I am regrettably adept at, so I take responsibility for the confusion over
consumptive vs nonconsumptive use. Of course we are consumptive. We drive
cars and live in houses and use energy. Every human on the planet is
consumptive in that sense. We need to seek solutions to the impact of
consumptive use by all people. BUT... bird watchers are not additionally
consumptive by the nature of their specialized activity. Hunters and
fishermen are. There are large government agencies, partly funded with tax
dollars and partly with excise taxes, that acquire and manage land for them
and which have to restock and restore the wildlife they take. There is
absolutely nothing the government has to do in response to the activities
of bird watchers. They do sometimes, such as in Texas with the Great Texas
Birding Trail, but they did not do it to mitigate the activities of bird
watchers, they did it because they expect to make money and political hay
out of it.
I chose backpacks as symbolic of the reality that much of the money
is not going to come out of the pockets of those who are theoretically
targeted. Expensive vehicles work too. But, Norm, your figures aren't quite
right. At my daughter's school the average cost is over $30.00 and many
cost over $50.00. Assume that in economically less stable areas the aver
age is lower, the toal that will be raised is still significant. It will be
closer to a dollar a backpack and there are 20,000,000 or more students in
public and private schools. That is based on over 200,000 in Maryland
alone, 33,000+ in Frederick County alone. There are at least five counties
with more students than Frederick and Maryland is one of the smaller
states. We are talking about an awful lot of money, but the principal is
more important: One one hand the proponents are arguing we should support
this because we have an obligation to "pay our fair share" and to "put
something back", and on the other they are planning to raise a big chunk of
the money from people not actively engagaed in this effort or this debate.
You cannot, or at least should not, have it both ways.
To be entirely fair, 95% of the money raised from a tax on
backpacks should go to public education, whose supporters passionately
believe they need it is badly as we do.
Norm, we do not agree on the need to get more people outdoors, at
least as far as this legislation is concerned. Preserving species, and the
environment, and diversity, means perserving habitat, and that is in
conflict with the move to get more people outdoors. Most parks, especially
heavily used ones, provide little or no habitat value. The encourage
species which are already benefitting from suburbanization, not the species
we are concerned with. Yes, there is an educational value in public access
to the outdoors, and yes, the state has a need and an obligation to provide
space for outdoor recreation. But those goals are not congruent with the
goals we are pursuing in supporting this tax. If you want to support the
tax so that we will have more picnic areas and ballfields, and parking
spaces, and fishing, that is fine, but it is not what the proponents
promise environmentalists in return for their endorsement. I encourage
everyone to look at the TWW Web page, on which each state lists its
priorities for the money. Very few will appeal to those who hope this tax
will provide protection for habitat.
Unless there is a dramatic, and completely improbable change in the
legislation, there will be no binding restriction on the states on how they
allocate this money. We MAY, for reasons of appearance, be asked for our
opinion, although our voice will be a lot smaller than that of the other
players, but in the end the state will not be enjoined from spending the
money the way it wants. If you have confidence that state governments will
spend the money to protect habitat and species, then you should be a
supporter. I do not, based on the priorities most state governments have
exhibited and their track record in the past.
It is not patently absurd to defend the historical precept that
preservation is a national, a community interest. That does not mean we
have always done it, or have won every fight, or do not need to perservere.
It means that it has been an agreed ethic. We have fought, and continue to
fight, sometimes bitterly, over the details and the methods, but those wars
do not obviate the fact that we have adopted a view that it is the interest
of the emntire society to deal with this issue. It is not, and we should be
resolute in insisting, and never should be, a special interest. If we
accept that in return for short-term gain, especially one so vague and
unfullfilling as this, we are condeming ourselves to foghting from the
sidelines.
Do I have alternatives? Not simple ones. We need for more general
tax money to be spent on environmental issues. That is a hard political
fight, but it is one we are winning. Perhaps it is our impatience, but the
record is encouraging. Many of us are old enough to remember what the
political landscape was like a mere thirty years ago, when there was no
Natural Heritage program, when there were precious few environmentalists,
and when local governments did not even know how to spell the word. Compare
that to today and it is difficult not to be optimistic. Have we done
everything we should? I would argue not. Should we keep fighting?
Absolutely. Is the world coming to an end? Not quite.We will continue to
win and lose, but we have acheived a remarkable amount in a very short
period (50 years is not even the eyeblink of a fly in the larger view).
This tax does not advance our cause. The money will not go where we
want and it designates us as a special interest. It will have to get a lot
better before I support it.
Rick
"A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for
other people."
Thomas Mann
Rick Blom
rblom@blazie.com
Bel Air, Maryland