---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 16 Dec 94 09:22:35 cst
From: wellsc@osprey.nwrc.gov
To: forest-owner@nic.funet.fi
Subject: Re[2]: Mexico Spotted Owl--Open Questions (fwd)
Shane said:
>It is my experience and thus my reality, that the Forest Service,
>politicians, BLM, and the Fish and Wildlife Service have catered to
>industry with regard for little else. In many parts of the West the
>governmental agencies that are incharge of "management" of OUR public
>lands are equal to industry.
I hope you don't mind a bit of a narrative....
In the seventies, I worked as a surveyor for oil exploration
companies. It was great work and paid well. Our biggest problem out
west was not "wacko environmentalists", it was the "damn BLM." They
would shut us down for ANY infraction of our permit (costing us
thousands of dollars per day). On the landscape, it was very easy to
see where previous exploration had taken place--long scrapings of
desert vegetation were cast aside by bulldozers and abandoned. We were
required to subcontract for natural vegetation and topography
restoration. (I heard later that these efforts were usually a waste of
time and money. Is that true?)
Later, I was sent to Argentina to work in a beautiful high altitude
desert south of Malargue. I never heard of any restrictions from the
government (other than security measures for over a ton of explosives
that we kept). Previous surveys had left deep gashes straight up and
down the mountainsides, there was no attempt to restore topography nor
vegetation. I suspect that our exploration resulted in much the same
"habitat modification".
Later in life I became (perhaps more accurately "got religion" ;} )
more environmentally concerned. I can trace a lot of my conversion to
the twin experiences of North American regulation and Argentinian
unconcern.
I suppose that the lesson I learned is compassion for the regulators.
They seem to get pelted from both sides and credit from neither. I
believe that most of society gets a "warm fuzzy" when they see some
endangered charismatic megafauna being protected by federal law. The
same folks think the fed intereferes too much in business and private
affairs. This environmental confusion in the voters results in the
environmental confusion that has gripped Washington for the past
twenty years or so.
The really neat thing about this list is that one gets to communicate
with so many people who share interests and who think so much alike.
The danger of that is that one may fallaciously substitute a small
group's commonality of purpose with the larger societies consensual
reality.
Chris Wells
wellsc@nwrc.gov
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My opinions are my own--what a relief!
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