Wisconsin Natural Resources Board Approves 2020 Migratory Bird Hunting Season Framework And Regulations

Dave Zweiffel over at the Capital Times has an online commentary on the latest bright idea from the Republican side of the Wisconsin political aisle: Allow Wisconsin hunters to shoot sandhill cranes.

This brilliant suggeston comes from Rep. Joel Kleefisch (R-Oconomowoc), husband of the lieutenant governor and a rocked-rib-meat conservative.

Zweiffel noted that the state has already opened new hunting on mourning doves. It is also about to let hunters go after wolves. Zweiffel continued (emphasis mine):

"Leave these legislators in town much longer and they'll start proposing open season on bald eagles. There's an awful lot of eagles flying around the La Crosse area, probably depleting the fish population in the Mississippi River.

"Kleefisch told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune last week that he's heard the cranes are really tasty."

So, apparently, is elephant meat, which is why similar wingnuts in Thailand would like to start shooting endangered elephants in that country. It's what's for dinner. But Kleefisch gives another reason: The cranes, he says, are a threat to farmfield corn and cribs. So, hey, let's start over wiping the critters out and have a feast while we're at it.

Of course, Kleefisch might just argue that he's merely ahead of the curve. Sandhill cranes were nearly hunted into extinction early in the 20th Century. The cranes have legally been hunted for some years west of the Mississippi River, but nowhere east of it, [img_assist|nid=131272|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=167|height=125]where the birds remained nearly extinct for decades until protections went into effect. Indeed, Wisconsin is home to the International Crane Foundation, dedicated to saving cranes and their habitat, even going so far as to laboriously lead cranes to their southern wintering grounds via ultralight aircraft. But never mind all that effort. The critters, say yahoos like Kleefisch, are just too doggone tasty not to kill.And they clutter up our skies and fields with their beautiful plummage, too.

Kentucky recently became the first eastern state to gain federal permission to allow huntting of the graceful, migratory bird. The move went ahead despite vigorous opposition from numerous environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, the Audubon Society, the Kentucky Resources Council and the Kentucky Coalition for Sandhill Cranes. Hunters shot 50 of the cranes in the first annual hunt. Watch that number go up, until the cranes are endangered again, of course. Meanwhile, the people with the guns win again, as usual.

Read more of Dave Zweiffel's commentary at:

http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/column/dave_zweifel/plain-talk-open-season-on-sandhills-send-our-crazy-legislators/article_4dfbc77e-4de0-11e1-a353-0019bb2963f4.html#ixzz1lLA8wgdr

 

[img_assist|nid=44213|title=WCC|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=276|height=205]Last night I drove all the way across Milwaukee County from my home to Nathan Hale High School in West Allis to attend our local meeting of the Wisconsin Conservation Congress, one of the most underappreciated yet democratic public institutions in this state or any other.

One day annually in each of Wisconsin's 72 counties, the congress convenes a set of combined issue votes and elections. This year, 85 natural resource issues were posed to attendees by the Department of Natural Resources, the Natural Resources Board, and the delegates of the congress, who are elected by those who attend the meetings. In order to vote, you have to attend one of the meetings and show proof of state residency. [The Congress is considering whether to allow broader input through Internet-based voting, but no decision on that, yet.]

Once signed up, you're given a thick booklet describing each issue and an optical-scan ballot. Most of the issues involve wildlife management, a DNR duty that includes hunting, fishing and protection of species. The votes are not binding, but are taken into consideration by the Natural Resources Board, the DNR itself and the congress as they  develop new and revised resource rules.

If you're new to the process, or even if you're not, many of the issues may seem arcane or inconsequential, especially if you are not an outdoorsperson. Many of the questions involved fisheries management issues on a few individual lakes among the 15,000 lakes dotting Wisconsin. You might be asked to vote, for example, on whether fishermen should be able to catch and keep muskies smaller than 16 inches on Lower Borborgymous Lake (that's not a real lake, by the way; I just like the word "borborgymous").

Why would you care, unless you're a resident of that area? Well, you might not, but while managing fish populations is a science, the public obviously has a political stake in what specific management decisions are made. Fishing, like most human activity, causes impacts on bodies of water, on shorelines, and any number of other factors. Asking citizens to judge whether natural resource policies should be tweaked every year as the environment changes is utterly laudable. The world of nations should be half as dedicated to considering similar policies involving oceans, rain forests and other precious earthscape.

Last night, among other, less hot-button, issues, Wisconsin residents had a chance to decide whether hunters should be able to employ dog packs to kill bears, whether the elk hunting season is long enough, whether the state's relatively small and legally protected wolf population is now too big and should be thinned, whether land owners have a right to shoot cougars attacking animals on their properties, whether rifle hunting should be allowed within sight of busy Highway 29, and whether rifle hunting should be allowed in state parks. None of those issues are trivial matters.

More sweeping poltiical questions came up, too. One advisory question asked residents how much political interference should be allowed in conservation matters. The question specifically referenced "special interest legislation that circumvents or bypasses the grass roots ideals" embodied in the congress. "Would you support legislation requiring the procedure of allowing the Conservation Congress process of public input on all matters concerning conservation, hunting, fishing, trapping, habitat, wildlife, land and water issues to take place before a law on these matters can be acted on by the Legislature?" I voted yes. Mind you, we just had an example of how politicians thwart sound natural resources policy, when Gov. Walker and the Legislature passed a measure allowing a specific developer in Green Bay to dismantle a wetlands for a strip mall.

So the congress isn't a perfect system with total power, but if you weren't there, you won't have a formal chance to influence natural-resources decisions again until next year's Congress, because beyond the vote itself, the deciding powers advise residents that they do not factor in written comments. They get too many of them, apparently. Then there's that pesky problem of our boy-wonder governor and his business-friendly, anti-environment legislature.

Political influence and inteference is a recurring theme in Wisconsin conservation issues, and it is not a trivial matter at all. You may recall that the Wisconsin secretary of natural resources, the person who runs the DNR, used to be appointed by the Natural Resources Board, insulating the post from short-term political inteference. But Gov. Tommy Thompson changed that in 1995, turning the job into a poltiical appointment and a member of the governor's cabinet. It remains that way, today. Gov. Scott Walker recently appointed Cathy Stepp, a former GOP state senator whose background is in the home-building industry, to run the DNR, and who is on record as saying the DNR staff is inexperienced and incompetent -- part of the Republican meme in recent decades that DNR is some kind of vast police state that bullies people around.

Traditionally, the Conservation Congress annual meetings are well attended by individual and organized sports groups representing hunters, trappers and fishing enthusiasts. The great majority of the people at the West Allis meeting were friendly and polite, and my sense is that many of them are serous and caring individuals who are very conservation-minded. But there were also some small minds, which vocally taunted environmentalists who dared attend and raise questions about policies and environmental impacts.

It was good to see that in the elections, a University of Wisconsin academic staffer who nominated herself as a county delegate garnered a healthy number of votes. She lost to a sportsman, but she was there, and more of you reading this should be there next year. Democracy is hard work, and it requires that you show up from time to time -- to vote, and to be heard. The Conservation Congress meetings are like a super-PTA for the environment. Not a panacea, but a necessity, and one we could lose if public interest withers or narrows.

The Wisconsin Conservation Congress web site is here:

http://dnr.wi.gov/org/nrboard/congress/

Paul Smith, outdoors editor for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, has done a good job illuminating the value of the Conservation Congress and you can read his best summary of its functioning here:

http://www.jsonline.com/sports/outdoors/118716194.html

“What happens if I have a public permit because I’m not rich enough to afford a private one?” the deer hunter asked me. “I shoot a deer and it runs across the road. There’s my deer. It’s not dead. But I don’t have a private permit to go get it.”   “It just seems to me that the new rules are set up to force people to lease hunting land because there are more permits on private land than public land.”   Deer hunters taking to the woods in Wisconsin are facing a slew of new hunting rules. Hunters will experience the long-talked-about rules of the Texan ‘Deer Czar’ James Kroll.   In the DNR’s words, the new rules change the “season framework, management units and antlerless deer hunting permits”. DNR press releases tout their “robust public outreach” and the “Deer Trustee Report” guiding this year’s changes.   Gone are “management zones” setting deer overwinter population goals. Gone are free tags & $2 tags in highly populated or CWD areas; gone are landowner deer tags. Soon-to-be gone is registering your deer at the local bar or convenience store.   Deer management units – usually set by natural boundaries and major highways – are replaced by county borders and four major ‘management zones”. Urban areas have their own “metro units”. DNR is pilot testing deer registration on-line. Next year all registration will be on-line.   Rules about antlerless tags are the biggest rule changes affecting hunters. Everyone who purchases a license will receive one buck and one doe or youngster (antlerless) tag. Many hunters, including our family, hunt for food. Filling the freezer with many critters, especially with hamburger prices rising, can make a real difference in the food budget. Buying tags was easy, cheap and –when deer were plentiful – families could easily fill up freezers for the year.   Now those ‘extra tags’ are limited. First, you do not get an extra tag when you buy archery and then a gun license. The new deer-hunting license is not weapon specific – meaning you can shoot an antlerless deer in archery season - that’s it for the year.   Second, tags are more expensive (6 times more expensive), limited, and depend on whether you hunt a private or public area.   Many times Secretary Cathy Stepp repeated, “The rules have changed, but the tradition remains.” Hunters whom I’ve spoken with wonder if all we’ll have years from now is the fond memory of what used to be Wisconsin’s very equal deer hunting tradition. Many things are changing. New rules could hasten the loss of our populist deer hunt.   For years those who live in the Northwoods have hunted paper mill land.  Now the companies don’t need the pulp and they are selling off the land. Hunters concerned about the deer rule changes reminded me, “open for public hunting” is different than “public land”. Mostly land up north is corporate owned but “open to the public”.   What happens when the land is sold?   Cash strapped counties up north are contributing to the problem. As one Eau Claire hunter whose family hunts up north told me, “Starve local government and things suffer. Local government looks for cash. The state isn’t giving them enough to keep up with the demand for services. So they clear-cut the county forest. The deer are driven out of the forest because the forest isn’t there anymore.”   Convenience store owners and hunters are also concerned about on-line registration. Storeowners are worried folks won’t stop for coffee and a doughnut if they register deer on-line. Hunters tell me: change the rules, make it hard to get public tags, expensive to hunt in private land and leave folks on their own to register a deer? Isn’t this asking for trouble?   Murmuring among hunters I’ve heard deals with the ‘artificial’ boundary between public and private. Deer don’t know who owns what. “If I shoot a deer on public land and he wanders across to private land, do I go get him and break the law, or let him suffer?” The general consensus was…. You can imagine.