[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