A Burning Paradox

by JIM BEERS

A pall of sooty air and the stench of burning fuel oil hangs over scattered locations in Iowa as I write this. The foul perpetrators of this travesty of hidden agendas and destruction are the knaves and charlatans of our state and federal “conservation agencies” working as the enablers of the environmental extremist and animal rights’ organizations that are weakening this great nation.

Federal “fire experts” and their state helpers are engaged in spring burning of federal waterfowl “Refuges” and state Wildlife “Management” Areas, each of with were purchased with Duck Stamp dollars or in the case of state areas exclusively with hunting license revenue and the federal excise taxes on arms and ammunition generated in large part by hunters and hunting.

In other words the federal refuges were purchased per Congressional Authorizing Legislation to “preserve habitat” for waterfowl; songbirds; resident game (i.e. hunted) animals like pheasants, Hungarian partridge, turkeys, and rabbits; and furbearers (i.e. trapped) like red fox, gray fox, muskrat, beaver, mink, coyotes, etc.

State Wildlife Areas were and are being purchased with mostly federal excise taxes known as Pittman Robertson funds paid by hunters when purchasing guns and ammunition. While these funds and these areas have long been used to support and manage every sort of game and non-game (including endangered) wildlife species, each state’s priorities have long been that the overwhelming majority of such available federal acquisition money is used to preserve, manage, and enhance wildlife species of interest to hunters and trappers and to make hunting opportunities as widely available as possible to state and out-of-state hunters.

Iowa is simply one state out of 49 (if Alaskans found out that what is happening in nearly every other state was going on in Alaska; well, I wouldn’t want to be the Game & Fish Director when the “general public” woke up) serving this federal/radical agenda I am about to describe. I could write Chapters about similar destructive fire hocus-pocus on National Forests, BLM lands, TNC lands and on other states’ lands but Iowa will do for now.

Iowa is an intensively farmed state with rich soil. Eighty years ago, President Roosevelt named an Iowan, “Ding” Darling Director of the US Fish & Wildlife Service. Ding often used Iowa as an example of how ducks and pheasants (among other game species) were disappearing due to “loss of habitat” like wetland drainage, fencerow clearing, and widespread burning of dwindling nesting cover for ducks and pheasants and winter cover for pheasants and other non-migratory game species. Ding was an early supporter of requiring federal Duck Stamps for waterfowl hunters and earmarking the funds for wetland acquisition to provide nesting habitat and public hunting. As a consequence, Iowa received several federal Refuges and a share of prairie pothole federal wetland easements over the years.

Ding also had a big hand in drafting and supporting the Pittman Robertson excise taxes on arms and ammunition. Iowa, especially used this money for years to buy “habitat” for nesting cover for waterfowl and upland game birds; winter (brush, willows, cattails, etc.) for vital winter cover for the non-migratory game species; and much-needed public hunting areas in that largely privately-owned state.

Over the past decade as radicals and extremists have taken control of state and federal “conservation” (the wrong term anymore) agencies; insidious and contradictory policies and practices have taken root silently to achieve a hidden agenda absolutely opposed to the reasons those agencies were formed and those tax dollars appropriated for the past 80 years.

Iowa waterfowl and upland game nesting habitat is being burned before and during nesting seasons. It is being made of no use to wintering non-resident game species. It is filling the air with soot; (where are all those “global warming” and “climate change” fanatics)? It is burning habitat with tons of fuel oil (it takes lots to burn wet vegetation and trees) with fuel oil; (is it “imported” and why is government using fossil fuels instead of “green” fuels to burn green resources”?

An Iowa friend with asthma asked federal and state “burners” recently to honor the agreed-to “no-burn zone around his residence. They yelled at him and the fed even shook his fist in my friends face before driving off when my friend called the Sheriffs’ Office in his cell phone.

Why, you ask, is this going on? Why are federal and state conservation agencies destroying this precious and virtually non-existent prairie nesting and wintering habitat? Why this thuggery? Why doesn’t someone stop “them”?

First, the current age class of extremist and radical bureaucrats tells the “public” that they are “restoring the native ecosystem”. Their imaginings purposely mislead the public into believing that coneflowers and certain grasses are the real purpose for which these lands are being burned. The truth is that any such program in contained areas would cost ten times all the money these agencies get total each year. The bigger truth however, is that they are simply eradicating any remaining pheasants, Hungarian partridge, turkey, rabbits and any stray furbearers left in Iowa. They are covertly reshaping all those state and federal hunting and game production area into unused “parks”. Simultaneously they are reducing the number of hunters, and therefore 2nd Amendment supporters.

Using today’s standards, all of them should get bonuses, promotions, and their union dues paid for a year. Think of it, a program that simultaneously:

Destroys public hunting areas statewide.

Destroys any remaining game animals statewide.

Destroys “Invasive Species” like pheasants, and Hungarian partridge statewide.

Allows bureaucrat thugs to intimidate rural bumpkins that think they have “rights”.

Turns over hundreds of thousands of acres of “public” lands to radical control.

Reduces the number of guns and hunters statewide.

Makes a state “conservation” agency even more dependent (losing hunting license revenue) on federal largesse and direction.

Creates islands of opportunity for extremist groups to introduce wolves or cougars and then protect them from hunting, shooting, or trapping as they ravage the countryside and destroy land values and rural economies.

Al Gore, Bill Clinton, and their appointees that diverted millions of dollars from the Pittman Robertson funds to introduce wolves couldn’t have come up with a more devastating program to destroy wildlife, hunting, gun ownership, and rural America!

By the way, can you hear Ducks Unlimited, Pheasants Forever, NRA, and all the outdoor writers and sporting stores and newspapers out there? No? Well neither can I.

Oh, and before I forget to mention it, about the “paradox” of all this government burning.

Back in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s and to a lesser extent since then, the federal government has bought millions of acres of “prairie potholes” from Montana to Michigan and as far south as Nebraska to “Save” wetlands. Simultaneously the federal government has purchased wetland easements with a one-time payment per acre on many more millions of acres throughout the remaining prairie pothole private property. All of this was to “save” wildlife habitat.

When I came to work in the 1960’s the USFWS had lots of brochures, movies, and news releases touting the federal wetland purchase and easement program. Each of them always prominently featured some heavy, middle-aged, cotton-shirted, baseball-capped farmer with a fuel oil burner dripping flames on cattails or willows or brown grass. OOOHHH, the implication was that these evil, ignorant bumpkins were too dumb to be trusted with “our” habitat. None of that however even touched the heartstrings that were tweaked everywhere by a duckling stumbling through recently burned and blackened nesting habitat (obviously burned by that same farmer). The public outrage generated was reminiscent of German movie theatres in 1939 when Nazi propaganda movies showed Polish invaders on German soil killing, plundering, and having “their way” with Teutonic maidens.

So states and landowners surrendered their land to federal realtors and as for EASEMENTS, the key phrase in this perpetual document was the landowner would forever agree “ NOT TO BURN, DRAIN, OR FILL” any wetland on the property covered by the easement.

You have to respect such audacity. To capitalize on stopping burning to save wildlife so that you can burn habitat to destroy wildlife is stunning. Not since Hitler and Stalin signed their secret Pact to divide Poland because Poland “would” invade Germany has anyone been so brazen. And all of us; hunters, gun owners, rural residents, and all of our “Forevers” and “Unlimiteds”; simply hope (like 1939 Englishmen) that if we just go along, certainly they won’t do anymore or come after “me”. Ding Darling must be spinning in his grave.

God help us because we certainly seem incapable of helping ourselves.

Jim Beers

8 May (Mother’s Day) 2011

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This article and other articles written by Jim Beers since January 2009 can
be found at http://jimbeers7.blogster.com (Jim Beers Uncommon Sense)

Articles by Jim Beers written from March 2006 to January 2009 can be found
at http://jimbeers.blogster.com (Jim Beers Common Sense)

Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC. He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC. He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority. He resides in Eagan, Minnesota with his wife of many decades.

Jim Beers is available to speak or for consulting at jimbeers7@comcast.net