(A follow-up to GOVERNMENT FIRES – THE TORCHING OF RURAL AMERICA.)
by Jim Beers
In the piece I made a comparison between modern American environmentalists and bureaucrats’ overt actions of the past 40+ years creating conditions conducive to these fires and the Burning of Rome under Nero in 64 AD. Nero has long been suspected of capitalizing on, if not directly causing, the notorious Burning of Rome to do two things:
1. Blaming Roman Christians whom he hated and then executing thousands of them horribly.
2. Taking the opportunity of a destroyed Rome to rebuild it as he personally desired.
What I clearly (I hope) posited was that modern American environmentalist radicals and out-of-touch American federal (and many state) bureaucrats are similarly building enormous accumulations of fire fuel on increasingly closed “public” lands. This fire fuel from unmanaged timber, insect-killed timber, storm-killed timber, un-grazed range lands, etcetera; combined with the closure and elimination of roads and trails that historically provided both access to firefighters and openings to create fire breaks and backfires are what the excellent book, The Perfect Storm, described as the coming together of every source of deadly and destructive natural mayhem beyond the control of human society.
I described the “cause’ of this phenomenon as the intended results of:
1. Radicals gaining control of government agencies in large measure by taking advantage of sex and race preferences.
2. Passage of environmental/animal rights federal laws that (unjustly) placed “the environment” and animals in legal positions superior to humans, human society, National welfare, private property and other Constitutional and “unalienable” Rights of Man.
3. Federal funding in the Billions to Universities to create a patina of “science” to justify these anti-human agendas.
4. Federal politicians pandering to the radical organizations for money and media support enabling re-election after re-election. This is especially true of US Senators that wield so much power and who were purposely paired from each State to represent state interests. This federal power check was eliminated 100 years ago (17th Amendment) to make US Senators no longer appointees of State Legislatures subject to State power responsive to state residents. Today US Senators are “popularly elected” officials supported by a wide array of hidden clienteles and agendas that create shifting state voting blocs for the Senators as necessary. The current FIRE situation on federal lands is only one of many results of this takeover of Senate purposes from State matters to radical agendas.
In doing all this I felt I was equally nasty to past Democrats and Republicans for their “droppings”, be it Nixon’s environmental cartoon fantasies or Mondale’s sex and race preferences modeled after Zimbabwe.
Alas, someone has taken outrage and expressed their umbrage to me. A lady has accused me of simply “hating” federal employees, the environment and women.
As a husband of forty-some (how many is it again?) years and the father of two daughters and a grandfather to another, I can only sigh.
As a guy that spent 32 years working for a federal agency and one who admittedly had many friends, I can only say that she is mistaking strong disagreement with some federal employees and their actions that, to my way of thinking, will require very strong actions to countermand and change, with something that only consumes the hater.
As to the environment, I can only say that I hold humans and their needs as SUPERIOR to any and all sanctification of animals, “wilderness”, “native” this or that, or any other contrivance of recent radical thought. While this is a deeply-held moral position that I would hold no matter in what society I found myself in; the gift of living in the United States of America at this time, under this Constitution founded on the principles stated so eloquently in our Declaration of Independence leads me to a position of defender of our system of government and opponent of all those that would destroy it.
For instance, the introduction, protection, and spread of wolves (that have unquestionably killed untold numbers of children, women, and men worldwide since human time began) into settled landscapes FROM WHICH THEY WERE EXTERMINATED AND OVER THE STRONG OBJECTIONS OF THOSE FORCED TO LIVE WITH THEM – BY BUREAUCRATS USING PUBLIC FUNDS AND UNJUST LAWS – is a travesty of indescribable proportion. Ask yourself, how many children of lady joggers or strolling college students per year or per decade ARE TOLERABLE to have this animal forced into our midst? MY answer is NONE!
Likewise, as wildfires from federal fire fuel accumulations (see the former article The Torching of Rural America) cause more and ever-greater destruction more frequently, what are we to make of a federal bureaucrat telling a news reporter that private homes, nurturing families on private property “do not belong there” because it is so expensive and difficult for the federal employee to prevent (unsuccessfully I might add) a fire (“wild” is a misnomer since it was set as surely as the Burning of Rome) BEGUN on federal property with fuel laid down by purposeful federal non-management and then ALLOWED (by virtue of unmanaged fuel everywhere else on “the federal property” and by virtue of purposeful road destruction on “the federal property”) to destroy homes, families, communities, and the very fiber of rural America for nefarious purposes? I make of it, like wolves, a deadly abuse of governmental power that must be rectified before it and its legal precedence’s grow and consume the entire Nation.
But I digress. The thing that stopped my critic was when I mentioned how state government agencies and politicians (for this purpose I described them as “LITTLE BROTHERS) are complicit in another use of FIRE reportedly begun by Nero 2 Millennia ago.
Pheasants and Hungarian Partridge are introduced and highly desirable game birds (God bless ‘em) that were found by the millions in every nook and cranny of the Upper Midwest for decades. As farming became more intense, farms and fields became bigger, weed control became more effective, and plowing everything but farmyards into black dirt for 4-5 months annually became the norm; pheasants and “Huns” declined, to say the least.
Pheasants and Huns desperately need 2 things HERE IN THE Upper Midwest to survive at all. First, they need winter cover to find shelter in storms, escape from predators, and make food available as snow deepens or ice is prevalent. Second, they need nesting cover in the spring to incubate and raise their young in safety from predators and where insects provide protein to the young and various small seeds, worms, and other food necessary for rapid growth are available.
In the intensely-farmed Counties of Northern Iowa, nearly all of such winter and nesting cover is found on State-owned Wildlife Management Areas (WMA’s), Federal Wildlife Refuges (USFWS), Pheasants Forever (PF) landholdings, and Ducks Unlimited (DU)Wetlands. The Iowa fish and wildlife agency (DNR) has “partnered” with USFWS, PF and DU to BURN the State-owned WMA’s every spring. So every April, May, and June Iowa WMA’s (bought for hunting purposes with federal excise taxes on arms and ammunition and state hunting license revenue) are BURNED TO THE GROUND by DNR, USFWS, DU and PF Personnel. State fire starters need no permits and use all manner of igniters like kerosene drippers and diesel, all of which if you or I used on our own property would get us fined and probably jailed. These four wildlife management (???) organizations share employees, equipment, and funding to assure that NO pheasants or Huns (to say nothing of reptiles, amphibians, foxes, rabbits, et al) survive to reproduce. Heck, they have become so complacent about their growing anti-hunting activities that Waterfowl PRODUCTION Areas open to hunting have been renamed Waterfowl PROTECTION Areas.
All four of these charlatan outfits – Iowa DNR, USFWS, PF, and DU – are composed of employees from top to bottom that are convinced that hunting is on its way out and when that happens they hope to seamlessly morph into “Nature Areas”, Study Areas”, “Native Species Centers”, etc. receiving federal funds just like Eddie Bauer transformed overnight from outdoor equipage supplier to snazzy clothing supplier for women and kids.
When asked why they burn every spring, over and over, they mumble about “Native Prairie”. While the areas they burn were just as often wooded by prairie trees like burr oaks as by the grass and prairie flowers in “Native Times” that they wax so poetic about, pheasants and Huns to hunt - for which the areas were purchased and are ostensibly using hunting revenue to “manage” - thrive not on prairie flowers and grass like Sharptails and Prairie Chickens. Pheasants and Huns live on non-native weeds and grasses that do not resist fires. So pheasants and Huns disappear and Sharptails and Prairies Chickens are absent because they need VAST extents of prairie that are no longer available in Northern Iowa. This happens as Iowa WMA’S BURN (LIKE Rome??) while American and Iowa bird hunters watch football (like Nero fiddled??). All so that these 4 Bums can use FIRE to remake Iowa in THEIR Image; just as federal bureaucrats use FIRE to remake rural America in THEIR image; just like Nero used FIRE to (unsuccessfully) remake Rome in HIS image.
While the scapegoats change (Iowa hunters, Rural Americans living near federal ownerships, and Christians in Rome under Nero) they have one thing in common: each paid money to and respected leaders they thought had their best interest at heart but in reality simple held them in contempt and threw them under the bus when it proved to be to their advantage. In all cases the common weapon of destruction was and is FIRE.
Like Little Brothers that look up to Big Brothers and want to be like them when they grow up; responsible adults must intervene when the Big Brother is a thug and criminal. State agencies and their bureaucrats have become like Little Brothers to their federal counterparts. As we grasp the enormity of the federal FIRE issue, do not forget the state activities and these clandestine “partners” likewise going on under the radar. State fire reforms are almost as badly needed once the veil of secrecy and unchallengeable power is pulled back and what becomes apparent is that they all come from the same nest.
Jim Beers
15 July 2012
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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. You can receive future articles by sending a request with your e-mail address to: jimbeers7@comcast.net