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Re: NFC: Re: Fw: blue pike and native michigan saugers



> LCDR David Meyers wrote:
> 
> Interesting dialogue.

I think I've heard parts of it before. :-)

> I think the comments from the DNR folks tell the real tale!  If they can't
> be "bothered," with this issue, then it really does come down to the
> grassroots level.

It has been my (limited) experience that the grass-roots level is stymied if
the "appropriate" agencies have a conflicting agenda. Listen very carefully
when talking to them. While polite and civil, usually, they are still saying
that "everything that is not required is forbidden." [Wonder where that
concept came from. ;-)]

For more than 15 years, our efforts to help California native fishes have
been sharply blocked in Sacramento, and California law has real teeth if you
don't do exactly what they want you to do. That's why I drive up to 1700
miles each trip, about 4X a year, to go work with the more-cooperative
Nevada Wildlife Department via the Desert Springs Action Committee.

In California, entire careers have been spent, among seven squabbling
government agencies, delaying final acceptance of a recovery plan promised
over 20 years ago! Meanwhile, the *Cyprinodon radiosus* (Owens Valley
Pupfish) has, again, gone extinct in its native habitat (where BLM rents
grazing rights and unconditionally refuses to let folks remove the bass and
carp) as they quibble (and draw comfortable paychecks and retirement
benefits). [A few pupfish are still living in -- more correctly, near -- a
couple of refuges. Total remaining population is unknown, but surely far too
small.]

Meanwhile, requests to bring in volunteer help for habitat restoration, fish
census, exotic removal, etc. are being shunted aside as potentially damaging
to the well established gravy train that is still on its tracks. The
generally good-hearted people, working for those 7 govt. units, would deeply
resent me saying so, but it appears to an outsider that the welfare of the
species is way, way down the list, on their current agenda.

Wright

-- 
Wright Huntley, Fremont CA, USA, 510 494-8679  huntleyone at home dot com

         [Applies equally to Republocrats and Demopublicans]

              Way easier to whine about darkness than
                pull your head out of... well, that
                  place where the sun don't shine
                             (^_^)                   
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