ALL SPORTSMEN AND WOMEN READ!!!

[JohnWester]

NOTE TO MODS!!! DO NOT MOVE THIS!
Okay, this just makes me want to vomit.  If you voted for or against the outdoors/arts amendment, it really doesn't matter... it's there, we deal with it and move on.  But this just really ticks me off, and if it gets you mad too, then I urge you to do something about it. Contact your State House rep now!!!

I don't want this to turn into a bashing/debate topic, so I am locking it and putting a copy into the outdoors political forum for all you who enjoy that can do it there.

I just feel that this is too important to not have here in the general forum for all to see.

Chris Niskanen: A veto would be better than House's outdoors funding bill
By Chris Niskanen
Updated: 05/13/2009 12:47:21 AM CDT

Remember that new tax money you approved for natural resources last November?

It is on the verge of being shoved down a bureaucratic black hole called "native biological diversity," and you should be really, really mad about that.

Within days, a joint Senate-House conference committee will begin negotiating the final package of $300 million in recommendations for natural resources, parks and trails, water quality and the arts. About $70 million is dedicated to 19 well-researched fish, game and habitat projects selected by the Lessard Outdoor Heritage Council.

In a few months of intense consideration, the council did what no Legislature has done before it: prioritize our most critical needs for natural resources.

The Senate has since passed a bill following the council's recommendations and supporting its 19 projects. But the House of Representatives' version is so fraught with gobbledygook about "native" plants and "ecological complexes" that the Department of Natural Resources and many of the state's mainstream conservation groups oppose it.

The conference committee gets to sort out this mess, which means compromise. If much of the House version is adopted, Gov. Tim Pawlenty has my blessing to veto the entire package.

Here are some of the problems with the House version, which was approved Friday:

Devised by Rep. Jean Wagenius, DFL-Minneapolis, the House language redirects the use of the $70 million of the Outdoor Heritage Fund from projects that
restore, protect and enhance fish, game and wildlife to projects for "native plants, fish and wildlife" and restricting those projects to benefit only "native biological diversity."

The bill subverts management of some popular species. Ring-necked pheasants are not native to Minnesota. Neither are brown trout nor the rainbow trout in Lake Superior. Wild turkeys were not native, either, in much of central and northern Minnesota.

This is a major problem. By narrowly defining how the money is spent, House members are alienating a large block of Minnesotans who hunt pheasants and fish for brown and rainbow trout.

An agenda promoting native plants and biological diversity is OK if you're managing your flower garden, but it doesn't make sense to the 70,000 Minnesotans who buy pheasant stamps or the tens of thousands who fish for brown and rainbow trout.

DNR Commissioner Mark Holsten sent a letter May 5 to Wagenius and Rep. Mary Murphy, DFL-Hermantown, both chairs of natural resources committees, explaining that the phrases "native biological diversity" and "ecological restoration" — both mandates of the House bill — are problematic.

Holsten's four-page letter, composed by his wildlife and ecology staff, was supported with footnotes and references to recently published scientific papers.

Wagenius responded Thursday. She told Holsten to go fly a kite.

"Your concerns are misplaced," she wrote, "and based on an erroneous reading of the constitution and the proposed legislation that supports it."

Wagenius' letter had no footnotes, but I assume she had a staff of professional ecologists and wildlife managers help her write the letter and the legislation. Who are they? I wonder. An attorney by training, Wagenius has de facto nominated herself the new DNR commissioner by advancing an ecological agenda that will set the future course of Minnesota's natural resources management.

"The House bill's intent is to sabotage the projects that hunters and anglers care about,'' said Garry Leaf, of the group Sportsmen for Change.

Other organizations, with professional biologists on their staffs, aren't happy either.

The Natural Conservancy, Pheasants Forever, the Minnesota Land Trust, the Trust for Public Land, the Conservation Fund and the Minnesota Deer Hunters Association have sent a letter to House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher, DFL-Minneapolis, explaining 16 problems with the House version, arguing the "native" species requirement "will preclude projects that hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans favor."

As of Tuesday, Trout Unlimited, the Minnesota Conservation Federation, the Minnesota Waterfowl Association and the Minnesota Division of the Izaak Walton League of America also had signed onto the letter, which states "our concerns are far-reaching, including high-level oversight issues, constitutionality and various technical inaccuracies."

The House bill also includes funding to protect the state from an invasive insect, the emerald ash borer, which wasn't part of the Lessard council's recommendations and has little to do with promoting fish and wildlife habitat.

Given its vagueness and departure from the constitutional mandate approved by voters last fall, the House bill seems to be an invitation for a lawsuit.

Let's hope the conference committee and Pawlenty have the wisdom to keep the House's nonsensical proposals off the books and the state out of court.

[JohnWester]

bump...