THE BIGGEST OUTDOOR STORIES OF THE NEW YEAR
Wild Bill’s Predictions for 2008
By Bill Schneider, 1-03-08
It’s that time of year again, when many of my peers in the writing biz reflect on what already happened--you know, the best and biggest stories of the year. But as I asked last year, how hard is it to look into the past and be a visionary? Being a forward-looking sort of guy, I again prefer to look ahead and predict what will happen instead of looking back to predict what did happen.
So, for the New West, here are my predictions for the top outdoor stories you can expect to read in 2008.
- This is a no brainer, but the Fish and Wildlife Service will officially delist the wolf early in 2008 and the battle moves to the courthouse. I actually think wolf delisting can survive legal challenges, but it might not happen by the end of 2008.
- Another no brainer. Assuming delisting clears legal hurdles in time to send out licenses, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming will launch wolf hunting seasons, but I predict the state agencies won’t find much interest in wolf hunting. Consequently, hunting won’t prove up as a practical option for controlling the ever-growing wolf population. (Because of the likelihood of extended lawsuits, this prediction may be one year ahead of its time, but I wanted it out there just in case.)
- On the Wilderness frontline, the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act won’t pass. One reason for its demise will be lukewarm support or even behind-the-scenes opposition from major wilderness groups.
- The Montana congressional delegation will introduce a Wilderness bill based on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge compromise worked out with timber companies, and partly because of aggressive, public opposition from several wilderness and environmental groups, it won’t pass.
- Cabela’s will make enough of the right moves in its trophy property business to convince critics to stop torturing the retail giant. Among those “right moves” will be a major partnership with the State of Montana to promote hunting access programs, a putting-your-money-where-your-mouth-is play by Cabela’s.
- The Baucus-Crapo bill, the Fee Repeal and Expanded Access Act, will get a lot of co-sponsors and either pass Congress or come very close to it. If it passes and in the face of strong support for the bill from his own party, President Bush will, nonetheless, veto the bill, but his embarrassing veto will be overridden on a close vote.
- Congress will finally face the tragic reality of the Mining Law of 1872 and pass a reform bill that ends public land giveaways and requires hard rock mining companies to pay royalties like oil companies do, but President Bush will veto it, but this time, his veto won’t be overridden.
- Gas will hit $4 per gallon, but as the oil companies already know, that price will still be below our tipping point. Hence no major change in our lifestyles.
- The Yellowstone grizzly delisting proposal will still be in court at the end of 2008.
- Even more hunters (five in 2007) will be mauled by grizzly bears and more grizzly bears will die in confrontations with hunters.
- The National Rifle Association will continue supporting politicians who don’t represent the best interests of hunters and its rival, the American Hunters and Shooters Association, will continue to gain ground on the NRA.
- Repeat from last year. Wyoming will continue to ignore pressure from other states and sport groups to close elk feedgrounds or do anything to defuse the Chronic Wasting Disease Time Bomb.
- Another repeat. Market forces such as high energy and construction costs and soaring land prices will further slow urban sprawl.
- One more repeat, but up-priced. The biggest outdoor story of them all won’t even be considered an outdoor story. The Three Trillion Dollar War will continue to suck federal (directly) and state (indirectly) wildlife and natural resources agency budgets dry and starve wildlife management and outdoor recreation programs in more negative ways than we could count. Last year, I made a minor miscalculation in believing estimates that the endless war in the Middle East would only cost us a trillion dollars. That’s now been upped to $3.4 Trillion.
I’ll report back next January to see what actually happened.
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1) Despite over-capacity within the timber industry's infrastructure, over-supply of lumber and wood products on US and international markets, historically low commodity prices, high - and rising - fuel costs and a dramatic US housing slump and sub-prime mess, Montana timber industry lobbyists will continue to blame any mill slowdown, shutdown or curtailment on lawsuits from [pick one]: "radical environmentalists", "extreme environmentalists", "environmental obstructionists", "environmental extremists" or "eco-terrorists."
2) Despite wildfire seasons that are 87 days longer, on average, than fire seasons during the 1980s, and despite continuing record drought and heat (together with the predictable 10% humidity and 65 mph winds), Montana timber industry lobbyists will continue to blame any and all wildfires (even those like the Jocko Lakes fire that ripped through heavily logged and roaded landscapes owned by Plum Creek Timber Co) on lawsuits from [pick one]: "radical environmentalists", "extreme environmentalists", "environmental obstructionists", "environmental extremists" or "eco-terrorists."
Happy New Year!
I think you are right about grizzly delisting staying in court, and increased conflicts even while no one addresses the impact that a severely decreased elk population from wolf predation. Ranchers and hunters will be blamed for the conflicts.
I think most of these are right on, but I must comment on the issue of wolf delisting. Under current conditions, delisting violates both the ESA and the 1994 final rule under which wolves were reintroduced. Dual status of wolves in Wyoming--trophy game in 1/8th of the state, predatory animal status in 7/8th of the state, is illegal.
One of the supposedly ironclad requirements of delisting back when wolves were first reintroduced in 1995 was that Wyoming had to remove wolves from the predatory animal classification in the entire State; the entire State was designated part of the recovery area. This requirement was a necessary element of having an "adequate regulatory mechanism" for wolf conservation and management post-delisting. You can find this requirement in Appendix 11 of the Final Gray Wolf EIS. Trophy game status throughout the State would meet this requirement. And until Dirk Kempthorne went to Interior, the FWS pretty much held to this requirement, and refused to accept Wyoming's "plan for wolf extinction," which is exactly what it is. Then of a sudden the FWS changed its tune and accepted dual status, without a valid by your leave to either scientific or legal reasoning. The justifications offered in the draft delisting notice for this switch in policy, which was issued last spring, were ludicrous. not to mention poorly written.
The key issue in question is whether or not the ESA requires the FWS to restore a species to its historical range, which with wolves was extensive. The language of the Act specifies restoration to "significant portion of [a species'] range." The intent--which unfortunately wasn't placed into specific language, but this is a common problem is statutory language--was to include "historical" in that definition of the geographic area to which a species was to be restored, and the FWS adopted that definition in its original ESA rules; the requirement to restore a species to its historical has governed restoration efforts over the last 30 years. Surely, there is a strong precedent for using "historical" in the geographic requirement for restoration.
It surely looks arbitrary and capricious to suddenly drop "historical" from the definition; the FWS now claims the ESA only requires restoration throughout existing range, which is illogical and contradictory; in the case of the wolf, it is already restored to its current range. That makes the issue of restoration moot, doesn't it?
Might this be deliberate?
In short, the justification for changing the definition requires some pretty tortuous and sophomoric reasoning. Unless the judge in the lawsuits is the notorious Clarence Brimmer down in Cheyenne, who never saw a cow anywhere he didn't like, I don't doubt that an objective judge will agree that delisting wolves while dual status is the law in Wyoming is arbitrary and capricous, and strike it down.
The other ironclad requirement of the final rule was that state plans had not only to ensure wolf conservation and management within their own states, but that the plans and management had to insure connectivity between and among wolf sub-populations in all three states; this is the requirement for the maintenance of a meta-population.
However, neither Wyoming nor Idaho's plans do that. With their stated intent to reduce the number of wolves to the bare minimum (for which there is no biological justification either), keeping wolf populations in a high state of agitation through wolf control, as well as with the "line in the sand" restrictions on where wolves will be allowed to exist, you find a clear intent on the parts of Wyoming and Idaho to deny connectivity and to obstruct the functioning of a wolf metapopulation.
For these reasons, delisting with the Idaho and Wyoming plans in place is illegal.
Bear delisting will probably survive legal challenges, given the shrewd manipulation of scientific debate about data--particularly population data and data on threats to major bear foods--by the FWS and given the assertion of agency discretion to choose which science will come to bear on the problem. Bears will not benefit from delisting, but there it is.
Scientifically, NREPA has a lot going for it. Politically, it has nothing going for it except the cowardice and greed of the brown major environmental groups, which have all the cash to oppose NREPA in Congress; and they are in fact openly opposing it, especially the misnamed Wilderness Society. (Bob Marshall must be rolling over in his grave). They're offering instead their collaboration and consensus proposals such as the Beaverhead-Deerhead compromise to which you refer above. It truly is a compromise, one which doesn't have much scientific justification. But there it is.
And yes, chronic wasting disease is continuing its slow but steady progress toward Wyoming's elk feedgrounds, and G&F;waits for the epidemic with open arms. The disease is now on the eastern edge of the Wind River Indian Reservation.
By the way, the Wyoming 2008 hunting license application is out, and G&F;is proposing, for another year of many years, to issue late season elk cow-calf tags in the elk hunt areas in wolf territory in northwestern Wyoming. The reason for another extensive late season on elk cows and calves is a combination of landowner complaints about too many elk and the now perennial lateness of the elk migrations, due to lack of snow in the high country.
This proposal for another late elk season does not betoken a real concern among G&F;big game biologists that wolves are limiting elk populations; it betokens instead the understanding that hunters are more efficient and effective than wolves in limiting elk populations. That politically-based concern about wolves killing all the elk comes instead from the G&F;bureaucrats in Cheyenne, who live in the pockets of the Stockgroaners and the Outfitters. Nothing new.
Happy New Year to you Bill. Keep 'em coming.
RH
What is the critical level for changing driving behavior? I hit it at $2.50/gallon.
Amen to this one, Wild Bill! Brady/Anti-Brady is so passe when the real issue is hunter and sportsman rights; not survivalist, militia, and assorted kooks who hunt gophers with AR-15s. I was an NRA Life Member before Wayne La Pierre and "Moses" took over the organization and turned if from a hunter education and sportsmens' association into a schill for sick wackos. Like the current President's papa, I dumped my membership when their loony mailings started going out in the 80's. Now that I know about the alternative- I may join it.
Reid is powerful enough to have led the process by which USDI-BLM has sold tens of thousands of acres of proposed wilderness and other BLM lands adjacent to Las Vegas to municipal government and private developers. $3 BILLION dollars worth of sales. The sales to school districts make a miner blush with envy. The schools are getting a second go at public lands, but only in Nevada. And all the money stays in Nevada, in a slush fund, to be spent on Nevada projects and other land acquisitions. All you who continually blather on about your owning the public lands ought to pull your heads out of where the sun ain't shining, and observe how real Democrat politics are local. Nevada has special needs. Las Vegas was land locked by BLM. To grow, it had to be on BLM land. So, the Meyer Lansky heirs who run the casinos, the Eccles Banking groups out of Salt Lake City who financed Vegas, have a friend in their Mormon Senator and Majority Leader, and he got the job done for his constituents. The vaunted EcoAdvocates caved and mitigation was in the form of wilderness designation on empty lands in the Nevada interior, already off limits to other use, and even then Clark county now owns the unclaimed ground water under those wilderness acres. Harry wheeled and dealed, and your senators did just what he asked for.
So, if you think Nevada's world's largest gold mines, operating and proposed, are going to pony up tens of millions to make people in Illinois or Montana or Vermont feel whole, guess again. Harry might get millions. You and I will not. Senator Reid will stuff the 1872 Mining Act reform like a cheap Chinese pillow. You have to remember that he is the chooser of who is on what committee, who is chairman of the committee, and those chairmen determine which bills get a hearing. No mining reform hearings will be in the offing. And if one comes from the House, it will not find its way to a vote. The politics of Tip O'Neil will ensure that.