OPINION/COMMENTARY

Friends or foes?

Imagine the United States' natural resources users as a medieval community living peacefully around a large castle. Think of the castle as the U.S. Constitution, a bulwark against those who would do away with all the members of the community. Lately, we, the natural resource users and property owners, have been seeking refuge in the castle, as the Animal Welfare Act attempts to eradicate the concept of animals as property; as the Endangered Species Act attempts to place growing amounts of unprecedented power over plants, animals, and property in the hands of federal bureaucrats; and as federal land managing agencies abjure any resource management and eliminate human uses, access roads, and rural economies, and communities. The two latest threats (as of April 2005) are federalizing authority over Invasive Species and a multi-billion dollar raid on the federal treasury, intended to give federal land managing agencies, and their state counterparts, the financial resources to undercut and phase out resource uses, from hunting and fishing, to logging and public land recreation. Each of these egregious programs has been quietly placed in seemingly harmless legislation, in the dark of night, by U.S. Senators....

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