Do As I Say, Not As I Do! Jim Beers commentary on Utah goat controversy

by Jim Beers 

Utah to proceed with mountain goat plan despite USFS's objections.

There have never been mountain goats in Utah's La Sal Mountains, and for that reason the U.S. Forest Service is objecting to Utah's decision to put the animals in the small island range near Moab to eventually allow trophy hunting of the goats.

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So let me get this straight.  The federal government can dump and protect wolves and grizzly bears wherever and whenever they want: and State governments, Local governments, ranchers, hunters and recreationists have no say in the matter.  But, if State governments and the hunters and allied businesses within a State decide to introduce and protect mountain goats on private and federal property that is under state authority and jurisdiction every bit as much as the private property within that state, the federal bureaucracy “objects”.  Poor babies.

Just because the federal government, bought, withheld and condemned private property nationwide under the guise of “Managing the forests”, “Restoring the wildlife” and “Sustainably managing the grazing lands”, “Minimizing fire threat” (none of which they any longer do) and because federal landowners do not pay taxes to State and Local governments; they have come to see themselves as above and beyond State and Local governments and the people they represent (i.e. all Americans). 

That “We the People” and our elected State and Local Officials let this disgraceful situation take hold like an Echinococcus tapeworm in the gut of our body politic to feed off the body politic and spread poisonous eggs to be deposited about like infected wolf scat while the tapeworm steadily deposits its' deadly cysts in vital organs of the body politic that silently but surely kill it - is our fault!  That we let this arrogance and hubris continue, is unforgivable.

Consider:

-       They won’t let me say there will be no wolves or grizzly bears on my land.

-       They scoff at Local elected Officials saying there will be local control of the presence and/or control of wolves and grizzlies within their local jurisdictions.

-       They have seduced and blackmailed State governments and their bureaucracies into believing that they are automotons enforcing programs and regulations written for and by faceless and self-serving federal bureaucracies out of some fiction like George Orwell’s 1984 or Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.Yet they will tell the State government what will and won’t be tolerated on federal 45 +/-% of the Nation) property.

If State Governments, Local governments and rural Americans don’t begin doing as Utah is proceeding to do; and stop doing as they have been doing for too long (i.e. acting like serfs under tyrants) things will continue to get worse until something snaps.  Like the news item reports, those are “Utah’s La Sal Mountains”.

Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow and is available to speak or for consulting jimbeers7@comcast.net