Hi Tweets,

Martin Muller writes:

>The real issue at hand is not the proposal to destroy native birds of prey
>(which of course is absurd) but the release of more than a thousand
>non-native birds (Ring-necked Pheasants are Asian birds).

and Eugene Jridler writes:

>Sounds like the president of Pennsylvania Game Commission is snapping his
>suspenders, by cracky, by gum! Has he the benefit of any research that shows
>that feral cats may be the cause of predation on his pheasants?

If it were only that simple, Martin. And, Eugene, if the Commission
President knew, he likely wouldn't care.

There's three deeper issues underlying the ostensible one here: one, that
whatever his mandate, the Commission President is clearly acting in a way as
to promote the interests of a specific-use hunting lobby, regardless of the
wildlife costs or how bad is the science; secondly, he's a politician and
knows where power is: that he declares it publicly indicates that lobby's
power over government policy; thirdly, that birders do not have a lobby of
equivalent political or economic clout or effectiveness, and are thus in
their impotence reduced to satiric letters to the editor, futile
fingerpointing and ineffective moralising in situations like this.

Can't say it often enough: until birders get off their keisters and organise
to declare, protect and advance their own practical political and economic
interests with equal assertiveness when they conflict with the other main
users of wild habitat, hunters will continue to buy far more
hunting-designated land, produce more television shows, make more videos,
set up more corporate tie-ins, and expand and entrench their political
connections and use their economic power in ways that birders--the
numerically superior and theoretically far wealthier (equally theoretically,
this should give them that much more influence in North American society)
group--haven't even yet begun, in their naivete and passivity, to dream
exist. I can't be the only person to observe how skilfully the hunting
community aggressively markets its activity and works politically to protect
and promote its interests, then compares to the efforts of the birding
community.

Until then, birders will pretty much watch such shenanigans as the current
pheasant caper in Pennsy from the sidelines and hope with fingers crossed
that a letter-writing campaign will work to stop this foolishness. This
time. But if a self-assertive birding lobby existed equivalent to actual
purchasing power and numbers, no President of a Game Commission in his--few
if any women run these outfits--right mind anywhere would dare to float such
a regressive idea for fear of the immediate political and economic fallout.

Imagine that.

Michael Price
Vancouver BC Canada
mprice at mindlink.net