US Forest Service? Fish and Wildlife Depts?

P

Pointer

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A great topic to bring to the forum...

Around UTAH, at least, the State and Federal Employees who work for these "bureaus", are usually cocky, self-important, Enviro-nazis...

They are also bleeding hearts who hate blood thirsty hunters...

Not far form Park City, Utah some farmers and ranchers wanted some depredation hunts to get rid of deer and elk which were overunning their lands and destroying crops and generally making a nuisance of themselves...

The "bureaus" involved essentially said "too bad"... the animals must be left to their natural conditions... :rolleyes:

Not too long ago it came to their attention that a couple of very large Bull Elk had become locked together in a fight... and they asked permission of the land owner to enter his land and "tranq" the bulls and unlock them...

The landowner created quite a stir when he said "No, the animals must be left to their natural conditions... " :D :D

Around this state all public lands have been essentially confiscated by the US Forest service and the BLM... They have made access to these public lands all but impossible.

They've gated public roads and trails allowing only foot or horse traffic to pass... hence making the public land on the other side, into Wilderness Land which is supoosedly only to be decided by act of Congress...

If a man on foot goes in and shoots game he cannot get it out of the steep terrain without paying someone with a horse to bring it out for him...:mad:

Note: More than 50% of the State of Utah is OWNED and CONTROLLED by the US Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. And neither one is in the service of the people... :mad:

There are many such stories, especially in the Western States, and I would like to read some of yours...
 
Well, I can't speak for BLM or the Forest Service, but I once worked a couple years for the US Fish and WIldlife Service.

One of the things that made policy in that agency interesting was the essentially dual nature of the agency. USFWS was responsible for a wide variety of things, including (but not limited to) National Wildlife Refuges, Waterfowl Production Areas, the National Fish Hatchery programs, and the Endangered Species Act. Oh yeah, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Federal Duck Stamp, etc etc.

Let me say up front I thought it was a GREAT group of people. Lots and lots of very smart, very dedicated people. One of the things that caused headaches was the essentially political nature of the agency. With the current Administration, obviously more "love" (that is, money) was going to some of the more "hook and bullet" programs than, say, to the ESA. Under the previous Administration, it had been the other way around.

And the people in the agency often looked at things very differently. People who worked in Endangered Species tended to be a little more "fuzzy," than the folks who worked in Refuges and Fisheries.

I got to watch as we worked through downgrading the gray wolf from "endangered" to "threatened" in the upper midwest, and it was a learning experience. There are a lot of people with really well-thought out, totally opposing stances on these hot button issues. And the thing I learned there is, SCIENCE IS NON-POLITICAL. Unfortunately, that means that just "applying the science" doesn't always make the best solutions clear. That isn't to say politics doesn't apply a lot of pressure to science...

As for land access, well, I know it was a priority for FWS where and when I was a part of that. Several of our landowner grant programs (we give you money to turn your old, nonproductive farmland into a wetland) came with the requirement that land be made available for public hunting. And we were, as an agency, supportive of and involved with the...oh...what's the acronym...International Hunter Safety Association/Foundation/You Know Which One I mean.

Different agencies have different mindsets, I'm sure, but they ARE only as good as the public helps them to be, on a local level.
 
I hunt and shoot on some public land here in CA. I've never had any problems with the Forest Service. In fact most of the rangers Ive dealt with were avid hunters/shooters themselves, as well as being helpful and courteous.
 
Apart from wishing they'd loosen up a wee bit on the regulations in the Sam Houston National Forest, I have no complaints at all about Texas Parks and Wildlife. They run a great program, and I certainly have never run into any "Nazi" types. I haven't even run into anybody rude or unhelpful. Sorry to hear your experience is so bad.

Springmom
 
Out of many encounters with Wisconsin DNR officers, I've only had one particular officer who would be considered rude and slightly harassing. Run-ins with this same officer on multiple occasions proved it wasn't a fluke encounter - he always acted as such, and it was always the same lake. I just chalk it up to he's just one more meany I deal with in life, and I don't fish the lake anymore because of it him.

But I followed regs to a "T" as best as I can. I get DNR news letters by email to stay current on regs and rules. I donate to help for conservation purposes. I think they have a cool job.

Mostly, the DNR have been helpful, seem to run well thought-out programs, and are definitely not anti bloodthirsty hunter (whatever that is).

Many I encounter are hunters/shooters themselves. They hunt/shoot with in the same regulations that I do. I frequent only one shooting range, and it's run by the DNR. $30 per year membership and it's kept clean, tidy, with nice restrooms and benches and pavillions (sp).

Just this week (Monday/Tuesday) had an email exchange with one of the DNR guys regarding some deer regulations I wanted to better understand. He assisted me very timely, and courteously. He also admitted some of the regs are a pain to understand and appreciated that I made an attempt to clarify.

Now, I could paint the whole darn lot of 'em as jerks based on my encounters with that one officer I mentioned earlier. But that'd be stupid wouldn't it.
 
Here in the dakotas they're more worried about hunter safety and well being than harrasing us. We had several hunters die of heart attacks during season in the last few years and a couple of accidental shootings. (including demo dick cheney) the only person ive had trouble with was a game warden back in the 90s that refused to do anyhting about deer depradation on livestock feed.

SW
 
As a Utah resident who does a lot of wandering around and shooting on public lands, I have to say that I haven't seen widespread closures nor have I had any problems with Forest Service, BLM or any other public employees. :confused:
 
I have hunted in the Bob Marshall wilderness in Montana about fifteen times.Ranger comes through almost every year.I always enjoyed talking to them.Once ,I know we had too many CutThroats cooking and were afraid of being written up.Hell,the ranger sat down and ate one.
 
Utah
Try driving any motorized vehicle... ATV, Jeep or truck to within a couple of miles of the Grandaddy Lakes Wilderness area...

The US Forest Service has closed and gated all roads that used to drive up to the border of that Willderness... ONLY Congress has the right to create wilderness areas and the USFS has usurped that authority by saying they are reclaiming 20% of the old "Unmaintained" roads and trails...

Because of this underhanded wormtongue method, a large number of Nevada state residents went out to the Pilot Mountain Range and began "maintaining" the old Jeep/ATV trails and opening the roads back up...

Here in Utah... Conversely, the USFS opened several areas which had been pristine, but NOT wilderness reserved, by grading and widening access roads, (ocassionally paving them) building campsites and outhouses and CLOSING THE JEEP AND ATV TRAILS that spurred from them...

Namely, Whitney Lake, Christmas Meadows, Hell hole, Fish Lake, Granddaddy Lakes Accesses, Smith Moorhouse and many more...

The BLM has done similarly at Onion Creek and other Moab sites...
At Onion Creek they built a two lane graded road with outhouses mentioned above and then outlawed the of the bottom of the wash for use by Jeeps and ATV's because this would somehow polute the trickle of alkaline water which dries up long before it gets to the Colorado river or anything that might be construed as a watershed.

Note... The new graded road FORDS the wash 16 times on the way through the canyon... But if the motorized vehicles even touch the wash outside of the fords... a $165 fine is issued! :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :p

Also note... the Onion Creek wash has been used by ranchers to drive herds and Jeepers and ATV's and horsemen and by horse drawn wagons for more than 100 years and there has NEVER been any sign of damage or polution of the alkali solutions that NEVER run deeper than 3" and NEVER run wider than a foot or two with the EXCEPTION of flash-floods and spring thaw...

Much of these two States are desert lands... and they have even closed off much of that...

Even horsemen cannot get into the better areas around Delta because they cannot carry enough water and feed for the animals... and trailering the horses is not allowed on the best accesses... perhaps the "Bureaus" will build some outhouses... and open the roads back up for the family car... :barf:

All such "decisions" are made, ARBITRARILY, by the very small local bureau employees without any appreciable public input.

Now, that's just a very little drop in the bucket from Nevada, and a little bigger drop from Utah...

The local "guvmint" folks are relatives and neighbors of the local citizenry...
The ranchers and farmers make very big bucks selling trespass fees and guide services to hunters...
($8-10,000 each) and the accesses that are closed off often seem to be a benefit to their business...

In several cases the really big ranches, greater than 30,000 acres, have given up cattle ranching altogether and are exclusively maintinaing and "selling" the State's wildlife and making considerably more money in the process...

I wonder why there are so very few huntable animals on the public accesses... DUH!
I have glassed from high ground and watch large groups of both elk and deer while they grazed on the private ranches... In the peak of hunting season... and I couldn't help but think of all the money the private hunters are paying for a VERY SLIM chance of getting a shot at a very low grade bull or cow elk.

SURELY... you have heard something more than you are sharing here in this thread...
 
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