I understand what you are saying about becoming involved and taking part in the process. I have now appeared three times before the Oregon Wildlife
Commission with the last time this past June 9th. But what is missing is that if we had competent and honest leadership in state wildlife agencies, having to fight such ‘battles’ would not be needed.
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Over and over I had tried to understand how can such agency leadership have knowledge that game species, such as deer, are harvested by the many
thousands every year, and yet propose a ban of personal take of non-game species that by comparison, have miniscule if any demand? Where in the hell is their ability to think critically? I view the current situation, that seems to exist in all state wildlife agencies, as simply one of following the leader and as being accepted, standard operating policies and practices.
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I am at a loss to understand how, when, where, and who started this immoral process. I am also at a loss to understand why no one in a leadership position has yet to put and end to it. But I could be wrong as I have am not privy to what has taken place in all 50 state wildlife agencies.
When I say "get involved" I'm talking about a whole lot more than showing up at a Commission meeting. I don't know what you - or any potential readers - do or don't know about how these Commission meetings work, or what takes place before them. Basically, in an ideal situation, stakeholders and staff would have had or at least started a productive relationship some time before the Commission meeting, and had a number of meetings and a bit of correspondence so that what was being presented by staff to the Commission, was palatable (maybe not delicious, but at least edible...) to the stakeholders and the staff.
Agencies
vary a great deal in how - and which - staff get involved in rule-making. It's important to understand that, in agencies where the "corporate culture" is to flatten out the decision-making, where they aren't very "top-down", there's going to be less Leadership oversight of junior staff, and there's going to be less internal imposition of "proper procedure". So you can get decisions made faster, but they aren't necessarily going to be great decisions. Unfortunately,
in any organization, a superior is going to feel a lot of pressure (whether imposed by himself or others) to show he's sticking up for his people. If he's seen to be always throwing his people under the bus, how can his people ever trust him? How can he ever get their loyalty, get their best and hardest work? We've probably all had bosses we'd follow into Hell itself, and bosses we wouldn't trust for directions to the water fountain. I sure have.
"Immoral"? " (in) Competent and (dis) honest"? Hmm. When you throw the whole can of paint at all of us, you're not going to make many friends. Even those of us who have a lot of empathy for the injustices that have been inflicted by others upon you, are going to choke on that bone. Believe me, nobody working in state wildlife management does it because they don't care a whole lot for wildlife. The problem lies in not also embracing the people side of the equation.
I think what you're looking for is accountability. In your opening post in this topic you laid out some possible steps. I like to think of those as nuclear options. They are options, and - hey - sometimes you just need to nuke somebody. But I would suggest starting with well-applied conventional approaches, making proportional adjustments as circumstances dictate. Because once you go nuclear, it's hard to go back to hoping for a constructive relationship. Conventional approaches involve working your way up the chain of accountability, from staff to career leadership to appointed & elected people. If your expectations of fair play have been violated, spell that out and try to work it out with those who you think screwed up (they might not agree with you, and they might even be right - be prepared for that). If you think you're getting jacked around, take it up to the next level. I have said this before - bureaucracies HATE to get embarrassed. Which can work for and against you - in part, it depends how you play it. Give a little face-saving space
to everyone while sticking to your core points and demanding fair and consistent treatment. If you honestly get burned, go up a bomb size until - if and only if it becomes necessary - deploy your nukes.
Of interest is that you once worked for the Florida Wildlife agency. Then you likely know of Kevin Enge with whom years ago, I was in contact and acquired some reprints of his documents dealing with the commercial take of herps in Florida. It would seem that most non-game wildlife biologists have not researched the literature and thus are not aware that for many decades, both Florida and Louisiana have had extensive commercial harvest of species of herps. Perhaps they are aware but simply dismiss those realities and go about their business of proposing non-sense regulations of placing non-game species in a protected status.
Sure, I worked with Kevin and held (hold) him in the highest regard. Besides working at FWC's terrestrial research lab in Gainesville, Kevin is a pretty accomplished colubrid and rodent breeder. As for actual
published literature on commercial harvest in FL & LA, I haven't seriously looked it up myself, don't know what exists. I just know (from water-cooler conversations and some harvest & effort reports - grey lit at best) there don't seem to have been any demographic or economic impacts from that level of harvest, whether or not one thinks it has been well-managed harvest, or not. (Sometimes an agency just gets lucky, or was adequately
but not excessively precautionary - and skill has nothing to do with it.)
There's been a bit of noise here about "protecting" herps having no conservation value. It actually depends on the laws of the state - in some states such a designation would have consequences for project proposals, e.g. for stream-alteration permits, consultations by state highway depts, etc etc. In other states, not so much. I think the constructive play for herpers to work toward, is to separate a little recreational take from these habitat-destroying or -degrading activities. That is exactly what has been done for deer, sportfish etc.
I need to say something about expectations for science to drive decision-making. In the best circumstances it can play a major advisory role. But science is not going to answer questions about allocation - about who gets what, or whose ox gets gored. That's a human judgement call, made for the most part by elected or appointed people. Not researchers or managers. It's one of the most frustrating things about being an academic or a state biologist - that politics wins. Politics is not about the truth, or reality, or objectivity. Politics is about power and resources, getting them and using them. Power corrupts, so it's best distributed and not aggregated.
Letters hand written and mailed are not like petitions that are just series of signatures or emails that are ineffective.
Ernie, I can agree with that - handwritten and unique beats duplicate form letters hands-down. But I still say it's better to come in person, if the process you're taking part in allows that. At the local and state level it almost always does. At the federal level, I have no idea. I think it's best to deal with things before they get that far.
I also want to point out, what I have mainly been talking about here and what I think Richard is most concerned about, is state designation of "hands-off status" for native, wild species. That to me is a different beast entirely from management of non-native, captive animals. Sometimes I think it would be best if captive exotic animals were under the jurisdiction of state ag agencies, like other livestock. Ag agencies understand trade, health certs, etc. State wildlife agencies are better off sticking to public trust resources - their citizens' birthright. When they start messing with people's private property, they get in over their heads. In my opinion, having seen things
from both sides of the fence.
Anyway, that said, I still don't agree with you on your characterization of Rodda/Reed. I see what happened there as rule-maker (FWS) misuse of an exploratory, preliminary scientific product. Science is supposed to be self-corrective, in that erroneous or atypical results will be refuted, not corroborated. Gordon - one of the most intelligent and well-rounded human beings I have ever met - was my grad school advisor, and I just cannot accept the idea of him as corrupted or deluded. It does not conform to the 4 years we spent working together, where I feel I got to know him fairly well. I think you've got the story messed up somewhere in the sequence of steps you think happened. I'm trying to be respectful here. But your slander, I can't just take it.
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Let me take this a step deeper. Human beings for the most part do not make decisions based on data, statistics, etc.
What? Fraudulent science is foundation of horrific wildlife legislation. With every piece of proposed wildlife legislation there is the accompany "scientific evidence". The reason these laws get proposed in the first place is because special interest group's are constantly pushing wildlife agencies to act on the "scientific evidence" they present.
I'm gonna stand behind what I said. People make decisions based on emotion, intuition, etc - not data, stats, etc. That's what I understand from contemporary neuroscience anyway, and also from experimental behavioral economics. People make decisions faster than we ever used to believe, then - here's the kicker - they unconsciously construct a narrative or an argument that appears to "objectively" support the decision they already made. That's why i say it's crucial to show up and show a face worthy of empathy. Deep down, normal humans do not like to hurt other humans or even other animals. If you can show up at a live meeting and say "hey, this thing you're voting on in a minute,
there's a real chance it's gonna hurt me - so please don't!!!" - you have a better chance than if you just send something in writing (no matter its quality).
Anyway, on the heels of what happened in Dallas and the last couple of years, and just thinking about this topic and its title in general, helps me understand my heartburn with the topic title and with a lot of what's been written here: I don't like it when people are encouraged to disengage, when people are encouraged to think the institution of wildlife management as a whole is broken. It IS NOT. And if you think it is, what's your prescription? Riots? Bomb-throwing? Sniping? That is not necessary and it would not be effective. Instead, learn how to be effective within the institution. For those of you in small states, it's really not that complicated. I'm not saying it's easy, but it isn't that complicated. And sometimes - sometimes - it isn't even very hard.
This is quite a bit of silliness.
There is MASSIVE dishonesty in human behavior all over the place. ...
The fact that some people will be dishonest is part of humanity. It pisses us off more when they're in government because they're in a position of authority respective to us. But don't pretend like government employees are some different species than the rest of us.
Well enough put. Also, I'd add that one or two anecdotes don't add up to full reality.
cheers