On Thu, 27 Nov 2003 09:15:56 -0600, "Wolfgang" wrote:


"Outdoors Magazine" wrote in message
. net...
Mr. Wolfgang,
And your remarks are constructive on what level other than in revealing
your
prejudice and classist attitude?

Well, Mr. James, that's a real interesting question, that is. In the first
place, I'm curious about what prejudice it is you think I've revealed and
which classes you believe I've set against one another, but I guess I won't
hold my breath waiting for revelation. As to the meat of the question, I
think the answer depends to a large extent on what is implicit in it which,
in turn, hinges on context. If I understand your position, you maintain
that hunting and fishing are worthwhile activities with their own intrinsic
merits. Is that about right? Assuming that it is, it might interest you to
know that I am a lifelong avid hunter and fisher. Naturally, it follows
that unless I am a complete sociopath, I believe those activities to be
justifiable on some level beyond merely satisfying my own urges. In other
words, we agree on the basic premise underlying your argument....however
vapid and counterproductive it's exposition. Now, the question you SHOULD
be asking becomes obvious, doesn't it? If you can't convince someone who
agrees with your position that your arguments have so much as a shred of
merit, then how well do you think you are going to fare in dealing with all
those folks who don't?

You should be so grateful that your place
in the world today has not been overly constrained by socio-economic
conditions of generations preceding you.

As you should be grateful for the existence of anyone willing to expend the
time and energy required to sift through that jumbled mass of randomly
selected words in a search for meaning, and especially so when, as was
predictable, the search proved fruitless.

Moreover, this gratitude could and
should translate into a willingness to assist those you mock.

Oh, you haven't seen much in the way of mockery yet, and the assistance that
has been rendered was surely as wasted as it was opaque to you. In the end,
the issue of whether or not hunting and fishing will continue to be
practiced in this country will not be decided by anyone willing to look the
matter rationally, but rather by people like yourself.

Wolfgang



Mr. Ehler's name rang a bell. I did a little search and here is what I
found in a Ted William's piece in Fly Rod and Reel magazine entitled
"Sportsmen vs. the Northern Forest".

"Whipping the sporting masses to a froth of hysteria and paranoia is
Outdoors Magazine editor James Ehlers, a Music Man figure who stomps and
shouts and carries on about secret, government-financed, anti-sportsman
conspiracies right here in River City. He preaches to his flock that the
core area is a preemptive strike on the working class by "egocentric
Chittenden County elitists," "narrow-minded misanthropic state officials"
and the unholy Pooh-Bahs of the "shape shifter" Fish and Wildlife
Department. "No cutting of trees means no habitat for [game] animals, which
means no hunting." The Nature Conservancy is a "Goliath" but sportsmen
(under his leadership, of course) have brought it "to its knees after being
ignored, excluded, patronized and prejudged." TNC is "saving the last great
places on Earth for themselves." The Vermont Department of Fish and
Wildlife is staffed by "disgruntled, coerced scientists." The
Montpelier-based environmental group Forest Watch is a bunch of "emotional
Bobos." Governor Howard Dean keeps "an ever thoughtful eye towards a
wealthy America and discriminating microbrew drinkers." In the core area
sportsmen can: "Come and watch healthy trees grow old, fall over and die.
Come and watch the deer look for browse that is too high for them to reach.
Watch them leave and die. . . . Come and observe the underbrush wither and
die because the large 'old growth' trees are blocking out the sunlight."
"Biodiversity," warns Ehlers, "is the rallying cry of hell-bent
preservationists everywhere. It is to the environmental community what
rear-end revealing pants are to high-school kids today. . . . The tweed
academia even have a name for it--sacred ecology--and the Vermont
Biodiversity Project zealots are on a crusade to control the social agenda,
equating the constitutional rights of humans with the supposed rights of
bugs." And so on and so on and so on.

"Why are you upset?" I asked Ehlers. "You can do anything you want in the
core area."

"There won't be any management for game species," he responded.

"But doesn't game--brook trout, bobcats, deer and such--need old growth?
Isn't restoring old growth management too?"

"It is if all the cards are on the table."

Well, no. It's management with or without cards, with or without tables.
When I asked Ehlers to explain how ecological reserves conflict with the
interests of sportsmen he e-mailed me a list of "Open Land Species
Threatened by Uniform Climax Forest Management" that included superabundant
organisms proliferating in suburbia and industrial forests. Among them: Joe
Pye weed, blackberry, black-eyed Susan, chokecherry, mourning dove and
robin. He is serious, and so are the Vermont sportsmen who follow him in
lock-step. Prevent ecological reserves! Save the Joe Pye weed!

After reading Ehlers copious screeds and interviewing him for the better
part of an hour, it became clear to me that of all the things for which he
can be justly chided, failure to think is not among them. For example, he
has figured out how to sell magazines, and he does it extremely well.
Outdoors Magazine is now the most influential sportsmen's publication in
Vermont, and it has just gone regional, seeking circulation in Maine, New
York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut. Tom Butler makes this
observation: "There are state legislators who honestly believe that if you
don't log every acre all the time, all the animals will die, that the only
way to healthy wildlife populations is to have intensive forest management
everywhere, that nature can't do anything right. There's an element in
Vermont that is grossly ecologically ill-informed, and I think James Ehlers
is savvy enough to goose it along." "

Here is a link to the whole article.

http://www.flyrodreel.com/conservation0103.html

g.c.