Field and Stream

I've never even read the magazine Field and Stream, the world's leading outdoor magazine, but because of recent events I have come to respect them. Why might you ask would I even bring up Field and Stream, a noted hunting and fishing magazine, not that I have any ill-will towards hunters or fishers? Well for two reasons, both dealing with the utter ridiculous and almost unbelievably anti-environment Bush administration.

The first reason revolves around the Bush administration's voracious energy policy and how it adversely effects our public lands. While first published in late 2003, Field and Stream released a editorial about how the President has failed to protect outdoor sports on the nation's public lands.

"With deep ties to the oil and gas industry, Bush and Cheney have unleashed a national energy plan that has begun to destroy hunting and fishing on millions of federal acres throughout the West, setting back effective wildlife management for decades to come....Our energy security can never result from more drilling in our public wildernesses. Of course, the worldwide quest for fuel damages the environment wherever it is unleashed. As Doug Grann, the president and CEO of Wildlife Forever, the conservation arm of the North American Hunting and Fishing
Club, points out, we cannot sacrifice the wildlife and wild country of this planet while doing nothing to develop alternative fuels and improving the fuel efficiency of our cars, factories, and homes."

Try explaining any of that to the Bushies, and you are likely to get the door slammed in your face. I mean, come on, energy companies are making record profits in this country(as well as having an inordinate amount of say so in the nation's energy policy, anyone remember Cheney's National Energy Policy Development Group), and they still can't come up with alternative fuel sources? Bullshit. If only our energy policy focused on the research needed to make alternative fuels possible.

Stream and Field most recently took a swing at the Bush admin after Secretary of the Interior, the infamous Gale Norton declared that "the nightmare of wetlands loss had finally come to an end due to unprecedented gains since 1997." How exactly is this possible considering that in the very same press conference, the Fish and Wildlife Service reported a continued loss of 523,500 acres of natural wetlands during the same time period? Well that would be because Gale Norton seems to think that golf course water hazards are considered wetlands!!!! Seriously. They are apparently including artificially created ponds including golf course water hazards and farm impoundments. Field and Stream reports that:

The boldness of Norton's claim was particularly galling given the Bush Administration's record on wetlans. President Bush, like other presidents before him, promised a policy of "no net loss" of wetlands, but his administration has consistently supported rollbacks of the Clean Water Act to satisfy industry and development. While saying the nation's wetlands picture remains "precarious," Norton added that "even ponds that are not a high quality of wetlands are better than not having wetlands." Now there's a ringing endorsement of the president's program. Norton's announcement was likely an act of setting the table for more administration assaults on wetlands protections. It was probably no coincidence that three days earlier, the Army Corps of Engineers and Environmental Protection Agency proposed new regulations that encourage development of companies that build artificial wetlands used by industries that destroy the vital natural habitats. It's part of the wetlands mitigation banking concept, which gives companies permits to drain wetlands, as long as they produce "new" wetlands somewhere else. Norton may thinnk a water hazard is better than no wetlands but for fish, wildlife, and sportsmen it may be worse. That type of pulic policy provides an excuse for more permits to drain more natural and productive wetlands to be replaced by non-productive water hazards. Those might be good for real estate values along the 18th fairway, but for fish and wildlife that rely on wetlands ecosystems to survive, it's terrible."

Kudos to Field and Stream for standing up to the Bush White House's horrible record on the environment. And a big Fuck You to George W. Bush and Dick (in his mouth) Cheney.