outdoors

Just like freedom isn't free, neither is recognizing some our wayward ways and taking bold steps to right them. We've done a lot of great things as Americans, but if we continue to sweep the offal under the rug, it will spell big trouble for future generations. I take a little issue with how you seem to condemn our industrial accomplishments, but I believe there is a way to remain a world leader in the industrial world while applying responsible conservationism.

The plan is exactly what it was intened to be by it's creators. Another envorinmentalist attack on the ability of everyday people to make a living. Typical environmental topics: roads are bad, people need to drive less, and use of energy is bad unless it comes from the wind. This is just another report to scare people into believing fossil fuels are killing the planet and we are all going to die if we don't change.

Everything has a cost. We cannot continue to live unsustainably because it just pushes the cost onto the backs of future generations. That's just plain selfish. Roads aren't bad but they have a cost and it's time we start taking that into consideration. People do need to drive less. Driving isn't bad but it has costs. It costs us air quality. It costs all of us at the pump when gas is not used efficiently. It costs us the lives of our troops.

As someone who works in the field, the most difficult and needed elements are 1) To limit what people can do. Behavior needs to be limited. 5000 people each with a cabin, a truck and a boat are far different than 50 or 500 2) Protect what we have strictly, and then start expanding and rehabbing. If the only solutions for an area are things like peat mining or expanding lakefront homes, then we need to realize something: it is an outpost. This is for both public and private. The best and worst example at the same time is Giants Ridge. A ski hill, two golf courses and the selling of public land, all at taxpayer expense, in order ( the justification) to maintain the economy of a former mining district. It once and for all needs to be seen that extraction industries always do this, and relying on them is pointless. The other part is to accept that places like this need to be rehabbed and the populations reduced...accept the idea you will need to move and or find another vocation...or accept poverty. We cannot sustain outposts, we cannot sustain every lake with pontoons and speedboats, we cannot sustain rampant logging, and we cannot sustain the suburbs. Ultimately, limits need to be set, or they will be set by nature..

There is an elephant in the room that few people will recognize or acknowledge and that's our failure to stabilize our population. If we continue to fail at that most important task we will continue to watch everything we value be degraded and rationed. Taking just Minnesota into account we have long ago passed the ability of coldwater fish to keep up with harvest pressure. Now our cool/warm water fish species are becoming overwhelmed by the increased pressure. If we fail to stabilize our population it's only a matter of time before all fishing in MN will be catch and release or put and take. I'm old enough to remember hunting when I could hunt all day every day and not see another person. Then it got so that I would skip weekends because every woods road had a vehicle parked at the entrance. The week days were still fairly open and you might have to pass up 1 road out of 4. Now it's 7 days a week where you pass up road after road after road. The best you can hope for is to hunt a road that has only been hunted once or twice that day. I know 100-200 miles of trails so it isn't like I don't know the woods around here.

Well Dennis, at least you called it a spade, finally. Now the legislators need that same reality check or kick in the pants, and if that doesn't work they need to be kicked OUT. We need to stop catering to industry at the expense of common sense and our environment. Once our leaders stop being corporate stooges, something might actually change. It's a shame that our supposed brightest intellectuals from the U writing that report, are afraid to speak the truth. That is the extent of corporate influence at every level of our state and nation. The "economic" argument is constantly used as a fear tactic, and it's still a lie.