Right-Wingers Appear Bent On Denuding Nature

Let’s just suppose you’re one of those selfish, elitist environmentalists who:

Likes to hear birds sings.

Appreciates county parks and open spaces.

Recognizes that wetlands are critical not only to ducks, but also to the future of pure drinking water.

If these longings strike you as important, why are you being so darned secretive about it?

The right-wing Contract Against Washington is trying to scrap these basic blueprints for quality of life.

Under the guise of scaling down government, they are trying to take the nature out of your future.

The Legislature is swamped with 300 bills that affect natural resources this year. The assault is overwhelming, and nobody can track them all.

But anyone who made a home here because the Inland Northwest hasn’t been trashed had better pay attention - or check out real estate in Wyoming.

State regulatory reform and “takings” bills have the potential to paralyze government agencies charged with protecting the environment from the slobbering mob waiting for an opening to uproot wildlife habitat, muck up streams and drain more wetlands.

In Olympia Monday, the House capital budget committee approved House Bill 1617, which calls for a moratorium on land acquisition by state and local agencies.

This would scuttle dozens of forward-thinking proposals, such as Spokane County’s plans to buy the Rocks of Sharon area on Tower Mountain.

Virtually every Republican legislator in northeastern Washington has signed onto this bill. Meanwhile, development gobbles up natural areas local residents never dreamed of violating 10 years ago.

The scoundrels in Olympia have signed a contract to trade paradise for pavement.

But if you haven’t written a letter or made a call to tell your legislator you appreciate a little green in the landscape, you deserve no better.

On the bright side: Even the nature-bashing Washington House of Representatives apparently isn’t going to hear Rep. Steve Fuhrman’s bill to neuter the state’s role in identifying endangered species.

Defaming sportsmen: Hunters may have trouble saving face after a few statelegislators finish bludgeoning the sport with blunt foresight.

Right-wingers have kept alive a measure to repeal a rule established last year requiring sportsmen born after 1972 to pass a hunter education course.

Hunters already have an image problem. The Legislature isn’t bolstering it.

The fanatic right fringe of the Republican Party wants to dump educational public television. The same fanatics also want to assure that some sportsmen can thumb their nose at their responsibility to be educated in the skill and ethics of the sport.

Have you noticed the pattern?

Knee-jerk in Idaho: Even the National Rifle Association is wincing at some of these reactionary tactics.

When a California transplant who lives in Moscow vowed to lead an initiative campaign to curtail bear and cougar hunting in Idaho, some Republican legislators countered with proposals to prohibit initiatives involving hunting.

NRA officials astutely denounced these proposals on the basis that hunters shouldn’t be associated with taking away citizen rights.

Reason prevails: Citing constitutional flaws, Wyoming Gov. Jim Geringer has vetoed legislation that would have placed a $1,000 bounty on the lawful taking of a wolf outside Yellowstone National Park.

“I align myself with the underlying sentiment of this bill, which is that the federal government has grossly overstepped its authority in total disregard of state’s rights,” he said in a statement. “However, the bill does not adequately define ‘lawful taking.’

“The bill is so vague and undefined … that I fear for the citizen who in good faith would comply with the new law by killing a wolf only to be dealt a heavy blow through federal prosecution under the Endangered Species Act.”

In other words, the good governor was able to head off one of the dumbest of the right-wing’s red-neck legislative vendettas.

But he still managed to fulfill his Republican contract by blaming Endangered Species Act for inciting such stupidity.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review