Thursday, June 03, 2010

American Hero: Real Hook & Bullet Conservation


This isn't the NRA. This is real hook and bullet conservation.

From Oxford American, the "southern magazine of good writing":

They’re the polluters’ worst nightmare: greens with guns. They hunt, but always eat what they kill. They work within the system, and they’re not afraid to go to court. They punch above their weight in government circles, operating on a budget smaller than your average lobbyist’s bar tab. And despite Florida’s best efforts to drain, pave, and overpopulate itself to death, they are hell-bent on saving it.

The Florida Wildlife Federation is the most effective environmental outfit in the South, maybe in the country. Over the past decade, this eclectic posse of deer hunters and bunny-huggers, backyard Darwins and bird-watchers, dedicated anglers and nouveau Thoreauvians, has become a force to be reckoned with. “We’re agile and we’re lean,” says Manley Kearns Fuller III, president of FWF. “If you’re not selective with what you emphasize, you can get bogged down. You need a plan, win or lose. When you get whipped, you’ve got to have a masterful retreat, like Robert E. Lee after Gettysburg."

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2 comments:

Karen Carroll said...

I joined the FWF when they SUPPORTED the take of peregrines again for falconry. Audubon, and others protested the take. I started a blog: www.seeaperegrinethankafalconer.blogspot.com to show how sustained take use initiatives and people like hunters and FALCONERS are the ones who will save the planet.

PBurns said...

Not only was Audubon wrong on Peregrine Falcons, they were ALSO wrong on Hawk Mountain, also wrong on California Condors and are STILL wrong when they tell the story of Bald Eagle decline in the U.S. And, for the record, I used to work at Audubon as Director of their population and habitat program, so I am not an enemy.

Wrong is wrong, and lack of imagination is lack of imagination. NAS is sometimes guilt on the former, and generally guilty on the latter.

P