The biggest revelation to me in the past three or four years is that as a
birder, I am very much a minority user of wildlife refuges. I've visited
several from Ridgefield to Royal in that time frame, and many of those such as
Finley very often. There are a lot of visitors, and it's obvious they're
enjoying the wildlife as part of the landscape, not identifying species with
crippling zeal. Tualatin has spacious facilities, and it's an urban refuge . It
can really draw a crowd no matter how passive the effort. The truth is that far
greater portions of refuges are off limits today than when I was a kid. Like
90% probably. Ever hear of the Cole Island Dike? Or Baca Lake, or Double O?
These were all standard stations on the Malheur pilgrimage when I was in junior
high in the Nixon years. If you could get a vehicle there, you could pretty
much go . No need to get permission.
Then "the myth of the non-user" gained traction among management at USFWS.
Frankly the number of "non-users" which is to say non-"CONUMPTIVE"-users , was
skyrocketing relative to the previous half century. Wildlife is certainly
better off now than then in the USFWS system. If refuges got a stronger
constituency they might get more of the money that's already allotted them.
There's that program involving offshore drilling for instance. We're a far
richer country than almost any politician will admit, but less of the wealth
is going to us than used to.
Ultimately the best index of a country's wealth is probably the amount of
landscape it can afford to set aside for the non-human consumptive users.
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