I was caught by a headline today that read, “Big changes coming for Maine’s big game plans.” If that is true then logically one must ask why is there a need for changes at all saying nothing about those changes being big?
The article states that deer, bear, moose and turkey will fall under management of a “single plan”, whatever that means, and the new “plan” will be “major” because the public is going to be sought after in “a new aggressive effort.” What possibly could go wrong?
If you must know, once again the Maine Government is attempting to “fix” something by creating, yet another, “steering committee” made up of “stake holders.” Stake holders generally means those connected insiders, many of whom have sat on previous committees to “fix” things, instrumental in creating new knowledge, shifting paradigms, ie. change agents who are brainwashed into believing that if real issues are disregarded, mostly because they are not liked for various reasons, and that if discussions become something different, whether relevant or not and always loaded down with political agendas, somehow those perceived “problems”, mostly political and financial, will go away.
What we are seeing here is the planned result of efforts to remove actual science from the wildlife management process that began many years ago and replacing it with political and social efforts of those trained, directly or indirectly, in the application of the Delphi Technique, in which the public is brought into discussions thinking they have an actual say in the process while the change-agent, Delphi technicians, manipulate and control the outcome. Those unfamiliar with the process are none the wiser.
The author writes, whether his own words or those of the steering committee, that there were “Lessons Learned.” I don’t think so. Perhaps what someone is observing is their perspective on what the present wildlife management plans have accomplished or not accomplished, stating that you can’t manage moose in high numbers to appease the moose watching public and businesses, while at the same time expecting to have a healthy moose herd. How many times have I written about this?
In addition, the same list of “Lessons Learned” shows that someone thinks you can’t manage for maximum moose numbers in the same location you are trying to manage deer at maximum numbers. Again, I have written about this problem in the past more than once.
Maine’s “Wildlife Planner” said that the Department knows what it would take to “do their job”(my words not his) but they don’t have the tools, claiming one of those tools to be, “We don’t own the land.” Does this indication the Department bemoans it is not a tyrant dictator or that they are failing to protect the king’s resources? Is Maine the only state that don’t have the tools nor own the land?
To lament that the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife can’t do their jobs because of social issues, like being scared to harvest more bears, as well as habitat, climate change, education, disease, it makes no sense at all to bring in those who have been most instrumental in creating a social vs. scientific dilemma to solve their own problem. It would seem logical that as wildlife management has shifted from scientific to social, along with exploding social “problems” in dealing with wildlife issues, resulting in poor herd management, the trend should be returning to science and away from social. This is not difficult to grasp.
Insanity is often defined as doing the same thing repeatedly, making no changes, and hoping for a different outcome. Forming another committee is insane. It’s also a cop out for the wildlife department to draw focus away from their own failures, while saying they will seek the public’s input on wildlife management desires.
Big changes will never happen. If big changes are needed, it is only because it has taken years to move wildlife management away from a scientific North American Wildlife Management Model, to meet the non scientific demands of a misled and agenda-driven population. This is the real change that is needed, however, this will not happened when the same agents of change who caused it in the first place, are called upon to “fix” the problem.
There are none so blind as he who will not see.
