Is There No Sanity?

My father had an expression he used many years ago when I was a boy. It reared itself when frustration set in: “There must be two of you because one couldn’t be so stupid!”

There’s obviously more than one in charge of our national park systems and wildlife management. I have been following the story for you about the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado wanting to slaughter elk because there are too many. Nobody disputes the fact that there are too many elk. The descrepancies come from how to go about thinning the herd.

The park service is holding a series of public meetings and receiving public comment until July 4, 2006 over their proposed elk management plan. Park officials have made it known that their prefered method of herd reduction is to hire more park rangers or an outside contractor, arm them with silencers on their weapons and send them in at night to do the dastardly deed, so as not to disturb the park visitors.

Yesterday, the first of several public meetings was held in Boulder to exchange information and receive public input on the plan. Park officials revealed that their plan, a 20-year one, would cost an estimated $18 million. Get this:

The costs would come from hiring extra staff or a contractor to shoot elk, building fences to protect vegetation, transporting carcasses, testing them for disease and processing the meat.

“Doing something like this is not going to be cheap, for sure,” said park Superintendent Vaughn Baker. “But we’re talking 20 years.”

This is the part that just riles me to no end. Government officials talk in millions and billions of dollars like it grew on trees. This entire plan as a joke, a farse; no, it’s plain insanity. They could close the park for a few short days during the off season and hunters would pay the government to go get the job done. Certainly the park isn’t going to lose $18 million by closing the park for a few days.

No, I think this is a clear case of spite, ignorance and caving in to the lobby of a few insane people who think spending millions of dollars is better than getting the job done for nothing.

As the title of this blog says, IS THERE NO SANITY?

Tom Remington