Sarah And The Wolves-- From One Fellow Fisherperson To Another...
By Gerald A. Honigman (10/03/08)
Governor Palin, there’s much about you that I find refreshing.
No, I don’t agree with you on every issue (so, you’re no different than any other candidate), but my heart tells me that your heart is basically in the right place--and I’m often accused of being too often cranially guided.
Having said this, please permit me to offer some advice to you in what will probably be a close election this November…and, right now, you guys are behind.
I am a former Democrat, now Independent, swaying heavily towards Senator McCain. There are many others out there like me--and we may very well determine the outcome of this election.
Let me begin by telling you a little story that you, as a fellow fisherperson, should be able to appreciate.
About ten years ago, my son Jonathan and myself were coming back from a fishing trip here in Florida.
As we were unloading our small boat, along came a commercial crabber with his crates loaded to their tops, crab legs hanging out of the slots. He then struck up a conversation with me.
A number of years earlier, I was part of a movement here to have red drum (“redfish”) declared a sports rather than a commercial species. Ever since New Orleans’ blackened redfish phenomenon, reds had been drastically plummeting in numbers--breeders disappearing before new generations could be produced.
The new law that was passed permitted the rebound of the redfish population, ensuring stocks into the future.
Now back to the crabber…
He proceeded to complain to me about how difficult it was to catch all the crabs he wanted to now--he with his many crates filled to the top and so forth.
The problem: Those damned environmentalists! Those reds were now eating too many of “his” crabs!!!!
I was proud of myself that day…I kept my cool.
I explained to him that long before man lived in Florida, reds and blue claw crabs lived in happy abundance…G_d working through nature creating predator-prey relationships to strike just the right balance.
I asked Mr. Crabber if he thought that maybe thousands of folks filling crates just like him might have something to do with the crab shortage.
Daggers came out of his eyes…
So Madam Governor, what does this have to do with you?
Many folks--Independents like myself certainly included--are sickened by the wholesale slaughter of wolves going on right now in your state--being shot from helicopters, etc. and so forth. Your opponents are making plenty of capital on this--sending out your record here in letters and postcards to millions of voters.
Yours is the one state in America where this noble predator--in balance with various prey populations far longer than man’s presence--is not endangered.
Like the crabber blaming redfish, Alaskan hunters blame everything but man’s own various adverse activities for their own declining prey populations. I remember a similar picture in National Geographic showing Japanese fishermen herding dolphins into the shallows so that they could beat them to death for allegedly eating too much fish…while Japan has huge nets killing anything and everything in their paths.
As a person who prides herself in bucking special interests and such, please understand that millions of Americans have become more ecologically tuned in--and not just from your opponents’ camp. Republican President Theodore Roosevelt, in many ways, can be seen as one of the fathers of the modern conservation movement. As many other hunters and fishermen have done, he too became tuned in to nature’s essential balance.
Governor, from one religious person to another, please rethink your support of such things as the wolf slaughter in your state. It goes against what I believe is the good heart and sensible mind that you indeed possess.
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