The war on science..and the war on Resource Management Anyone who works in Natural Resources may tell you now, if they actually know anything and are actually committed to the work ( rather than just working at a job), that it is probably the area truly under attack by the right wingers. Cuts have been abundant at a time when resources are being pressured the most, and they and their supporters not only dislike the rational inquiry of science, but the application of this to resource management, or anything that questions their grabbing a dollar at the public expense. The same is true in this region, where economic hopes are placed at more and more extraction and exploitation. This has happened before, and memories are short here. They do not seem to remember the difference between 1978 and 1984, and they are falling for the same again. Relying yet again on one industry is not going to solve the communities' problems...in essence, we are going to destroy more of the place so for another 20 years someone can drive a pickup and an ATV, just as the seventies were spent on oodles of snowmobiles and muscle cars, all to be sold off at cut price in the 1980's. So where does resources fall into this? Our objective is to make sure that use is sustainable, but whole divisions and departments counter that, and actively help and subsidize the very industries that destroy the most...and mining is one primary problem. The regulations do not acknowledge the reality that every time someone destroys just a little bit, it adds up. We, hopefully and eventually, will acknowledge this, that the strip malling of America must cease, and that we must eventually say no to developers and ourselves. It is always interesting to me how some express their love for nature, then they plow it, pour concrete and asphalt, build a 3000 sq foot "cabin", replete with sat dish and air conditioning, roam around the lake on a leviathan pontoon boat, then tell me how they " love nature". Loving someone is not destroying them..it is allowing them to exist. The state of course, as a politically driven beast, cannot challenge these precepts. It can only attempt to control and modify the lunatic behavior of our society...one that experiences nature by driving, taking a picture in front of a sign, sampling the local coffee shop, purchasing a t-shirt, then dumping the garbage in the local ditch. All species go extinct, and most likely we will as all do, or we'll split off into different species...and maybe much of this will be forgotten when the stars burn out...