Link below. Obviously written to support a pre-established agenda. So much context and critical information that was conveniently left out of the piece.
Saw a group of birds(three hens, 2 roosters) by my place yesterday before the storm. Poor things were looking desperate and in tough shape. Can't even get to my feeders any more due to snow depth and drifting. Very frustrating to work hard to help out the wildlife and be active in P.F and then have people write uneducated articles such as the recent publication about the Legacy funds!!!
#1, I am not that big a PF fan, but seems to me the $ is fairly well split up and PF is giving tte land to DNR and F&W. This obviously helps re the clean water issues too. I am not really sure what this guy's agenda is unless he dislikes pheasant hunting, Anderson or all hunting.
The local tax issues always comes up in SD too re no net gain. Tough issue, but we have to save what's left. (And restore a little more.) Perhaps fish and hunt (tourism) income could contribute to the property tax shortages locally.
It isn't considered much in SD until we get the dire predictions we did last year in SD.
I have half written an email to the editor but have not had time to finish.
Some of the things I see that the writer(s) conveniently left out include:
First off was the failure to mention that the most environmentally at risk areas of the state are those with heavy ag production and that because of this urgency they will rightly get a higher % of dollars. Also failed to make the connection that organizations like PF, DU & The Nature Conservancy are heavily focused on conservation efforts in farm country which gives them an obvious advantage in carrying out the needed programs.
Another point that was conveniently left out was the fact that PF, DU & The Nature Conservancy do a great job in MN of leveraging additional $$ from federal programs and also adding in $$ from their own contributions which allows them to stretch the base funds for these improvements from the state a long way.
The comment on having spent a lot of dollars on water quality improvements for the Minnesota River with no appreciable gains in water quality fails to acknowledge the hundreds of thousands of grassland acres lost in CRP over the last decade, the hundreds of thousands of grassland acres not in CRP that have also gone into production during that time and the thousands of miles of tile that has been installed as well. They have totally ignored the reality that had this money not been spent the water quality situation on the MN River would be considerably worse. "Treading water" given the land use changes in the MN River valley over the last decade is an absolute victory for conservation.
The position on tax revenue losses is more of the same flawed arguments. It completely ignores the possibility that this issue could be more of a symptom of flawed tax policy and not really a logical or sensible condemnation of the public acquisition of sensitive habitat in environmentally compromised areas. Buck's idea about license fees providing tax $$ relief for the local governments is a good one and probably a worthwhile compramise since meaningful tax reform is unlikely.
If you guys see some other issues to address let me know and I will get it in the response.
