Emperor Walker Wearing No Clothes When It Comes to Wisconsin’s Natural Resources
Actually, this emperor has no clothes.
Wisconsin citizens have got to realize that Wisconsin’s governor has not had the best interests of the state at heart when it comes to natural resources issues, including the effects of rising greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere’s significance to Wisconsin’s natural, economic and human resources in the absence of timely action by their governmental officials.
This politician looks only ahead to the next election. Our part-time governor has his attention turned to Iowa, New Hampshire and any road leading to Washington, D.C.
His tracks are the proposed budget that will leave scars on the state.
For a state with the legacy of people like Aldo Leopold, John Muir, Gaylord Nelson, and Warren Knowles, it is an embarrassment that Gov. Walker would submit a budget that:
• Strips the Natural Resources board of its authority, making it advisory only to the DNR – leaving all decisions up to the DNR secretary;
• Eliminates 18 research scientists from the DNR Sciences Services Bureau;
• Eliminates environmental education programs;
• Places a moratorium on land buying through the Stewardship Fund.
The problem is that politicians care about money brought into their campaigns, and getting re-elected.
That is why the Natural Resources Board was established originally: to keep natural resources governance at arm’s length from politicians. The NRB (citizens who in the past came together to put natural interests foremost), can make decisions taking into account biological and sociological information.
The NRB was also charged with hiring a DNR secretary, but Tommy Thompson and Jim Doyle looked to their self-interest and changed a system that worked well since 1927.
Now Scott Walker has manipulated the system, put politicians in charge of the DNR, silenced scientists, and changed agency priorities from natural resource protection to job creation.
How long can people who hunt, fish, trap, bird watch, hike, camp, and enjoy the state’s scenery, sit on their hands while the governor trashes our state?
Source: original article by Tim Eisele, Wisconsin Outdoor News, February 28, 2015
Note: “Emperor’s New Clothes” is an old children’s story by Hans Christian Andersen about an emperor who pays a lot of money for some new magic clothes which can only be seen by wise people. The clothes do not really exist, but the emperor does not admit he cannot see them, because he does not want to seem stupid. Everyone else pretends to see the clothes too, until a child shouts, “The Emperor has no clothes on!”
Recent Comments