Stripping the NCWRC

It seems that conservation in every form is under attack by legislation.  I suppose the mentality is that environmental laws are bad for economic development.  After all, the laws designed to protect our air, water, and forests must have a negative impact to those developers seeking to drain wetlands, emit pollutants in the air, and allow sediment to wash into our streams. 

Then there are all those pesky varmints.  The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission is working to conserve those critters like it is some kind of statutory mandate.  Wait, there actually is such a statute. 

Ding Darling
www.dingdarling.org

Back in the 1940s, there was a movement across the country to take conservation programs to the next level.  Folks like Ding Darling were concerned that the great restoration efforts begun by Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, and George Bird Grinnell were becoming too political and that conservation would suffer because of this intervention.  Building on a national model, the North Carolina Wildlife Federation was instrumental in initiating legislation that led to the creation of the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission (NCWRC) in 1947.

Darling's biography describes his frustration with petty political interference, and how he hoped that conservation could somehow be kept from the negotiated world of politics.  It was felt that creating a separate, autonomous agency would help keep politics from influencing the biological management of wildlife resources.  The NCWRC has founded on this principle of making decisions based on what was best for the resources.

Of course, politics have always been a part of any wildlife agency.  To think otherwise would be ludicrous and naive.  The NCWRC is no different.  The commissioners are political appointees.  Both state and local politicians often ask and receive favors that benefit their constituents. 

The current legislative body in North Carolina seems intent on breaking down the NCWRC stone by stone.  HB 574 was passed by the House and awaits action by the Senate.  The bill will remove all rules concerning opossums between December 29 and January 2 each year.  This action hopes to ensure that the Possum Drop can be conducted for a handful of folks in a crossroads community in Clay County.  It's not possums that are at stake - it the fundamental shift in how the General Assembly interferes with conservation efforts.

Then HB 760, the Regulatory Reform Act, had language inserted that would have stripped wildlife officers of their inspection authority.  This authority is unique to conservation officers across the country.  It allows them to temporarily stop people engaged in wildlife related activities to determine if they possess the required licenses and other equipment.  A later iteration removed the verbiage concerning inspection authority, but left language that states:

“Except as authorized by G.S. 113-137, nothing in this section gives an inspector, protector, or other law enforcement officer the authority to inspect weapons, equipment, fish, or wildlife in the absence of a person in apparent control of the item to be inspected."

Huh???

One has to wonder what the drafters of that language really want to address.  Are wildlife officers pilfering through hunters’ trucks while the hunters are in the woods?  That is already illegal.  Or maybe it is to keep those “jack booted thugs” from going into a hunter’s house to inspect his freezer without a warrant or permission.  It couldn’t be that – those actions are also illegal.  Could we be trying to fix a problem that doesn't exist?

What is easily discernible is the effect of such a law.  A wildlife officer could no longer check a trap that she suspected of being illegally set unless the trapper was present.  Or a marine patrol officer could no longer check for identification of nets until the fisherman showed up.  Many other situations come to mind where the conservation of wildlife resources, the NCWRC’s and Division of Marine Fisheries' mandate, would be adversely affected.

I suppose we could speculate on any number of reasons that one legislator has a beef with the NCWRC.  What isn’t questionable is the impact this legislator is having on an agency with a rich history of stewardship of the state’s wildlife resources.