...have to be learned again.
Then, the scandal and outrage of northern wastelands and killer forest fires prompted a generation of Great Lakes region conservationists to argue successfully for separating conservation policy from politics, reforesting the north, and renewing fish and wildlife. It worked well for 70 years.
Now politics governs conservation and...
MN's share of the general fund devoted to conservation is close to its lowest point in 30 years.
Same in Michigan, according to the Detroit Free Press story linked below.
But even the Free Press is not talking about the solution that MN green groups are promoting -- a state constitutional amendment earmarking revenue for fish, wildlife, and clean water.
How else we this trend be reversed? It is one thing to say the public should elect legislators who make better budget decisions. All the incentives for legislators today, however, are "future be damned." That's why putting conservation funding in the constitution is a cause whose time has come.
..[I}f you take a look at the state budget numbers, you see a slow but steady erosion in the commitment to protect Michigan's outdoor bounty. The departments of Natural Resources and Environmental Quality each operate on a shoestring. Both will crash and burn in the next few years without more support. By 2008, the DEQ faces the loss of its entire brownfield cleanup program -- now funded solely by Clean Michigan bonds. By 2010, the DNR's Game and Fish Fund will have a $47.5-million deficit.
This has resulted from a decade-plus of pushing more and more costs onto user fees and other programs such as the bond issue. Ten years ago, the DNR got 24%
($50 million) of its budget from the general fund; now it's 11% ($25 million). For the DEQ, the general fund contribution has skidded even more drastically, from 28% ($101 million) to 9% ($33 million) over five years.
http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060618/OPINION01/606180551/1068/OPINION
Posted by Dave at June 19, 2006 07:01 AM