Where I live children can still swim the lake and explore our parks without much supervision. There is not a lot left of the Tall Grass Prairie, but the remnants that remain explode in flowers in early summer. The forbs that are gathered by the kids wind up on the kitchen table and spark youthful tales of their gathering. Ikes, I hope your young people can endorse what your regional environment provides them. What natural resources are left must be protected as never before.

My grand daughter, who is twelve this year, is a junior member of the league and is learning about the environment around her. She must carry the torch for those of us who have made the mistake to think that the government will take care of things. They have failed us. It has always been the people who volunteered their time who have saved what we still have. Those that hunt and fish, bird watch, hike, buy a license or park pass have saved our common rights to date.

It will take years to implement new laws and policies and we need to prepare our young families so they can have the tools to face the task ahead of them. Our grand children will be the ones who must improve what we have left them, but only if we leave them a legacy of exploring the outdoors around them and learn what is there and what must be saved. If our offspring are not outside they will not learn to care.

Get the kids a membership in the League and take them outside.

Mike Williams

Congress: It’s Time To Get Things Done

As progress on the farm bill plods along I lose a lot of respect for the way Congress gets things done. The current Farm Bill is five years old and during its life span those responsible to write the next one should have had a plan in place to improve the old one, but. the only thing they have agreed on is more money is needed. The old farm bill expired October 1, 2007 and we still don’t have a new one. Hey senators, its time to start my field work.

When I look at the list of commodity payment recipients in my home state I am staggered by the number of farms that receive more than a million dollars per year. With $20 wheat and high prices for corn and beans 2007 must be counted as a windfall year and commodity subsidies are not needed. That should leave lots left over for conservation programs before input costs (fuel and fertilizer) and land prices catch up, but noooo our Congress is increasing drought emergency payments and our million dollar operations are again guaranteed a profit, albeit a bigger one.

Grasslands are being plowed and prepared for crops that rarely succeed on highly erodible arid lands west of the Missouri River. Some of those grasslands are 10 thousand years old and have evolved into a biosphere that is tolerant to drought and accommodates the wildlife that has evolved to be able to exist on the prairie.

The sage grouse, the sharptail grouse, the prairie chicken, prairie dogs and ducks by the millions call the grasslands and wetlands of the prairie their home, but we are giving away billions of taxpayer dollars to virtually destroy their homes by subsidizing agriculture production. If it were not for the hunters and fishers who virtually finance wildlife habitat protection with their license fees the upland game and waterfowl would disappear. I guess politicians don’t like to hunt.

Most all of the wildlife and habitat is in private ownership and if we want to save it we need to help pay for the protection of it. If we want the bluebirds to survive and the bobolinks to continue their elaborate courtship, the orioles, American redstart, myrtle warblers, goldfinches, swallows, purple martin’s and hundreds of others have a home when they fly north to nest we need to come together.

The Izaak Walton League is working hard to preserve the conservation provisions of the next farm bill and to save the wetlands by supporting the Clean Water Restoration Act. Join www.IWLA.Org. and help make our voice stronger.

Mike Williams
President

Water in America

Florida, Georgia and Alabama have spent millions of dollars in lawsuits during the last 20 years to determine who has the rights to the water in the Chattahoochee River. The recent drought has intensified the arguments to the point that the President has intervened. Several of Iowa’s rivers have become so polluted that they cannot be used for drinking. Parts of Nevada have passed ordinances that prevent homeowners from having lawns. In spite of conservation efforts Nevada is out of water.

The Niobrara Aquifer of the Great Pains has been pumped down twenty feet in the last 25 years and more wells are being drilled every day. California has a battle between the AG industry and municipalities over who should have priority and must look to water from other states if future immigration numbers remain constant. Ocean water converted to drinkable water is very expensive and puts a burden on those who can afford it least.

Whole economic industries have been built using the waters of the United States and are now in danger of collapse because of low water availability. In the farming Midwest wetlands are being filled and drained. Laws that were put in place are no longer enforced or declared void by a judge who fell in love with the word nexus.

Congress is working to remove the word navigable from the clean water act, but there are still those who doubt the problem or who are greedily protecting the dollars earned from a finite resource.

Join the Izaak Walton League and help support the rewrite of the Clean Water Act
MikeWilliams, President Izaak Walton League of America at IWLA.org

Resource Management

Over the last 40 years of my life I have witnessed a gradual political intervention in natural resource management resulting in an irresponsible excessive destruction of our natural resources.

Public lands have been handed over to those favored by the current administration. Reckless land management by those so favored have poisoned and changed ecosystems forever.

Our grasslands have been overgrazed and mismanaged to the extent that native plants and forbs no longer exist in some areas. We have heap leach mines whose acids and poisons are drained away by what used to be native coldwater fish streams. Oil extraction activities have fragmented the large range of our upland game bird species. Some 70 invasive species have invaded our great lakes. The great everglade swamp has been poisoned and drained. Glaciers and tundra are melting and disappearing and we still have those who declare it is not our doing.

We have let resource management slip away from our professionals and let it interfere with good science and recognized needed professional management. The wolves are now managing the kitchen.

Once more we need to have our citizen’s change what has happened and protect our homes and the habitat they are in. “It is up to citizens to act as ultimately it always will be.”

Join the Izaak Walton league and be a part of our citizen challenge.

Mike Williams

President

1 800 453 5463

WE KNOW:

Oil companies want to rip up the trees, land and water to dig oil out of the ground in Alberta. It will take five barrels of water and 1000 cubic feet of natural gas to produce one barrel. The same companies want to pipe the oil through the Dakotas across the most sensitive aquifer in these states.


Foreign mine companies want to open the largest hard rock gold mine in the United States on the best salmon producing watershed in the world. The application for this project includes known pollution process methods of extraction. Not far away from this state owned property is the greatest toxic polluter in the United States; another mine.

Every day ships unload their ballast water containing invasive species in spite of regulations prohibiting this practice in the Great Lakes.

All over the United States land is being parceled and locked away from public use. Federal, state and locally owned public resources are being exploited by livestock, mining, oil extraction and timber harvests.

At any one time there are some 45 hypoxia (oxygen starved) zones in the oceans surrounding America. These zones are caused by rich deposits of nitrogen and phosphorus pollution that feed seasonal algae causing oxidation depredation when it dies.

All across America passerine bird and waterfowl populations are dropping alarmingly due to habitat destruction. Rural and urban sprawl fragment biospheres along with wetland destruction, septic applications, and roads. The people, who move to the country to be around wildlife, drive the wildlife into smaller and smaller ecosystems.

Tens of thousands of chemical mixes introduced since the forties are spread all over the country with no idea of what they are turning into over time.

Global warming is real and will have huge repercussions on wildlife and water distribution. Will we stand for piping water from the great lakes to regions of the desert to accommodate shifting populations?

SO CHANGE IT:

It is up to the citizens of this country to join together and hold our politicians, agencies and corporate executives accountable for the mass destruction of nature’s balance.

Join the Izaak Walton League of America and strengthen the voice of America’s heritage. Help save what America is for those who must live with what we leave.

Mike Williams, President

http://www.IWLA.org

Citizen and Member?

We are near sending a whole new group of citizens to congress and the presidency. We always expect that they will represent the real needs of the people that elect them, but soon find that once the chair fits they do what they think the people will tolerate. A friend and an Ike wrote the following.

“We have had ample time to discover that laws and agencies created to protect our resources are failing the challenge of our citizens who labored as volunteers to give these agencies the tools to do their job. It is up to citizens to act as ultimately it always will be.”

Join the Izaak Walton League and take conservation into your own hands.

Contact Mary Rubin maryr@iwla.org

Mike Williams

President

Join a Legacy

The Izaak Walton League of America has existed for 85 years and has a phenomenal record of protecting and enhancing outdoor America. Our mission statement is “to conserve, maintain, protect and restore the soil, forest, water and other natural resources of the United States and other lands; to promote means and opportunities for the education of the public with respect to such resources and their enjoyment and wholesome utilization.”

Our philosophy is summed up by the Chevy Chase Chapter of Maryland: “We inspire sound conservation ethics. We believe the land and the natural resources we have inherited are not simply a fiscal commodity, but a dynamic and diverse community to which we belong. We strive to understand the processes of nature that govern renewable and nonrenewable natural resources and to provide the environmental leadership, advocacy and initiative for our membership and our local community to coexist with the natural world with minimal disturbance and maximum respect. We are dedicated to expanding, encouraging and preserving access to open spaces. We value about all our ability to impart the framework of environmental stewardship. Our commitment is to create a forum that plants the seeds of ecological appreciation, reverence, and ethics for all things natural, wild and free.”

“We expect our members to maintain the highest standards of ecological integrity. We recognize that our ability to most directly and positively impact local land and wildlife practices begins with the knowledge, imagination, dedication, instruction and teamwork of our members and volunteers. Our goal is to educate and embolden the local community to foster, explore, and enjoy wild places and to advocate the wise use of our local ecosystems—to teach a harmonious relationship with the land and its wildlife and to realize the consequences of all man made interaction with the natural world.”

Does this sound like you? Search out a chapter near you and join our mission. If there is no chapter in your area join as a member at large. Our magazine and news releases will keep you informed. We believe that future opportunities for outdoor appreciation are dependent on the collective talents, time, energy and funding of all of us.