Drying Up

Ponds and marshes around much of Michigan are near-overflowing this year--good news for ducks, at least those whose nests didn't wash out. But funds for programs supporting waterfowl and other game habitat are running dry.

From the AP:
The controlling Republican caucus in the House has renewed its attacks on the two most important waterfowl conservation programs. It plans deep if not total cuts to the North American Wetlands Conservation Act, and big hits to the conservation titles in the Farm Bill, including the critical Conservation Reserve Program.... NAWCA saw all of its $47.6 million budget eliminated. Waterfowl managers said it is critical to the survival of waterfowl hunting because it is the major vehicle for protecting the nation’s dwindling base of wetlands. During the past 30 years, it has protected 25 million acres of waterfowl habitat leveraging $800 million in government funds into $2 billion in matches from private partners. The House bill was blocked by the Senate, and after long negotiations with the administration, the compromise that passed included $37.5 million for NAWCA.
Read it all.

So the debt crisis comes, literally, home to roost. On an outdoor bulletin board I frequent this news was met with consternation, even by some members with a conservative political outlook. Only a few responded along the lines of "We all have to share the pain." I'd be more willing to concur with that line of reasoning if wetlands hadn't "felt the pain" of our economic expansions so much. Seriously--habitat loses either way. In good times it's pressured by development. In bad times, it loses funding for protection and management.

I know something has to give somewhere, but cuts like this are especially short sighted. For one thing, as the article noted,

The $5 billion a year the nation spends on various conservation programs puts $14 billion back to the treasury in taxes from people who make their livings in the industries supported by those programs.

Besides, the growing demand for food and mineral resources is going to continue regardless of the recession (unless that proceeds to the point of global economic collapse), which makes the conservation measures we have in place all the more important. In other words, while these cuts may have some merit...we just can't afford them right now.

For me, the key question as we face the debt, or any public concern, isn't "How much do we spend or cut?" but "What kind of country do you want to live in?" Obviously a country spending half its resources paying off its creditors is not one you want to live in. But one without healthy wetlands, forests, and waters has little appeal to me. Neither does one where students go deeply into debt to attain a threadbare higher education.

Of course, other citizens have very different ideas about the sort of country they'd like to inhabit. Conversations on this point will never be simple, but it would be nice to see leaders and encouraging and, yes, leading one instead of reciting tunnel-vision alarums about spending, spending, spending.