Dear editor:

Many years ago our government teamed up with the universities, colleges and special interest groups and introduced science into our wildlife and its habitats. Since this time, especially over the last 30 years, our deer herds, upland game birds, and our waterfowl populations have been and still are being depleted.

I believe one of the best examples of this ideology is when they started killing off the does and fawns with limited quota doe and fawn licenses and then blamed the low deer numbers on Chronic Wasting Disease. This has gone on for decades with the results being very low deer numbers and a very aggressively growing CWD program.

They not only target the deer for further scientific study, they also have started targeting the hunters with mandatory regulations.

The wild sage grouse is another way they are proceeding with their projects. This is harmful to the sage grouse because they not only steal the eggs from the wild nests, it also allows them to continue harassing the grouse year round and opens up the door for commercial use of the sage grouse.

The Little Horn in the Bighorn Mountains turned out to be a complete failure. This is where they took a beautiful mountain stream and tried to turn it into something that it wasn’t. They left it in ruins with wire, cables, timbers and other debris strewn about.

A very destructive project they have started is the use of poisons on the habitats. This is reckless and a very dangerous idea to impose on our wildlife and its’ habitats and even the people who use them. This is just a small fraction of the projects through the years that I believe have failed or are failing the wildlife because of mismanagement, mistakes and careless accidents such as the walleye in Buffalo Bill Reservoir. 

I have yet to see any real benefits for the wildlife besides paper benefits come out of these projects. All the surveys, studies and monitoring done by the science communities, academic communities, and special interest groups not only help these groups to legitimize their excuses for further projects. It also allows them to continue harassing our wildlife. People have harassed the wildlife forever but not to the extremes that our government and special interest groups have done year round for decades. I do believe it is time they stopped thinking about their own agendas and start giving back to the wildlife.

I know the younger generations don’t understand the amount of devastation that has happened in the past several decades to Wyoming’s wildlife because a person had to have lived it. I do believe the truth is in the history. Man cannot control the natural order of things. He only screws it up and even destroys it.

The only thing they do control is the hunter and fisherman.

Rand Christensen

Otto