It has gotten to the point that we, this includes me, can no longer believe what we read and hear from those individuals and organizations who have for a long time been the only source of information available to us. This is kind of scary when you look back while asking yourself if what you were told 5, 10, 15 years or more ago was even true. So, who do you believe? Well, that’s up to you.
The way I see it, you have basically two choices. One, you can take the lazy way out and be like the masses of “sheeple” and believe everything you read and hear or, two, you can expend a little effort and dig for the truth. It is out there.
There are two edges to this sword we call the Internet and the instant information-generating machine. One the one edge, you as a consumer, have the greatest opportunity ever in the history of mankind to seek out and retrieve information. On the other side of the sword, there is so much information, how do we know what’s reliable and what’s not? The answer is simple but the solution is not. The answer is we no longer know what accurate information. The solution requires effort on your part.
Major news outlets are being found out everyday now to be knowingly spreading lies. Makes you wonder how much they are spreading unknowingly doesn’t it. Some of the same media groups are presenting to the public doctored photographs as authentic. These are some of the more blatant misrepresentations of the truth and perhaps are more easily detected.
Worse than this are the media outlets who “copy and paste” information that they pay for. Tons of stories get plastered everywhere each day generated by major news sources – Associated Press, Reuters, etc. Many of smaller outlets don’t have the manpower to research every story that gets printed. They need content and the easiest way to get it is from other news sources. In essence, when one outlet publishes a story, it consequently gets pasted everywhere, therefore it must be the truth, right?
Another result of laziness and the need for content comes when media outlets rely on the news makers to supply them with press releases. As an example, most fish and game departments across the country have a public relations person or a communications director, whose job it is to provide media outlets with news. I get them everyday in my mailbox. What happens when one fish and game department has an agenda? Will they provide facts and truth, so that rightfully informed citizens can make decisions based on such?
The state of Idaho will more than likely be looking at a citizen’s initiative come November 2008. This past fall and winter, a small group of people made up mostly of socialistic thinking and misinformed politicians and mislead sportsmen group leaders, made an effort to ban elk ranching and hunting elk on game preserves. Several bills were presented that ranged from an all out ban to tighter restrictions. None of those bills even made it out of committee because the legislators were given truth and facts by the Idaho Elk Breeders Association. Can we ask for anything other than truth and facts?
Long before any of these bills made it to Congress, one group called the Idaho Sportsman Caucus Advisory Council, vowed they would take this effort to the citizens by way of a citizen’s initiative. It appears that may happen. What the ISCAC is betting on is that Idahoans will take the same route as Montana did a couple years ago when a citizen’s initiative there called for the phasing out of all elk ranches and a ban on game ranch hunting.
I think the major difference that can be expected with this initiative is that already, many residents of Idaho have been presented facts. Once truth enters this equation, I believe the Idaho majority will be sane and vote the right way to retain a safe and necessary industry in their state, while at the same time voting to leave issues like hunting ethics up to the individual.
What the Idaho Elk Breeders Association will be facing from now until November 2008, are articles like Bill Schneider’s in yesterday’s New West. Schneider’s column is filled with so much rhetoric and nonfactual statements it becomes clear to any reader that one side or the other is not telling the truth.
In the article, he begins immediately to negatively sway his readers about elk ranches.
Idaho lawmakers won’t approve any significant controls, let alone a ban on shooting domesticated animals in small enclosures and calling it “hunting†or any legislation meant to reduce or eliminate game farming.
A classic tactic used is “shooting domestic animals in small enclosures”. The writer is trying to get the reader to envision shooting Snowball, the kitty, while caged in a cat carrier. Is the writer saying that he would have liked to have seen restrictions put on minimum sizes for hunting ranches? I don’t think so as you will find out by reading the entire article. His intent in this statement is to paint an immediate picture to assist in justifying the rest of the mantra he will present.
Schneider attempts of bolster his support by claiming that from the comments he has received, the majority of Idahoans want to see elk ranching banned. I can say the same thing. I get many of the same comments that can refute his claim. I’m not so naive as to think that my readership or his is a scientific cross section of the citizenry of Idaho. I know that my readership, like Bill Schneider’s, comes from people who tend to agree with my philosophies and political persuasions.
After the attempt at stating his support, he makes a claim based on untruths.
I have little doubt that most conservationists in Idaho, especially avid hunters, do indeed want to rid the state of the embarrassing and unethical “hunting†practices and eliminate the threat of diseases like chronic wasting disease leaking out of game farms and infecting wild herds.
I’ve said it before, that hunting ethics is personal and should not be legislated but to eliminate the threat of diseases is bunk. Idaho, more than likely will soon see its first cases of chronic wasting disease and/or brucellosis but it won’t come from game ranches, I can tell you that. No disease has ever been found on any ranch in Idaho because they test their animals. The state of Idaho is surrounded by chronic wasting disease in other other states. There is no way of stopping wild animals from crossing state lines, so the odds are stacked against it. How many deer and elk crossing from Wyoming into Idaho are tested for disease first? If I were an elk rancher, I would be more concerned about my herds becoming infected from the wild animals.
Which brings me to a point. Schneider even makes this incorrect statement after his article when he responds to a reader’s question. The reader asked for statistics on diseases. Here’s what was written.
I don’t have these stats, but I do not there is great fear among wildlife managers that concentrated domestic herds will become infected and escape. And there have been many escapes in Idaho, not just Rammell’s incident.
CWD was found in Montana game farms, but it is unknown if it spread to wild herds before the animals were destroyed. Game farm animals have contributed to the spread of CWD in Colorado and Wisconsin, but again, I don’t know the percentages
For someone who doesn’t know the percentages, isn’t it a bit irresponsible to proclaim the dangers of spreading disease? The sky is falling! The sky is falling! What has never been proven, as I understand things, is that CWD infected wild animals first from farmed animals in Colorado and Wisconsin. To make the leap that because it was first discovered in farmed animals before wild animals is misleading. The percentages would tell any scientist that the odds of finding it in penned animals that are under control and tested regularly, are much higher than on free-roaming wild animals that are only tested randomly, if at all.
It is Schneider’s last paragraph that I find just as disturbing as the rest of his inaccuracies.
But those lost opportunities do not lessen the need, which is greater than ever as more and more game farms pop up like mushrooms in a mountain meadow after a warm rain. I hope a broad-based coalition of sporting and environmental groups can join hands, even those who might disagree on other issues like hunting and wilderness designation, and work closely together on this common goal. If this doesn’t happen, Idaho voters might reject efforts to ban canned hunts and phase out game farms. And then, Idaho will become a pint-sized Texas.
It is clear here that he is inviting groups such as the Humane Society of the United States, PETA, Defenders of Wildlife and any other leftist animal rights groups to come to Idaho and join with a handful of mislead and misinformed people to force their beliefs and ideals on the masses. We have all been witness to the campaigns waged by such groups – the money, the lies, the inaccurate photos and videos, the TV ads, radio ads and the like that will paint an evil picture of good, hard working innocent people who have a right to farm, to prosper and be free. If this is who Schneider, the Idaho Wildlife Federation and the Idaho Sportsman Caucus Advisory Council and any and all other groups want to team up with, it clearly shows they are not looking out for the long-term best interest of anyone but themselves.
Tom Remington
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