The Bush administration is pushing to raise the cost of a duck stamp from $15 to $25 the first increase in almost 20 years. In case you don’t know duck stamps are a federal issued stamp that hunters must have to hunt migratory birds each year with the funds being used to safe guard habitat for the birds and other species. Hunters have happily bore the vast responsibility for monies generated through this program and I suspect this will continue.
I’m not opposed to raising the costs I’m just concern with the politics that have gotten us to the need to raise the costs. Many acres of farmland over the years have been set aside in Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) that has put aside land for wildlife habitat. Efforts by the Bush administration to boost ethanol production have basically destroyed the CRP by raising the price of corn to a level that has put lots of habitat land back into crop production. Not to mention the impact on our own food production.
Habitat land is now more expensive because what would have not been cost productive to plant now is. When we have all kinds of untapped oil reserves in Alaska and off our coasts that we won’t touch because of the “impact on nature” so will destroy habitat and our economy to create a much more costly fuel.
I’ll buy the stamp but at the rate we are going the additional $10 won’t be enough.
