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Don't sweat it Chris, This kind of thing happens all the time. Once the oil wells have been drilled, all that will be out there are the pumps that you will see, all the personell will move on to the next strike. Been doing that in the west since the gold rushes and the land rushes.
Few put down roots, so once the storm is passed, (and it looks to be moving west now into Montana), you will again have small sleepy farming communities, people will be few and far between. If it wasn't for a reason to be there, (in this case oil), very few want to live in those places due to the weather and climate and limited job opportunities.
There has been a noticeable decrease in the traffic over that way. Once the drilling is done, one person can monitor a lot of pumps, and a couple of repair/maintenance guys to do the rounds, other than that, about all that will be left are some oil pumps on the horizon and things will go back to normal.
Give it another year or two, most of the oil workers and the jobs will be long gone again and everything will go back to normal there, just the way you wanted it.
Yeah, just like locusts, what's the difference?
Don't sweat it Chris - in a few years all that will be left is the polluted water supply underneath your property, the ugly pumps in the middle of nowhere and the stench of crude oil coming out of some hole that you will never find...
Boomtowns attract dynamic people, the kind who make a place great. The stump sitters do nothing. Moving into a place full of bust out rednecks is like moving into a sewer. You've read ognend's horror stories about his neighbors. This isn't fifty years ago. Those little agricultural towns don't exist anymore, at least, not as the idyllic places you assume they still are. But boomtowns don't often fade into ghosts as they frequently did in those days and before.
With a couple of hundred grand in my bank account (I wish!), I will take an environmentally clean ghost town any day of the year. Oh the irony, you have to be rich to live frugally in isolation
if i have to say how I would do it right now, the best place for a person to bug out to is in their own home right now. as long as you are not in a city of more than 2000 and not very close to a big city.
I sincerely doubt this estimate. Either that or their lobby is disproportionately large. Everywhere I have lived (4 states) - they wielded huge influence on how public state lands were used - essentially they were always #1 on the list to satisfy their requirements.
My home state leads the pack for hunting, but we have over 1/3 of the state is federal/state ground and a good public access for hunters.
Add to that we have 10 big game species, lots of small game and game birds as well.
A large number of those people also fish, but the numbers are hard to find.
Hunting and Fishing are conservation tools to control the numbers of animals to the carrying capacity of the ground, cohabitate with agriculture and humanity, and is also a huge cash influx through licenses and taxes as well as money paid to local hotels, grocery stores, mechanics, guides ect.
It generates a lot of revenue for the state besides the benefits to the citizens and the wildlife itself as hunter money in taxes and licenses are what pay for the Fish and Game departments, land acquisitions, accesses, biologists to study the animals etc.
Another benefit is to non game species because they live in the same places the game animals do, but there are no funds generated for non game species specifically, so they benefit from the money spent by hunters and fishermen.
In my state, hunting is a long held and deeply loved tradition. Most of the legislators on either side of the aisle have partaken of the sport and appreciate our wild populations of animals, so hunting and fishing issues are normally supported.
Even the folks that don't participate, pay any fees, or spend any money on the animals still benefit because they can see the result of the work of the outdoorsmen everywhere they go in this state when they see the strong herds of wild animals everywhere.
The government should sell all of its real estate holdings by auction. Private owners will find the highest use for that land. Grazing rights will sell at market rates. Private owners operating under fair laws will be able to eliminate vandals.
When everyone owns something no one owns it. It's analogous to people who say they love everyone; it means they love no one.
I'd prefer no one owning the land to no one but a few rich people being allowed to use the land. If it weren't for the federal land holdings in the West many wildlife species would be extinct. The bison, for example. Everything doesn't need to be reduced to a dollar and cent value and yoked with the burden of producing a profit in paper and ink. Maybe no one "owns" those public lands, but everyone has equal right to use them in non-destructive ways, and they provide a place for various plant and wildlife species that are not "profitable" to business to exist. That is of more value than a bank full of paper scraps. I for one despise being fenced in and confined to a tiny area. I like vast areas I can freely wander in and enjoy, and the availability of such places is truly what distinguises North America from Western Europe.
Hunting and Fishing are conservation tools to control the numbers of animals to the carrying capacity of the ground, cohabitate with agriculture and humanity, and is also a huge cash influx through licenses and taxes as well as money paid to local hotels, grocery stores, mechanics, guides ect.
The hunting and fishing industries are well funded by the hunters and fishermen. It is a business that generates a lot of revenue. It also employs a lot of people. Many of the people who work for these business are basically people who would otherwise have to look elsewhere for jobs and and a good portion of them probably could not find any (due to lack of qualifications). So, we perpetuate the industry. Just like we frac and then brag about increasing employment numbers of locusts who flock to a town in search of a job - people who are otherwise probably unemployable. The society sacrifices the environment in order to support these folks who cannot survive otherwise in the job market. We then call this the right to make a living.
It is interesting that many people are perfectly OK to see an industry and all its jobs get shipped to China and become extinct in this country (happened many times in the last 50-60 years, anyone can remember when people used to make a living sewing jeans?). But the moment you mention protecting the wildlife or the water supply or the environment, no way, it is as if you slapped them on the face...
The state governments have structured things in such a way that hunting licenses pay for state parks and other things. In a world structured like that, someone who kills animals for sport is called a conservationist. I hope you can see the irony of that. So, at some point the legislators are hunters and they look for ways to fund their and their brethren's free access to hunt anything they see fit on public lands. They levy an "access fee" on anyone who wants to hunt and they use this fee to pay for law enforcement on the lands they want to access. As a convenient side-effect, this gets to guilt everyone into thinking that the hunters are the good guys and the rest are just whiners who on their own would not be able to support a great public lands access system. After a while all this is lost on someone "new to the game" and you can tell that someone that you are the chicken, not the egg.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MTSilvertip
Another benefit is to non game species because they live in the same places the game animals do, but there are no funds generated for non game species specifically, so they benefit from the money spent by hunters and fishermen.
In a world where you hunt for sport and have business that survive solely on guiding trips into the wilderness so that someone can shoot a bear or a wolf or whatever else, you also end up with a division of living beings into "game" and "non game". Why not just tag them all with a dollar bill for "yes, shoot" and no tag for "don't shoot".
Quote:
Originally Posted by MTSilvertip
In my state, hunting is a long held and deeply loved tradition. Most of the legislators on either side of the aisle have partaken of the sport and appreciate our wild populations of animals, so hunting and fishing issues are normally supported.
Hunting was never a tradition for human beings, it was always a survival method. Most people these days do not survive on wild meat - for 95% of hunters hunting is a hobby or a sport that has a beneficial side effect. So is running or kayaking or bird watching though and none of them involve killing. Hunting industry sponsored mass media BS would have you believe it is a tradition though - how else can you justify murder for sport? Or who else would call themselves a conservationist for killing living beings?
Quote:
Originally Posted by MTSilvertip
Even the folks that don't participate, pay any fees, or spend any money on the animals still benefit because they can see the result of the work of the outdoorsmen everywhere they go in this state when they see the strong herds of wild animals everywhere.
I would rather pay a separate tax to maintain access to public grounds than partake in legalized and organized murder of life and extinction of species. I would also not want to play God.
Ognend, read the first few chapters of Genesis. Managing game populations is not playing God. It is excercising the benevolent dominion that God entrusted us with shortly after creation. If we mess it up, we suffer the consequences, and if we do it right, we reap the rewards. That simple.
Ognend, read the first few chapters of Genesis. Managing game populations is not playing God. It is excercising the benevolent dominion that God entrusted us with shortly after creation. If we mess it up, we suffer the consequences, and if we do it right, we reap the rewards. That simple.
In that particular belief system, it makes sense (I am not religious and I respect your right to believe). However, you can make up many belief systems that make sense, including ones in which you don't have to manage by killing.
I wonder how long it would take before all the game animals were hunted into extinction if the SHTF. Not to mention we don't even need meat in our diet. There are plenty of vegetarians in perfect health. What will those hunters do when the last elk or deer or rabbit is killed?
more deer in wisconsin than there are people. when the last piece of meat is gone from wildlife, i will still be eating beef from the steers and cows.
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