WTF, WDFW?
- Thread starter O' Clarkii Stomias
- Start date
100% of the reason I have been an NRA member for more than 40 years. There are very few public land access advocates, the NRA is one of them.
It is painful to read this because if there is one state that could end public hunting and fishing I think it is WA.
smc
Guppy Chow
Sure. The following from Merriam-webster is a positive ”or not”. At least in my view:
a : preoccupied with arcane details or procedures in a specialized field
She can get wonky about the economy when she wants to, but what sets her apart is her ability to tell a coherent, populist story about it in a way that other members of her party are either unwilling or unable to do.
wanderingrichard
Life of the Party
"Wonky":
When me back locks up in spasms and I look like a human pretzel, Mate
When me back locks up in spasms and I look like a human pretzel, Mate
and the difference is…?
IMO: Not all wildlife is game, but all game is wildlife. Game has a regulated and defined hunting season, and is also wildlife. For example, deer. They (deer) are both game and wildlife. Bald eagles though, just wildlife, not game in Washington since there is no defined hunting season.
Maybe I've not thought about it clearly before, but that's how my brain computes the difference currently.
It's an interesting question though. Some animals could be game in some areas and not in other areas very near by. Has me second guessing how I think about it since theres a spatial compoment to my thinking that makes things confusing.......hmmmmm......
What's your take?
I feel bad about my "if I won the powerball" plans now. Your plan was way less self centered (and way more fucking awesome) and doesn't involve any mega yachts, private islands or water front mega mansions in Seychelles or fleets of super cars.....in my defense though, I did have at one point the thought to take the top 100 forum content providers to my mega mansion in Seychelles after winning two bill. That'll all have to wait though. Boo.
To me, "preoccupied" generally has a more negative or maybe neutral-at-best meaning. The kicker for me is the "but" style sentence, which implies the wonky part of the sentence is a negative because it's followed by "but this part is positive".
@Long_Rod_Silvers your take on wildlife vs. game looks pretty good to me, especially because you've noticed that it's not black and white. I'm just confused how @FontinalisFin would propose managing wildlife and game separately when the critters in question could be the exact same thing but maybe just over an arbitrary line on a map or calendar date that has nothing to do with their actual ecology.
My experience on the data collection side has shown me that wildlife and game management is amazingly complex... And then you have to add in all the human factors and you get messes like this. I wish I was more optimistic.
"So and so is a political wonk" doesn't carry any negative connotation to me. Sort of like nerd, which I totally am.
This tree hugger supports hunting rights and public land access. Below cost timber sales and logging old growth forests, not so much.
They will never co- manage because the objective is to eliminate sport. Like long rod said, game is wildlife but not all wildlife is game. They won't be satisfied till all game is wildlife and there's no hunting or fishing or harassing. Have to grandfather in game species so they can always be hunted and fished and the state's new wildlife 'management' plans won't affect that. Highly doubtful.
I don't believe they are bambiists. I think they could truely care less about our ungulates. When faced with the debate on the spring bear hunt Lorna Smith said something to the effect of basically disagreeing with the estimate of the elk carrying capacity of the Blue Mountains by the regional biologists.
The Blue Mountain elk herd is at a 25 year low. Calf studies show almost total year 1 fatalities by predators and these fruitcakes without I'm sure ever stepping foot in the area just brush it off and say, "oh well." It shouldn't matter if you are a hunter or not, some of these people are not capable of being in the position they are in and should have been fired yesterday.
Rob Allen
Life of the Party
So you are saying that wildlife commission members are ignoring the science prepared by actual biologists?
I've spent far more time looking up definitions of "wonky" and now "political wonk" than I expected! I'm also a nerd, and I think words matter."So and so is a political wonk" doesn't carry any negative connotation to me. Sort of like nerd, which I totally am.
We all know that if you dig deep enough you can always find something that'll support your personal opinion. This site kind of sums it up for me.
"So to return to our original question, is the word wonky insulting to a person or group of people in and of itself? It all comes down to context. If you are using wonky in its more traditional sense as a reference to something unstable, unreliable or defective, you are not necessarily calling to mind a group of politicians squabbling over the minutiae of a new policy. But you might be. I guess it’s just up to you to choose which words you use."
Is wonky politically correct?
Is the word wonky insulting to a person or group of people in and of itself? It all comes down to context.
wordnerdmoxie.wordpress.com
Given the context, I still get the impression that the author of the article referenced in the OP was using "wonky" in an unflattering manner.
Access to public lands gets a huge YES from me. Fishing and hunting rights - if the best available science supports harvest I have no problem and will happily partake! If/when politics gets involved as we've all seen countless times, that's when I lose hope.
The WDFW commission went against the WDFW biologists 100% by vote. That's exactly what happened. Hence why I make statements they are a rogue radical group. They shouldn't exist. Why pay for a department that gets overruled by a citizen commission group?
They aren’t even a sampling of the average citizen, and that’s part of this, they are a mobilized special interest group, that has strong armed their way into a position of power that isn’t even real.
We have a long storied history of putting in charge people who have no clue about what it is in their charge or the culture there of or even how it works. I say down with data, down with science, down with sound reasoning. We are entering a new more advanced era where agenda trumps all and purity of concept can only be realized by eliminating all that opposes our neatly anthropomorphic boxed in world view.
PS. I read the article yesterday and thought it might come up here.
Note the sarcasm for what it is
Also, "wonk" isn't an insult. It's used to describe someone with an almost pathological penchant for the arcane and obscure details. Often this is when concerning public policy or politics in general.
I agree completely with @Billy ; their function has been (predictably) corrupted. The Commission's charter prescribes fair representation of all fish and wildlife stakeholders, be their motivations commercial, recreational, conservational, or (now) preservational. For quite a while, they met that bar at least reasonably well.
The Lower Columbia gillnet fishery changes the Commission implemented several years back motivated the commercial sector (we're talking big fish here; processors and the like, with lots of money and a strong lobby in Olympia) to make the Commission more amenable to their cause.
The first order of business was to lobby the legislature NOT to confirm the pro-recreational Commission members who had been instrumental in the Lower Columbia decision. They succeeded; those Commissioners' terms were allowed to expire, making way for new appointees. That led to the next step, which was to "promote" certain candidates (via contributions to the Gov.'s campaign fund, I suspect) to be their replacements.
That's probably not exactly how it happened, but the takeaway is that both the Governor and the Legislature were somehow convinced to waive protection for recreational interests in fish and wildlife management, and if it was perhaps expensive, it didn't seem to be very difficult.
I would advise people to vote in better representation, but the fact is that we (hunters and fishers) are a small minority (and a divided one, at that), so at least in most cases, politicians don't lend us much of an ear. If we were more unified and better-funded, we could make some real changes politically, but we're sort of all over the place (and under-funded), so we mostly come off as whiners on a rant in their view.
The Lower Columbia gillnet fishery changes the Commission implemented several years back motivated the commercial sector (we're talking big fish here; processors and the like, with lots of money and a strong lobby in Olympia) to make the Commission more amenable to their cause.
The first order of business was to lobby the legislature NOT to confirm the pro-recreational Commission members who had been instrumental in the Lower Columbia decision. They succeeded; those Commissioners' terms were allowed to expire, making way for new appointees. That led to the next step, which was to "promote" certain candidates (via contributions to the Gov.'s campaign fund, I suspect) to be their replacements.
That's probably not exactly how it happened, but the takeaway is that both the Governor and the Legislature were somehow convinced to waive protection for recreational interests in fish and wildlife management, and if it was perhaps expensive, it didn't seem to be very difficult.
I would advise people to vote in better representation, but the fact is that we (hunters and fishers) are a small minority (and a divided one, at that), so at least in most cases, politicians don't lend us much of an ear. If we were more unified and better-funded, we could make some real changes politically, but we're sort of all over the place (and under-funded), so we mostly come off as whiners on a rant in their view.
Rob Allen
Life of the Party
That is certainly how they act.
