The Wildside for Feb. 5, 2012
KNF fight demands answers
It’s time to step back and take a look at just how many giant steps our federal government has taken to control what we can and can’t do when it comes to hunting and fishing our lands and waters.
For years now, folks in Washington, D.C., have adopted the attitude that they know more than we do about the land, the water and the animals that thrive there.
Take Thursday for example: At the urging of Stephen Oats, the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission amended state hunting rules for the 2012-2013 season by adding a Dec. 15-23 with-or-without dogs deer-hunting season on a part of the 600,000-plus acres that make up the Kisatchie National Forest.
OK, KNF, with the word “national” stuck in the middle, indicates there is some sort of federal control over these thousands of acres. The question for years now is how much control should these federal managers be allowed to have.
For most of the years these “national” lands had hunting seasons regulated by the LWFC with a certain level of input from the U.S. Forest Service. That’s as it should be. There should be a working agreement between the USFS and the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and the commission (the LWFC) that oversees the LDWF’s operations.
But when the Forest Service commands our state, or any state, adhere to rules that overturns years of established use of lands within the state, then somehow is it too much to believe that these federal folks have overstepped their bounds?
In the case of Kisatchie, the move from the USFS’ Atlanta Regional Office is to ban the use of dogs to hunt deer, an ages-old practice in Louisiana and most other southern states.
There was a deer-dog ban in place this time last year until a group of hunters who use Kisatchie retained legal representation and fought the Atlanta office’s decision and won. The ruling was that the USFS regional office has to better document the reasons for the ban, that it couldn’t be some sort of knee-jerk reaction to just any level of federal or state pressure to impose the ban.
Apparently the legal fight only delayed the imposition of the ban until the Atlanta office could better document the objections to the generations of deer-dog hunters using this land for their sport.
Without trying to single out a man doing his job, KNF employee Steve Balboni told the LWFC to expect the ruling to come from Atlanta “sometime next month.”
It’s at this point, the question of the authority to impose such a ban begs for an answer: Where in the U.S. Constitution does it guarantee the right of this federal agency to establish these restrictive rules, and by doing so, to usurp the rights of our state or any other state?
For the hundreds of deer hunters who use the KNF and the tens of thousands of fishermen in our state affected by increased federal regulation, it’s a questions worth asking.
And it’s the answers that we should demand to be forthcoming — and sooner than later.