About
Gerald A. Honigman
Gerald A. Honigman is a Florida
educator who has done extensive doctoral studies in Middle
Eastern Affairs, created and conducted counter-Arab propaganda
programs for college youth, lectured on numerous campuses and
other platforms, and has publicly debated many Arab spokesmen.
He is the author of
The Quest for Justice in the Middle East. His articles and op-eds have been published in dozens of
newspapers, magazines, academic journals and websites all around
the world.
Link
Dear Madam
Governor: From One Fisherperson to Another October 1, 2009
There
are many things that I admire about you.
I
wish you well and believe that if you give some further thought to
issues that I will discuss below, you will find yourself in a much
better position to attract many more voters--especially Independents--in
your future endeavors.
Let
me begin by first telling you a few stories...
About
ten years ago, my son, Jonathan, and I were returning from a day's
fishing out on the Intracoastal Waterway near our home in Florida. We
live on a one-block street that sits between that above estuary and the
Atlantic Ocean. So, seeing you and your husband on television salmon
fishing in Alaska triggers lots of understanding from these quarters. I
believe that we both share a love of nature and a gratitude for that
which God, via nature, provides.
Well,
on that day mentioned above, as we were pulling our little boat out of
the water, along came a commercial blue claw crabber complaining about
how hard it was, since the new redfish laws went into effect, to catch
all of the crabs that he wanted.
The
blackened seafood craze out of New Orleans had placed a high demand on
large reds, and the big breeders were fast disappearing--victims of
modern commercial fishing advances and technology. Unfortunately, a
similar story could be told about the fate of too many other species as
well.
To
try to save the red drum from virtual extinction, laws setting limits
were passed giving reds far greater protection. As a result, the species
began to make a decent comeback. That now brings us back to the crabber.
With
about two dozen big, covered, slatted containers filled with crabs,
their legs sticking through the spaces between the slats, the crabber
decided to complain to me about those "environmentalists" who caused him
so much hardship...
How
so? Well, they were responsible for setting limits on how many reds
could be taken, and since there were now more reds around, they were
eating more of "his" and other crabbers' blue claws. I believe my
blood pressure shot up a hundred points at that moment.
Oh
yes...perhaps I should also explain that I am a biology teacher--a
specialist in ecological science (one of only fifty teachers in the
entire state asked to write the teaching guidelines for these subjects.)
I
turned to him and asked if he ever considered the impact that he and all
of his buddies were having on the crab situation. It was like I was
talking to myself.
Alright. One more story...
Early
in the last century, it was decided that wolves, cougars, and other
natural predators would be exterminated in the Kaibab Peninsula in
Arizona to help the mule deer population.
Federal agents did their thing, and within a few years the deer had
doubled their numbers. However, with no natural predation and hunting
banned, the Kaibab deer herd continued to grow. Between 1906 and 1924,
the herd increased from 3,000 to about 100,000 animals, far beyond the
carrying capacity of the land. After the herd depleted its natural food
supplies, malnutrition, disease, and starvation took their tolls. An
ecosystem forced out of balance, the protected mule deer population
plummeted to a few thousand survivors.
Get
the picture? I believe you know what I'm getting at here...
While
governor in Alaska, you were under pressure from your own version of my
Florida blue claw crabber. Your successors will continue to be as well.
There
are those who want to continue to exterminate wolves--shooting them from
planes, and so forth--supposedly to protect game species like caribou
for their own special interests...human hunting, to be more specific.
Just
as redfish lived in an ecological balance with crabs long before man was
ever a consideration here, so too have predators everywhere lived--necessarily
so--with prey populations.
Madam
Governor, you alienate thinking folks everywhere--the young,
ecologically conscious, in particular--by endorsing such a blatantly
cruel and repeatedly proven seriously flawed policy which I believe you
yourself--a lover of nature and its essential balances--must know in
your heart to be wrong.
I believe you potentially have a great political future ahead of you.
Much of what you say and stand for is indeed admirable. Please consider
reaching out to those Independents and others who might very well vote
for you after a bit of reconsideration and fine tuning on your part of
such issues as those dealt with above.
