12 minute read
News
from Sept. 6, 2012
They didn’t pay for that
Nevada Republicans held what they called “‘We Built It’ Convention Watch Parties” in Reno and Las Vegas where participants watched the Republican National Convention proceedings.
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The name of the parties was a reference to Barack Obama’s “You didn’t build that” comment about businesses using services provided by the public.
What the local Republicans saw on the television screens was a convention paid for with $18.3 million in taxpayer dollars, held in a hall built by $140 million in taxpayer money, served by streetcars of the Hillsborough Area Regional Transportation Authority owned by the Tampa public and otherwise reachable on public roads, guarded by publicly-funded police and additional security provided by $50 million in U.S. Department of Homeland Security funds.
The Democratic National Convention in North Carolina this week receives similar public assistance.
Instant retribution for snub
Republican National Convention officials suddenly changed the convention rules at the expense of presidential candidate Ron Paul, prompting Nevada Paulists to vote for him in violation of their pledge to support Mitt Romney on the first ballot.
The Nevada delegates planned to vote for Romney—winner of the Nevada caucuses—on the first ballot until the rules change.
The Paulists had worked to get five states to sign a petition that would have allowed Paul to be given nominating and seconding speeches from the podium. In the end, they got the support of six states, whereupon the rules were changed to require eight. At that point the Nevadans decided to vote for Paul as a protest.
It was not the first time the Nevada Paulists were victimized by such tactics. In 2008 they won control of the Nevada Republican Convention and were about to elect national convention delegates when party officials shut down the convention, later electing delegates in a party committee.
Attn: Tourism officials
At her No Upside website, blogger Renee DiResta has designed a U.S. map that logs the most common stereotypes of the 50 states.
DiResta determined these stereotypes by harvesting information from Google’s auto-complete function, which tracks previous searches and shows the most frequent below the search field. DiResta typed “Why is [name of state] so” into the Google search field and then collected the commonly asked questions about each state under the field.
She then created the map. When a reader makes the cursor hover over a state, it lists the most common questions about that state. In the case of Arizona, for instance, the most common questions asked by Google users are, “Why is Arizona so hot? … so racist? … so conservative? … so crazy?”
In Nevada’s case, the questions are “Why is Nevada so dry? … so hot? … so dangerous? … so sparsely populated?”
The question about danger may be related to Nevada’s longstanding place at the wrong end of so many national quality of life rankings, such as crime rates, suicide rates, tobacco use, firearms deaths, children’s health, toxic releases, infectious disease and so on.
The map can be found at http://tinyurl.com/8z6n86c.
Noose tightens
California Gov. Jerry Brown, in concert with the U.S. Interior Department, has approved two new tribal casinos in that state.
The Enterprise Rancheria nearl Marysville and the North Fork Rancheria near Frescno each plan casinos with 2,000 slot machines. The Enterprise casino is expected to have 1,900 permament employees, the North Fork 1,500.
—Dennis Myers
Success story
A 75-year-old federal program is celebrated across the nation
What the Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation calls the “most successby ful conservation legislation in theDennis Myers history of North America” turned 75 this week. Though it did not become effective until July 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act on Sept. 2, 1937, and that approval is being celebrated around the nation. “It’s the most important conservation act ever passed,” said Nevada Wildlife Department director Ken Mayer. “These dollars are essential to our agency. We wouldn’t be functioning without it.”
Ken Mayer Nevada Wildlife Director
A website commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Pittman-Robertson Act can be found at http://wsfr75.com/
Also known as the PittmanRobertson Act, the law has provided $7 billion over the decades, pulling species like the bald eagle, whitetailed deer, wood ducks and wild turkeys back from endangered status. It did not rely on federal action, instead giving state programs an assist.
In Nevada, it has been instrumental in protecting populations of both game and non-game species like the mule deer, bighorn sheep, golden eagles and desert tortoise.
It provides for setting aside the excise tax on firearms and ammunition for allocation to states for wildlife restoration, assuming the states comply with certain guidelines such as the creation of a state fish and game department, enactment of wildlife conservation laws, and a ban on diverting of license fees paid by hunters for any other purpose.
Mayer has high praise for that last regulation.
“For me, the biggest thing is that in that law it said that a state was not eligible to take the dollars from sportsman unless they have a law that provides for security for those dollars,” he said. “From my perspective, that was a stroke of genius—can you imagine, with all the years, all the ups and downs, the temptation to tap those dollars for other things?”
The law was a product of a convergence of influences—the first American Wildlife Conference called by Roosevelt in 1936, the agitation of a lawyer/newspaper editor/Oregon fish and game chief named Carl Shoemaker, the legislative sponsorship by Senators Key Pittman of Nevada and Willis Robertson of Virginia, father of television evangelist Pat Robertson. Pittman, president pro tempore of the Senate, died three years after the Act was enacted.
That conference called by Roosevelt was actually the continuation of a series of 21 gatherings called American Game Conferences, the change in names reflecting an evolution of concerns in wildlife restoration.
U.S. Sen. Key Pittman of Nevada chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and served as president pro tem of the Senate. His Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act is still protecting wildlife three-quarters of a century after its enactment. Pittman was photographed here with Massachusetts Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge (right) in February 1938
“It is a central part of the North American Model of wildlife management and is a model envied by the rest of the world,” Nevada wildlife official Patrick Cates wrote about Pittman-Robertson earlier this year. “It is no exaggeration to say this act is largely responsible for bringing wildlife back from the brink in this country after the unregulated commercialized hunting of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.”
Grants began in 1939. By 1941, all but two states participated in the program, splitting $2,530,000. With the 25 cents in state funds for each 75 cents provided by the feds, $3,373,333 was applied to wildlife restoration that year. That is $52,574,427.46 in 2012 dollars.
Paradoxically, Pittman’s home state was not one of the 46 states participating. News reports said Nevada and Georgia had not yet enacted state legislation and funding.
In 1944, syndicated outdoors columnist Johnny Mock suggested that the Pittman-Robertson program had been slowed by the war and urged that the money accumulated in the fund be put to work before the end of hostilities. “One of the best conservation measures ever passed by Congress was the Pittman-Robertson Federal Aid to State Wildlife Restoration Act,” Mock wrote. “Only the Federal Migratory Bird Treaty and Act has been of greater benefit to the wildlife restoration program. … With a great deal of work possible in the conservation field, before Johnny comes marching home, Congress should be urged to appropriate the $9 million now lying idle in the treasury at Washington. The fund was earmarked for such purposes and should be put to work.” Nine million dollars in 1944 is $117,155,454.55 in 2012 dollars. Mock also wrote, “All states but Nevada have given consent to the act.”
As late as 1945, the Sportsman’s Club of Mineral County published a statement in the Hawthorne newspaper that was critical of the legislature for failing to provide the small state contribution. “Refusal for participation in the immense federal allotment of funds created by the PittmanRobertson act has placed Nevada in the position of ‘cutting off her nose to spit her face,’and the reduced quantities of game in the hills is a clear indication that something is suffering because of this backward and indifferent attitude,” it read. “It would appear
that Mineral county’s delegation to the Nevada state legislature would be making a very valuable contribution to the development of the state if at the next meeting of the legislature they would introduce and sponsor bills enabling Nevada to participate in the Pittman-Robertson funds, enjoy a centralized state control of game reserves and remove for all time this phase of natural resources from the local ‘political football’lists.”
However, the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies has figures that say Nevada received $16,823 from Pittman-Robertson in 1939 and $43,456 in 1941. There is no explanation for the conflict.
Nevada received about $8 million from Pittman-Robertson in fiscal year 2010.
In spite of Nevada’s initial disinterest in the program, Nevada Democrats to this day embrace the Act as a party legacy because Key Pittman—for whom Harry Reid named one of his sons—and Willis Robertson were Democrats. The Nevada Outdoor Democratic Caucus—an arm of the state party—has a page posted on its website describing the act in detail and calling it “assurance of a steady source of earmarked funds [that] has enabled the program’s administrators, both state and federal, to plan projects that take years to complete, as short-term strategies seldom come up with lasting solutions where living creatures are involved. … Areas famous for their wildlife have directly benefited from this spending, but so have sporting goods and outdoor equipment manufacturers, distributors and dealers. Thousands of jobs have been created.”
Across the nation, state governments have been celebrating the Act. The Oklahoma Wildlife Department issued a glossy history of the Act, “The Greatest Conservation Story Never Told.” The Michigan Department of Natural Resources announced a year-long celebration. Pennsylvania, New Jersey and other states have observed the anniversary.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation has put up a commemorative website at http://wsfr75.com/. Tahoe Films has posted an online video on the anniversary. The Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation scheduled a commemoration at its Las Vegas national convention.
Just as Nevada was apparently slow using the act, its commemoration is also coming late, but the governor is expected to issue a proclamation and hold a ceremony.
The Act has been amended a number of times during its history—the tax was extended to archery equipment, for instance— and there is an effort underway now to use some of the funds to build shooting ranges. Ω
Coexistence
Johnny Mock (1944) Columnist Treat yourself to gift certificates up to 75% OFF!
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Gay and Catholic displays had side by side places at a University of Nevada, Reno campus recruitment event last week. Dozens of campus organizations were set up around the university quad at the start of the fall semester to try to attract new members.
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Funds go to waste
The U.S. Department of Energy granted University of Nevada, Reno professor and researcher Miles Greiner $745,000 to study storage technology for nuclear waste. Greiner is a mechanical engineer, and will work on a three-year program focused on the drying process of the waste, which could help in transporting and storing the waste safely.
The grant is part of the DOE’s Nuclear Energy University Program, which helps fund more than 40 projects around the country. Two doctoral candidates and one post-doctoral will work with Greiner. Greiner has had past projects funded by the DOE and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, including one that lasted from 2010 to September of this year, for which his research team received $1,500,000 from the DOE to research “advanced heat and mass exchanger technology for geothermal and solar renewable energy systems,” according to Greiner’s faculty webpage.
App adventure
A new app for smartphones and tablets will give locals and visitors a chance to explore Sierra Nevada. The app is called the National Geographic MapGuide and can be found by searching for “Sierra MapGuide” in the Apple and Android stores. Created by National Geographic, the Sierra Business Council and the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, the resource provides information about restaurants, hiking trails, travel tips and more. The information is crowd sourced, meaning that locals provide the tips and suggestions. The app is part of National Geographic’s Sierra Nevada geotourism efforts, which also include the Tahoe Expo (see right).
Cool schools for outdoorsy folk
Outdoor enthusiast magazine Outside named the University of Nevada, Reno one of the 25 Colleges for Outside Readers. The article cites the close proximity of outdoor attractions like the Sierra Nevada mountain range, Lake Tahoe, the Black Rock Desert and the Truckee River, and also highlights some of the university’s academic programs such as forest management, engineering and ecohydrology.
Other schools on the list include several University of California institutions, as well as some smaller colleges such as Green Mountain College in Vermont and Warren WilsonCollege in North Carolina. To see the entire list of schools, visit http://bit.ly/OVA4jf.
—Ashley Hennefer
ashleyh@newsreview.com
ECO-EVENT
Keep Truckee Meadows Beautiful is looking for volunteers to help with the 15th annual Truckee River Cleanup Day on Sept. 29 from 8:30 a.m.noon. Last year, more than 600 volunteers helped clear 12.5 tons of trash from the Truckee River. Cleanup sites include Crystal Peak Park, Mayberry Park, Oxbow Nature Study Area, Lockwood, Fisherman’s Park, Rock Park, Glendale Park, Cottonwood Park, Reno Sparks Indian Colony Health Center, McCarran Ranch and Gateway Park. A barbecue will be held afterward at Rock Park. To sign up, visit www.ktmb.org or call 851-5185.
Got an eco-event? Contact ashleyh@ newsreview.com. Visit www.facebook.com/ RNRGreen for more.
