Jim Beers retired from the US Fish & Wildlife Service in 1999. Today he is a consultant, writer, and speaker known for clear statements about the hidden agendas and dangerous tactics of environmental radicals and animal rights extremists. His views and recommendations flow from his experiences with the Utah Fish & Game while attending Utah State, his military service as a Naval Officer aboard ship in the Western Pacific and ashore on Adak in the Aleutians. His Federal experience began as a wetlands biologist in North Dakota. He then served as a US Game Management Agent and Special Agent in Minnesota, where he worked with the Minneapolis Police Department, to Nebraska, to the Port of New York where he was the sole FWS Agent for two years..

Jim spent 25 years in the Washington, DC headquarters of FWS where he served as Special Agent in International Investigations, a Congressional Fellow, Animal Damage Control Program Coordinator, Chief of Refuge Operations, and Wildlife Biologist for the Pittman Robertson funding to the states. In this latter role, Jim antagonized the new animal rights bureaucrats and environmental appointees by being a strong advocate for state furbearer management and trapping as the European Community was trying to outlaw trapping and the use of fur throughout the world. Because of this work and his refusal to certify a grant request for P-R funds for an anti-hunting campaign by the Fund for Animals he was forced to retire. Before retiring he testified twice before a Congressional Committee about the misuse of approximately $45 million dollars of P-R funds by the FWS. This resulted in amendment of the P-R and Dingell Johnson laws to prevent future abuses.

A little known fact concerns the ten years in Washington when Jim worked a second job to pay college bills for his three children. He worked as a security supervisor in the Rotunda of the National Archives guarding the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Between reading about the documents,

answering continuous questions and having long conversations with authors, genealogists, and expert visitors Jim became an informed advocate for the principles on which this country was founded..

This mix of practical environmental and animal knowledge stirred in with Constitutional and historical facts has made for strong opinions and interesting observations. When asked why he didn't go higher in the FWS hierarchy, he has a ready reply. "Requirements for promotions and hiring disappeared in the 90's for such high purposes as advancing women and minorities. As I was leaving, the relative of a powerful Washington politician was hirec1 from a Department store at the grade I retired with and a relative of an FWS manager was hired without any wildlife experience at a grade I didn't get until I had moved five times.. Top bosses were Congressional staffers who had lost their jobs or people who none of us had ever heard of before. The agency I joined in the 60's had only the name in common with the devastating agency we know today."

Jim Beers on HUNTERS:

Our ability and willingness to work with others is directly proportional to our own commitments and beliefs. What other explanation is there for the widespread failure of hunters to support each other in the face of the campaigns to eliminate wildlife management and hunting?

Most hunters respond when they are directly threatened but it takes far more than that if hunting and the sustainable uses of natural resources are to remain the rights that the Founding Fathers and our ancestors fought for. Westerners must support easterners.. Duck hunters must defend big game hunters. Bird hunters must speak out for cougar and bear hunters. Archers must help the gun hunters. Big Game hunters must look out for the rights of dog owners. International hunters should explain the wonders of the American system of hunting and resource management wherever they go. The poorest hunters need to stress how

precious their right to hunt is and how it must be defended. If we can't do this we will return, just as our British and Australian counterparts are to a life where the government prohibits guns and hunting and a steadily growing list of other things we have come to take for granted.

This doesn't begin to get into how hunters' organizations need to be revamped to defend hunting and not their own careers. Similarly the current state and federal agencies habits of staffing from and working with organizations that aim to eliminate hunting (along with many other traditional liberties and rights) must be reversed.. Hunters are reluctant to take on these agencies or the politicians that semi-annually harvest votes by selling out our rights and our way of life.

Finally, wise hunters know that they have a stake in what happens to rodeos, fishing, logging, circuses, animal experimentation, trapping, farming, and a whole host or other animal use activities. I guess tht fact that most hunters don't get involved in defending these rights means just one thing, they don't care enough.. If you know anyone this is true of, tell them to get involved before it is too late.

On ANIMAL RIGHTS:

Animal rights organizations operate exactly like communist and socialist radicals operated throughout the last century. Their tactics and goals are exactly the same. They lie and propagandize the young. They exploit any opportunity to further their ULTIMATE goal which is an all powerful central government with no checks or balances and which they control. Like other anarchists they believe their values and their notions of how everyone else must live should be imposed on everyone else for their own good. Their philosophy is morally bankrupt. While they proclaim an interest in elevating the status of animals, they are really about denigrating the status of humans. They share this lunacy with many of the environmental radicals and centralized planers of socialist causes. If we allow them to prevail, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

On the ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT:

For 125 years the Governor of each state was responsible for all the plants and animals within their state. Starting with a 1917 treaty with Great Britain (on behalf of Canada) certain migratory birds were placed under Federal control. Only such a treaty or a Constitutional Amendment could legally justify placing plants or animals under Federal control.

The ESA places ANYTHING listed under Federal control. Further listing authorizes "taking" without compensation (violating the Constitution) and unlimited enforcement authority for practically anything that limits unlimited Federal control. The justification for all this is a treaty with the UN and/or over 100 nations. This treaty, called CITES, allows the UN to, like our Federal government, list ANYTHING and thereby require increasing governmental controls and decreasing human uses or management. ESA and CITES both started out as species protection but soon devolved into repositories for subspecies, races, populations, population segments, and now distinct population segments. This power accumulation and generation scheme for Federal bureaucracies should be significantly reduced because it is illegal..

The CITES Treaty was signed and ratified by the US and should be enforced. However, since the UN is not a sovereign nation and since a treaty signed with a multitude of nations, some of whom enforce it while others ignore it in whole or in part, it is not a treaty as envisioned in the Constitution. While it can and should be enforced it should NOT be sufficient to disrupt the Constitutionally established system of environmental jurisdiction in the US. State cooperation should be voluntary and Federal authorities should not exceed what authority they had before either ESA or CITES came on the scene.

This requires hunters and state politicians and state bureaucrats and conservation organizations and a whole lot of others (including a lawyer or two) with the commitment to change things. Like the Marines we need a few good men.

On CARA:

Making larger and larger percentages of state wildlife employees recipients of salary checks written by the US Congress and therefore directly accountable to Federal regulation writers in Washington

- A Good Idea?

Federal and state land purchasing that puts more and more land out of reach to hunting, fishing, trapping, range management, forest management, wildlife management, fishery management, camping, picnicking, shooting, logging, walking dogs off a leash, etc., etc. - A Good Idea?

Giving state agencies the go ahead, as exemplified by the Feds, to begin pouring money and people into non-game management where there are NO relative values (when do you have "enough" turtles?) and no measures of accomplishment except dollars and employees - A Good Idea?

Giving states that prohibit offshore drilling for oil, Federal royalty funds from the states that allow offshore oil drilling

- An Equitable or Fair Idea?

Supporting any proposal that will stock the state agencies, like the Federal agencies, with an overpopulation of animal rights activists and environmental radicals amounts to voluntary execution for sustainable use natural resource users. Wake up before it is too late.

On GOVERNMENT LAND ACQUISITION:

As the son of a blue collar Dad and as a retired government employee I only own the mortgaged house I live in. That said, I have hunted on public lands all over the country and I know that certain wetlands and other productive habitats are here today because they were acquired by the

government.

If recent years have taught us anything it is that activist politicians, government bureaucrats, Washington lobby groups, and national "conservation organizations" can and will stop all resource use on public lands. They will eliminate hunting and trapping on those lands. They will prevent access and any resource use no matter how sustainable. They will claim "viewsheds". They will prevent even the inventorying of such vital resources as oil. much less allow any extraction of that necessary fuel. Resources are wasted and stupidly encumbered on public lands.

Today, annual government land acquisition increases are like gun registration in Germany (and Britain too) after WWI. Then the high purpose was to prevent communists (read poor rabble who took over Russia) from getting guns so they were registered and controlled. When Adolph showed up almost 15 years later he just picked them all up and since then everyone wonders why no one stood up to him. Land acquisition by the government is to "save" this and that but remember when the next environmental activist President gets elected he or she will pick up both those state and Federal government lands (since they were all bought with Federal funds) and be way on down the road like~bld Adolph was thanks to those gun records..

On PREDATION:

It is funny how when the government wants to reinfest an area with wolves, predation is not a problem. When the government wants to List the bighorn sheep only in California (where the electorate prohibited the hunting of mountain lions) it can say in the sheep Recovery Plan that the sheep will become extinct if the mountain lions are not controlled. So not only does the Federal government assume jurisdiction over the sheep but now you and I pay the USDA every spring to go into the Sierras to kill the overabundant lions to "save" the sheep. Who thinks up this stuff?

On AUDITING STATE AGENCIES:

Pittman-Robertson and Dingell-Johnson funds must be audited every five years according to law. From five to twenty years ago the states were audited for all Federal funds (called a combined audit) at once. Needless to say state Fish and Wildlife agencies were of least importance and very complicated so they invariably fell through the cracks.. When the laws were amended an audit organization (Defense Contracting Audit Agency) was hired and trained to complete the first thorough audit cycle in twenty years.. When the five years was up, they had finalized over half of the state reports and had the other half drafted. The last half was states that had big problems, states that refused to cooperate, and some that were just a mess. So the states and their lobby group "worked" with the FWS (who didn't want any more scandal) and fired the auditors. They are gone and the draft reports are neither enforceable or of any use to persons who did not gather the information.. So now FWS is hiring the Interior Inspector General (who investigates FWS and does not do audits) to complete the audits and do the next cycle. This is illegal ("hiring" your Departments IG), it is stupid (hiring anyone but an auditor to audit), it is scandalous and prosecutable (firing public auditors, not auditing, and destroying evidence), it is unfair to hunters and fishermen who established these taxes for these agencies, and it is going unnoticed but hey it worked! No scandal endangered the CARA effort to "be just like P-R and D-J"!!

On CONSERVATION ORGANIZATIONS:

We all know what we have to fear from the animal rights outfits and the environmental extremists but what about our own outfits? Some, like the Wildlife Federation speak for themselves.. Others like the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies play hidden political games that sometimes help and other times hinder animal users like us.

In their attempts to be all things to all people, they do and allow things that harm our best interests. Yet others like Ducks Unlimited and the Wildlife Management Institute try to bridge the differences with those out to do us in by keeping a foot in each canoe. Their carefully worded reports and information are calculated to guarantee themselves a place in a world with or without the sustainable use of natural resources.

All of these groups evolved in an era where more government was better and getting government help was the name of the game. Anybody who still believes that hasn't watched what has been going on lately. This nation was not founded on nor was it made successful by government largesse. The same things that caused our Revolutionary War, the writing of the Declaration of Independence, and our Constitution were as true then as they are now. Unfettered government sooner or later takes away everything. Free people with rights and liberties are what we are about and what made us what we are. The Conservation organizations really need overhauls and I suspect some new ones need to be formed to be responsive to the threats we face today.

On GOVERNMENT ETHICS:

Does anyone really doubt that government employees were establishing the widest possible lynx presence for more government land restrictions and more bases for lawsuits when they manipulated the lynx studies? Are you as outraged as I am that those employees were not only retained but given bonuses and promotions? How can we ever learn about this stuff if some old guy isn't about to retire and concerned enough to make a stink?

Are you as concerned as I am about the precedent of the Federal government assuming the jurisdiction over animal welfare and then expanding to species everyone said would never be covered like dogs and mice and rats? If this high purpose justifies Federal intervention, how about cockfighting? How about circuses

or rodeos? How about hunting or fishing or trapping? Before you laugh too hard, look at what is being done to hunting in Scotland and Britain. Ask your Canadian friends what is happening there. The more all powerful the central government, the more susceptible they are to be used as a tool by those who will deny your rights and liberties.

On DOUBLE STANDARDS:

Did you know that while the FWS proposes restoring endangered sturgeons in Nebraska to limit water use by farmers; the FWS and NMFS and EPA are still permitting the US Army Corps of Engineers (for 9 years) to dump tons of alum and chlorine laden sludge on endangered sturgeon and their breeding grounds in the Potomac River in Washington, DC?

Did you know that EPA constantly tightens pollution restrictions (linec1 double lagoons and zero runoff) on duck farms that have 5,000 or more ducks. They are protecting groundwater, surface water, soil, and human health from E. coli, streptococcus, nitrates, potassium, phosphates and other dangers. When Nebraska farmers ask about fields that won't grow crops, wetlands that look like pea soup, and E. coli outbreaks in restaurants under goose flight paths in an area where millions of ducks and geese spend months they are ignored or laughed at by government bureaucrats. When they ask for help to disburse the birds, or reduce flock size, or to conduct research to determine if pollution standards for wild birds are feasible, they make another disturbing discovery.

The Secretary of the Interior, through the US Fish and Wildlife Service, must permit any bird control or harassment. However, FWS doesn't want to assume any liability for wild birds because somebody might hold them responsible if one of "their" wolves or grizzly bears nailed a kid in a campground after a "reintroduction". So they send the farmer to USDA. USDA says they can only control migratory birds

if FWS allows it and they usually use hunting. Wait, it gets better. When the farmers consider getting some money appropriated to have the government do waterfowl manure research (lots exists for domestic ducks but zilch for wild birds) who would they give the money to? Secretary Babbitt took the research Division of FWS and transferred it to the Geological Survey (when Congress wouldn't give him millions for a new "environmental research agency"). For a couple of years Babbitt was hailed for his bold move in "saving" more of the environment, then he lost interest and the muddled National Biological Survey began to disappear into the bowels of the Geological Survey. So who would conduct manure studies for wild birds? If USDA would animal rights activists in FWS control them? Who would set standards for refuges with large wintering populations? Who would set and enforce standards on state areas like the Central Valley of California or the Saint Lawrence River Valley? FWS and the states would have to be dragged kicking and screaming into developing such standards. In the meantime, EPA is driving up the price of domestic duck when you eat out. As for farmers or refuge neighbors where flocks of 1/2 to 3/4 of a million wild birds spend months in the same location, let them eat cake.

On WHAT YOU CAN DO:

Cooperate with those who are threatened like you are. Dog owners, mink ranchers, loggers, medical experimenters, furriers, farmers, property owners, commercial fishermen, whalers, are all threatened by the same forces and groups that will eliminate hunting. Work with them, know their issues, and support them.

Be proactive. Don't just fight when you are threatened. Any team that only plays defense loses. Constantly confront animal rights and environmental extremists whenever and wherever you find them. Tell others why sustainable use of natural resources is what intelligent people support and non-use and non-management is like an ostrich burying it's head in the sand. Schools, newspapers, friends, coworkers are all venues. Let them know what you stand for and why they need to protect your liberties so you can protect theirs.

Recognize your enemies and oppose them. Know your friends and support them.