Conspiracy or Coincidence?

[Outdoor Talk Network by Jim Slinsky]
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Conspiracy or Coincidence? ©

By Jim Slinsky
05/10/08

It is only natural as one gets older and contemplates the difficulties of life in their remaining years to fantasize about having lived in a simpler time. The great historical events and extraordinary individuals of the last two hundred years have unquestionably shaped this nation and the people we are. Personally, I have often wished I could have met Teddy Roosevelt, Wyatt Earp or Wild Bill Hickok. I wish I could have witnessed in my day the Gold Rush of California and Alaska.

Interestingly, a similar piece of history is currently unfolding right before our eyes, the Gas Rush of 2008 in northcentral PA. The trillions of cubic feet of gas found in the Marcellus Shale deposit will change this state forever, physically, biologically and politically. It is an interesting end of a story that may have been unfolding for the last 30-40 years. Have we arrived at the end of a fantastic story that was nurtured and manipulated from its inception or is the Gas Rush of 2008 just something destined to happen in our lifetime?

We will start with the decades old argument to merge the PA Game Commission and the PA Fish & Boat Commission and put these agencies under the control of DCNR. Was the intention of this effort to save money and improve services or was it about shifting ownership of our 1.4 million acres of State Game Lands to a resource extraction agency? You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to ask this legitimate question.

We will fast forward to 1999 and the new deer management program. Was it really about forest regeneration or was it about getting the hunters out of woods? Was it about forcing hunters to abandon their camps and favorite hunting spots? Was it about eliminating competition for use of the land? Personally, I have always wondered if the deer plan was really about the trees on the land or the gas (liquid gold) beneath the land? The collapse of the deer herd led to collapse of the hunting economy and hundreds of rural businesses that serviced it.

How about the PA Wilds program? Was it really about creating a tourism industry or about causing conflicts with the remaining landowners? We had a tremendous tourism industry with hunters frequenting the area and spending hundreds of millions. Why would the state destroy the hunting industry to promote a tourism program that was destined to fail, but they now fail to admit it? Was the entire program a depopulation plan to minimize the property owners receiving lease payments and royalties for the gas beneath their holdings?

By the way, the deer are gone and they are not coming back unless we put them back. With the highest population of coyotes east of the Mississippi and continuous talk of wolves and mountain lions does some entity have different plans for the future of northcentral PA? Let us not forget regeneration did not occur and the agencies are now liming to jump-start regeneration. Did they know this was going occur from the beginning, but the deer had to die anyway?

I am going off the deep end you say? How about windmills on our ridges, gas wells in our valleys, posted ground wherever either exists and you are relegated to hunt the sidehills if you can grow one leg longer than the other where there are no deer anyway? Interesting.

I can not tell you for certain if the above story was truly an intricate plan that was executed over the last ten years or not. With the PGC seeking public funding through a percentage of our sale tax dollars while at the exact moment sinking gas wells on our State Game Lands, I must be having a bad dream.

The reality is all of the above is true and unfolded right before our eyes. The reason our PGC Commissioners never wanted to recognize our horrendously acidic soils is because the plan was much bigger than regeneration. Deer were just the first to go for all the remaining pieces to come together.

Now I will be the first to admit that hindsight is always 20-20 and I may have just done a clever job of linking all of the previous events into a grand conspiracy theory. You might be right. However, there could be only one other explanation.

The events that led us to the current conditions of the great Gas Rush of 2008 were totally unrelated. Therefore, all of the above was mere coincidence.

Jim Slinsky is the host and producer of the “Outdoor Talk Network”, a nationally syndicated, outdoor-talk radio program. For a station near you or to contact Jim, visit his website at www.outdoortalknetwork.com.

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