Californias enviro-bureaucracy at work....

[Dr Mordrid]

These people have way too much time on their hands;

A California law requires a trapping license in order to kill mice.

The Animal Protection Institute of Sacramento pushed the bill, which mandates anyone who takes furbearing mammals or non-game animals must purchase a trapping license by passing a complex test and paying a fee of $78.50, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The Fish and Game Code 4005 defines non-game animals as including mice, rats, gophers and moles, the paper noted.

However, Scott Paulsen, chief of law enforcement for the Department of Fish and Game, said the law would not be enforced for personal use.

Nevertheless, he says, the statute is enforced for commercial use.

That means if a citizen hires a gardener or pest control service to set traps at his house, they could face arrest without a permit.

Terry Knight of the Lake County Fish and Wildlife Committee said the DFG did not support the bill but it was promoted by the Animal Protection Institute.

"I can see the headlines now, 'Mice trappers face jail term,' " Knight said. "But if you get the permit, the real problem you're facing is that it takes too many mice to make a fur coat."

Dr. Mordrid

[Brian Ellis]

You will probably find that there is a contradictory law making it mandatory to kill vermin on your property

Is this Arnie's first attempt at raising revenue from fines?

[Admiral]

Say, where do I get my permit to shoot bureaucrats ?

[Dr Mordrid]

Originally posted by Brian Ellis


You will probably find that there is a contradictory law making it mandatory to kill vermin on your property

Is this Arnie's first attempt at raising revenue from fines?

Nothing to do with Arnie. Most departments and bureaucracies can pass regulations on their own without an affirming act of the legislative or executive branch.

In fact such departmental rules have the force of law unless the legislature or executive actually vetoes them. This is how such nonsensical things like not cutting undergrowth in Californias forests until it burns down can happen.

Dr. Mordrid

[DukeP]

Hey, natural flash fires is GOOD for forests.. Cleans out and makes fertilised ground available for the next generation.

Just dont~plan on admiring the talls trees for the next 30 years

~~DukeP

[MultimediaMan]

These weren't natural, Duke. Many seem to forget that people are part of the ecology, too. We, as humans, have forever changed California's ecology, and there is no changing it back short of using nuclear explosives.

I'm a native Californian, and lived their for most of my life. Small Forest fires are a part of life in the summertime. What happened this past summer went well past that.

Remember, the vast majority of California is actually desert. It is just REALLY well-irrigated (Courtesy of the Hoover Dam).

California historically gets inconsistent amounts of rainfall, The trend being one or two years of fairly high amounts rainfall followed by extended periods of drought. This cycle feeds the forest fire circle of growth/drought/burnoff. The trouble is California this time around had several years of good rainfall starting in 1997 and ending in 2001 instead of one or two years worth. The amount of undergrowth and new evergreen saplings was near-record levels. The rains the following year were dismal, causing a massive dieoff of live plant matter by the end of 2002.

It was an explosive combination, and 2003 saw the match get lit.

The U.S. Forestry Service saw this coming in 1998-1999 but were overruled by the "Cute and Fuzzy" leftist/environmentalist Clinton Administration: Reasonable amounts of undergrowth/culling of trees, followed by running the detrius through an ordinary chipper/mulcher would have had the same net effect as a normal cyclical forest fire. But the powers that be (Clinton, Davis) stopped culling/undergrowth cutting via executive orders and funding cuts.

The net result was a firestorm in some areas, killing off forestry outright with temperatures high enough to sterilize buried seeds instead of a surface or flash fire that clears moderate undergrowth and dead trees.

We are the stewards of our land, not Druids of the forest. The firestorms of 2003 were the direct result of the politicians listening to the tree-huggers and ignoring the professional forestry community.