Our Future Overlords

Answering the mail, most of which is from schoolchildren working on class projects, can be a little mundane. Most of the letters are uninspired, and reading them evokes an image in my mind of a frustrated child diligently copying the text written on the chalkboard. Today, I received something more interesting.

This letter was in two parts on the same page. The top half was a typical information request, but just below that was a dotted line and a note, "P.S. Please ignore everything below the dotted line. (Saving on stamps.)" Below that, "Do not read until January 20, 2089!!!"

Of course, I saw this as an invitation to read below the dotted line. It took a couple readings to understand the intent of the message. The second half of the letter was a letter to the future, where the writer's descendants had pulled a coup of the United States government. Here is the text:

"Dear Crimpys,

What a wonderful day this is for us. I am bursting with pride just thinking about it. Although I wish it was my poor Milton taking the oath, President Longfellow Crimpy has a nice ring to it. I also like the sound of Vice President Wigglesworth Crimpy.

I wish my Bichon and I could be there to enjoy the inauguration with you. Unfortunately, we're dead. But we're safely stored in the cryogenic chamber, and await the day when our diseases can be cured. (Not sure why the chamber has a window).

I have more advice for you. Since there will be some controversy surrounding your first executive order - turning Theodore Roosevelt National Park into Byron Crimpy Private Park - I would suggest waiting a few days before putting up the barbed wire.

Milton: I want you to know that you're still my favorite grandson. You'll be a great Secretary of the Interior. And Spenser: Thank God for diplomatic immunity.

Sincerely,

B. Crimpy"

My response:

"Mr. Crimpy,

Please inform your descendants that your note to them will be in the file cabinet in our office. If your descendants manage to simultaneously become President, Vice President, and Secretary of the Interior, please keep in mind that the power to create National Parks and change their name and designation is in the U.S. Congress. Plan for a Congressional takeover. I hope they choose to govern with the foresight, democratic appeal, and commitment to natural resources conservation that Theodore Roosevelt did."

The Peaceful Transition of Power

As President Obama took the oath of office today, I took particular notice of a few items.

First, I felt a sort of reverence for our nation's strength by and commitment to the peaceful transition of power. This had not been as significant to me before I had traveled to Africa, where political upheaval seems continual (although not a problem in Tanzania). As President Obama spoke of work and alluded to national strength through the power individual work, there I was, working, touching up photos of prairie dogs. OK, my prairie dog pictures won't fix the economy, but they contribute in a small way to a better world. Importantly, as power shifted, I, as a member of the Executive Branch, went about my business as usual. The lights stayed on. No one tried to take over our office forcibly. The phone didn't even ring.

Second, I was deeply moved by the historical significance of Obama's election and inauguration in the context of civil rights and the lot of African-Americans in our nation's history. The part of Obama's speech that mentioned that his father might not have been allowed to dine at some of Washington's restaurants when he was born drove that point home. Here I sat as a steward of our 26th President's legacy, thinking of how just a century ago, Theodore Roosevelt faced severe public backlash that included racial epithets on headlines in Southern newspapers for inviting Booker T. Washington to dine with him at the White House.

Third, I think it's important to recognize that Barack Obama is in every way the first 21st Century President. Though his election was most probably because he was in every way the most opposite of the unpopular George W. Bush, he embodies the changing demographics of America and a generational shift. For a nation looking for guidance and leadership in order to get back to its fundamentals, the American people picked someone very different from any of its previous leaders.

This Month in TR History

January, 1909

In the final months of Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency, his relations with Congress soured. Congress was putting the brakes on the Secret Service’s ability to investigate Congressmen, which, to Roosevelt, smacked of corruption and fraud. A vague and unsubstantiated reference to corrupt members of Congress as “the criminal class” in Roosevelt’s Eighth Message to Congress in December, 1908 had touched off hostilities between the President and Congress.

Roosevelt, who built his early career fighting corruption and waste in government, found himself at the end of his career still fighting the same war with largely the same results: frustration on the part of the other elected officials and immense popularity with the voting public. The Secret Service had been, as Roosevelt noted in his January 4, 1909 Message to Congress, “partly responsible for the indictment and conviction of a Senator and a Congressman for land frauds in Oregon.”

As Roosevelt’s career was coming to a close, his opponents, sensing daylight, began to resist more strongly; they wouldn’t have to deal with Roosevelt much longer. The Secret Service’s ability to investigate them was an annoyance and, to Congressional officials, smelled like abuse of power. Unsubstantiated rumors circulated that Roosevelt had used the Secret Service to harass and spy on political opponents.

President Roosevelt defended his use of the Secret Service in his January 4, 1909 Message to Congress. “I do not believe that it is in the public interest to protect criminals in any branch of the public service, and exactly as we have again and again during the past seven years prosecuted and convicted such criminals who were in the executive branch of the Government, so in my belief we should be given ample means to prosecute them if found in the legislative branch.” Congress voted to condemn Roosevelt by tabling his Message. To Roosevelt, Congress’s actions implied complicity.

With relations with Congress at their worst, and President-elect Taft slowly organizing his administration, it was the winter of Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency.

Effective Speechwriting

I was listening to NPR and they were interviewing Ted Sorensen, John F. Kennedy's speechwriter. Someone in the audience asked him about how he wrote speeches. Part of his answer was to address four important aspects of an effective speech:

Charity - catering to the audience (relevance)
Clarity - use an outline while planning
Brevity - using only as many words as are necessary to get a point across
Levity - The ability to change the speech.

I thought that really applied to my job, and realized I intuitively knew this but now I can remember it through handy rhyming.

Elk Management Plan / EIS Comments

I have reviewed the Elk Management Plan and Environmental Impact Statement in its entirety and have weighed the options carefully. I am pleased to have identified an Alternative that I support and that I hope will be the choice the park makes in the end.

Below is a copy of the comments I submitted about Theodore Roosevelt National Park's Elk Management Plan. It should be made clear that these are my comments as a citizen, and they do not reflect the opinions of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the National Park Service, or any of their employees, nor do my comments reflect any official position on the part of any group, agency, or other entity. Theodore Roosevelt National Park has not identified a preferred alternative, and the issue is open for debate. I think that makes it more important to comment on than most documents of this type. Anyone interested in reviewing and commenting on the Elk Management Plan can do so here. The document is open for public comment until the end of the day, 3/19/09.

My comments:

After a full review of the entire Elk EIS / Management Plan, I feel sufficiently informed and confident to identify an option that I support and that will meet Theodore Roosevelt National Park and National Park Service objectives. I support Alternative D, termed “Testing and Translocation,” for reducing and maintaining the size of Theodore Roosevelt National Park’s elk herd.

Alternative D, “Testing and Translocation,” provides the park with the means to meet its elk management goals while achieving all of the collateral goals of the wildlife management action. Additionally, it addresses my personal concerns for the public perception of the National Park Service and its methods for wildlife management. The option does not preclude continued hunting opportunities outside the park. Importantly, Alternative D will have a minimal impact on visitor experience in the park, and will be the easiest action for the park to reconcile with U.S. citizens of diverse backgrounds from all fifty states.

I prefer Alternative D because I strongly feel that it is the most ethical choice and the most beneficial for the most parties involved. Since Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) has not been documented in the park, I am confident that some of the animals would be allowed to live elsewhere at the end of the action. If it is the underlying logic of the elk management action that some elk must die so that others may live, do not the largest number of animals live when some of the herd’s elk are translocated? Although the action’s flow chart suggests that it is a complicated course to pursue, any failure to reach the ultimate goal – the delivery of park elk to a willing recipient – would have the same net result as Alternative C, reduction by euthanasia. Why not at least try to let some of the population survive where they can be a benefit to other people, agencies, and ecosystems? Those elk selected for translocation could later be hunted, thereby achieving the goals of Alternative E, to “increase elk hunting opportunities outside the park.” Lastly, I prefer the option because the processing and testing is done off-site, where it will be out of public view and where it will have the least impact on visitor experience.

I am very uncomfortable with Alternative B and Alternative E because they are politically sensitive and do little to benefit the park’s surviving elk population. Alternative B allows the most vocal opposition to the Park’s elk management action – hunters – to find further cause for complaint. My fear is that “skilled volunteers,” as suggested by the language in the Elk Management Plan, will be a small and marginal factor in the action, causing only frustration for vast majority hunters that wish to be involved but would not be allowed to participate. It is better to preclude anything remotely resembling “hunting.” Additionally, how would the public perceive elk carcasses being dragged out and removed from the kill zones by park officials? Alternative E is inadequate for reducing and maintaining the elk herd, as scientific data in the EIS show. The elk appear to know what areas are “safe” to them and which are “unsafe,” from a hunting standpoint, and tend to avoid leaving the park.


The park must be very careful in how it would “look to increase elk hunting opportunities outside the park.” Sharing real-time locations of elk, or worse, driving them outside the park with a helicopter or other means violate the ethics of sportsmanship and reflect poorly on the National Park Service. The image of a helicopter driving elk out of the park into the sights of waiting hunters is too easily drawn as an editorial/political cartoon. In addition to the elk’s situational awareness making them difficult to maintain through hunting, hunting is a pastime of a minority of Americans with a shrinking number of participants. There are other concerns about hunting and its unintended consequences for the elk population’s health. A January 12, 2009 article in Newsweek, “It’s Survival of the Weak and Scrawny,” describes how trophy hunting has changed the laws of natural selection in animals such as elk since Theodore Roosevelt’s time: the largest bull elk are killed and the younger, less-impressive bulls do more breeding. Over time, the genetic makeup of the hunted animals changes, with the surviving generations becoming smaller, weaker, and demonstrating “frighteningly little genetic diversity,” according to the article. In increasing hunting opportunities outside the park, the overall health and genetic robustness of the herd the National Park Service was created to protect “unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations” must be considered with an understanding that hunting tends to reduce the virility and vitality of the elk herd. By instead pursuing Alternative D, “Testing and Translocation,” the park would be a nursery for elk with the vitality and characteristics of the elk that Theodore Roosevelt hunted in the 1880s. Preserving the animals and landscape as Theodore Roosevelt experienced them is a goal of Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

Likewise, Alternative A, the “No-Action Alternative” would spell disaster within a few years. I have heard some individuals say that the elk would “move out” before they would allow themselves to deplete the forage available to them, but this is erroneous. Elk, as the EIS indicates, have site-specific habitat preferences, and would likely degrade the land if they were allowed to become overpopulated as other deer species have been known to do in the past. As Aldo Leopold recognized, in the absence of some form of population control, deer species can be very destructive to the land, leading to erosion and negative impacts on plants and other animals. Leopold wrote in his essay “Thinking Like A Mountain,” “I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed first to anemic desuetude and then to death….In the end, the starved bones of the hoped-for deer herd, dead of its own too-much, bleach with the bones of the dead sage, or molder under the high-lined junipers.” Taking no action for any reason would be irresponsible for the elk, the plants, the soil, and the other animals that depend on those plants and the habitats they provide. Allowing overgrazing and the resulting starvation die-off would also be a shameful waste that would detract from the visitor experience. It is my expectation that Theodore Roosevelt National Park will pursue another option before it allows such a situation to occur, and I am encouraged that the Elk Management Plan strongly leans toward other options.

Alternative D, “Testing and Translocation,” is the best option for the reduction and continued management Theodore Roosevelt National Park’s elk population. Alternative D will meet park goals for reducing and managing the elk population, will minimize political opposition because hunting will remain at present or increased levels statewide, and will have the minimum impact on visitor experience in the park. It is also easier for the park to reconcile through its efforts in interpreting the management policy for the public: imagine a park ranger standing in front of a group and explaining how the park transported some of the herd elsewhere, then imagine him or her explaining why hundreds of elk are being shot from helicopters and having their carcasses hauled out of the park, or why the park is promoting hunting. There are the most good reasons to pursue Alternative D, and the fewest reasons not to pursue it.

3d Buildings Success!

Several of my models on Google's 3d Warehouse were accepted into the permanent Google Earth 3d Buildings layer. Others, including the Maltese Cross Cabin are still pending approval. Hooray for web-based slavery!