Wednesday, March 7, 2018

News from Theodore Roosevelt's Inspiration

I get Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership articles sent to my inbox, and today's is worth sharing a little about. I'll leave the link at the end of what I have to say. Surprises me that the Bureau of Economic Analysis is tracking the outdoor sector of the economy for the first time, but the results aren't surprising to me: about two percent of the gross domestic product. More than 800 billion dollars is a lot of money, but I wouldn't expect any less of a nation that values its land and water as much as we do. It's a growing figure. The economy in general grew 2.8 percent in 2016, while the outdoor economy grew 3.8 percent.

Now what about the Trump Administration's response? Public lands continue to be a target, agencies managing the 640 million acres (which doesn't seem all that many) taking budget cuts. The infrastructure is a wreck, and little is getting done to maintain and improve it. According to TRCP, the President's infrastructure proposal is contingent upon expanding industrialization of public lands. If this land is my land and your land, our President seems glaringly un-American. To be frank with you, I think of the bodacious streamer fly I cast once into the Salmon River back in November 2015. Whatever possessed me to try it, and it doesn't take much of a stretch of the imagination to guess what, I realized before I finished stripping it back the bad idea. It has a big fat red head, black body, and busy black marabou tail like a woman's dress. What was the communist dictatorship of the Soviet Union but a government directing industrialization?

I will always know that isn't my America.


http://www.trcp.org/2018/03/06/outdoor-recreation-jobs-spending-shouldnt-overlooked/



No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments Encouraged and Answered