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[BlackSalad]

After watching 60 minutes minutes last night, I started to ponder what exactly the state government has control over.

In the 60 minutes episode, they did a report on the bear population in northern wyoming near yellowstone. For those of you who didn't get to see it, it basically talked about how the population is now so great that people are being threatened and livestock are being killed, aka the economy is starting to go into the ground. This sparked my interest because I am not only from that area of the US, but know first hand the impact the bears have had on the environment.

For awhile now the federal government has been trying to raise the bear population in Yellowstone, and they have done it very successfully. So successfully even that the bears are spreading out of the park into local communities. Bears are becoming more than just a nuissance to the public in towns well outside of the national park, and in one case they interviewed a family whose house was being 'attacked' so to speak.. the bear tore off some siding and while trying to get into their house.

Even the environmental specialists in the area agree that the bear population is ready to be controlled because its not a balanced ecosystem. Many towns in northern wyoming have passed resolutions to allow hunting of the bears to put the ecosystem back into equalibrium, but here comes the feds. Some lady in washington who probably never has even been in wyoming seems to think that hunting is bad in all circumstances. She questions why the people complain about the bears when they decided to live in the wilderness. What a stupid question, the bears are now beyond a natural occuring population, and the local economies are being impacted in a negative way. I think that deserves the right to complain and pass a resolution.

But the resolutions didn't go through, this lady who sits in an office building all day has blocked the resolutions through some federal thing and the people of northern wyoming just have to suffer. The state is helpless to the feds.

This brings me to my point, through history I thought state governments had a HUGE influence on the federal government, but now it seems all they control are state roads and public schools. If a state makes a law that the feds don't agree with, sure enough it'll go to the supreme court and the feds will get there way. What happened to state governments? Are they helpless against the federal government?

 

[Fragamemnon]

Those bears are currently protected under the endangered species act (ESA). As inconvenient as you or others may view species conservation, the integrity of this act is a cornerstone of US environmental policy. If states or local governments could simply short-circuit the ESA because it hampers their economic development plans, then the ESA would be completely meaningless, as local economic interests will always beat out some animal that people don't care too much about.

The Yellowstone bears are up for delisting from the ESA endangered/threatened list later this year by the Fish and Wildlife Service. At that point, the states will have the jurisdiciton to implement whatever population controls they see fit.