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Banning of Fishing in State Parks ??

6K views 17 replies 10 participants last post by  pmflyfisher 
#1 ·
Whats next ?

FYI


PETA targets fishing in state parks

Associated Press — Jan. 23, 2002

WINONA, Minn. — Minnesota anglers like their fishing enough to wake up before dawn in the summer and sit on thin ice in the winter, so they probably won't take kindly to the latest campaign by an animal-rights group.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wants Minnesota to ban fishing in state parks. "Impaling him on a hook and ripping him out of his environment is cruelty to animals, plain and simple," said Dan Shannon, who is leading PETA's "Fishing Hurts" campaign.

The group launched its campaign by sending a letter to Bill Morrisey, Department of Natural Resources director of parks and recreation.

"The violent process of fishing and its consequences do not complement the peace and tranquility of a state park," Shannon said in the letter.

Speaking last week from PETA's Norfolk, Va., headquarters, he said this is the animal rights group's first anti-fishing campaign. It also began lobbying in Louisiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Michigan.

"Fishing is just hunting in the water," Shannon said, adding that Minnesota already bans hunting in state parks. "The scientific evidence clearly states that fish can feel pain."

In a return letter sent to Shannon last week, Brad Moore, the DNR's assistant commissioner for operations, said he does not believe anglers or their activities are damaging to state parks.

"We have no intention of banning fishing in state parks," Moore wrote.

Shannon said that because fish don't make a noise or a facial expression upon being hooked, they receive less sympathy from the public than do mammals and birds, he said.

Rich Enochs, president of the Win Cres Chapter of Trout Unlimited in Winona, said: "It's an interesting position, but I can't seethe point.

"A total ban seems to be contrary to any sort of reasonable balance on outdoors philosophy," he said.

Shannon said PETA's campaign hopes to foster a public debate and doesn't expect people "to agree with us overnight."

Garry Barvels, manager of Whitewater State Park, said he didn't understand why PETA would send the letter.

The park, like many in southeastern Minnesota, offers fishing for stream trout. The winter fishing season is open for catch-and-release using only hooks without barbs.

"They're not really hurting the fish that way," Barvels said. Of the PETA campaign, he said, "I don't know how to even answer those people."
 
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#4 ·
In nature, from which we are inseperable, predators chase and take prey. Lions eat gazelle. Pirhana eat mammals in a flurry of painful bitesized flesh-cutting chunks so quickly that these large amazonian rodents haven't had the chance to die as they disappear in a bloodbath of water, cleaned to the bone. Crocodiles eat... well anything. It's a dog eat dog world out there.

And on the other end of the spectrum there's PETA. Humans, who often consider themselves above nature, yet breathe the same oxygen, drink the same water and subsist on the same core nutrients as the rest of the earth's creatures, decide that they must stop people from engaging in fishing.

How more off-base from reality can you get? If fish could vote I am sure they would choose angling over extinction - and dams have rendered entire populations of fish extinct. I have never heard of PETA attacking power conglomerates to prevent the extinction of a whole race of fish, but they are sensitive to their feelings. There are no feelings in extinction.

When they form a picket line in the water to stop cormorants from eating fry, herons from impaling fish with their beaks, bass from swallowing other fish live, they are being fair about their argument (while exposing how ludicrous it is!).

When they stop polluters from dumping fish-choking chemicals, industry from emitting sulfuric and carbonic particulates that lead to acidification of lakes that slowly and painfully eliminates sensitive species (talk about suffering!), then they are on the right track to reducing animal suffering.

Nature sacrifices the few on behalf of the many, so that all benefit. The transfer of resources in this exchange is rarely "pretty" from a PETA perspective. By focusing on such a narrow track as angling rights, they are missing the boat. They are not effecting meaningful reduction in animal suffering; nature will cull the population to a state of equilibrium in no more graceful manner than a caring angler would. Anglers are perhaps the largest body of humans on earth with a compulsion to protect not only the fish but the entire ecosystem around them, well most anyway. We suck at it sometimes but our hearts are in the right place.

If we suddenly stopped fishing in a Minnesota State Park, what has been achieved? A small enclave of anal retentive humans will be sated by the decision. That's about it.

PETA isn't about the animals feelings, it's about PETA people's feelings. Thinking they are in touch with nature, they couldn't be more out of it. Somewhere at this very moment, life on earth is succeeding because the natural cycle of life, death, and the game of numbers is taking it's course - uninterrupted by picket lines. When we choose to participate in this cycle, we confirm that we are still in our own way part of nature.

.02

Juro
 
#5 ·
I am not biologist or a PETA fan ..that's for sure ...but I would think Fish ,like all living things of that order would feel pain... I mean pain is the body's reation to something wrong or as a self defence mechamism. If you did not feel pain you would not live long. Fish can sence temperature differences etc... now the pain may not be as we define it but there must be something that will make a fish or any animal react to an injury.
 
#6 ·
Peta just wants money!

I was reading an article on peta, and they stated that most of the money donated to the peta orginization was actually used by the managing people and none went to help out on projects to help the poor and mistreated animals. They just get to travel and play at the ignorant people who donate to them expense! Juro is right, that without the natural order of things, many would just plain disappear. The white tail deer is one of these success storys as well as many other animals. If they weren't hunted, they would eat themselves out of house and home, and you would have a mass starvation on hand. Hunting a fishing, done in a responsible manner will always leave us plenty of fish in the lakes and streams for those who choose not to do either, hunt or fish, but just to see! Even Yellowstone park cannot keep its animals in the area, because they would starve. Plus they re-introduced the wolves to help them manage the units..... Peta is just in it for the money....... Plain and Simple.... Like their minds.....:hehe:
 
#7 ·
Yep, I could beleive that about PETA.

Many so called public interest groups like that and they are usually operated by lawyers.

Sorry had to get that out. But I have to deal with our state and federal legal system on a daily basis at work and it is incredible as to the politics and beauvcreacy it has evolved into here in America.

One of my favorite sayings "It is out of control". No offense to the lawyers on this forumn, but I suppose I will hear something back from them.

If you do please PM me so we can do it in privacy and you will be limited to 1000 characters per message. :chuckle: :chuckle:

I battle about 30 corporate lawyers every week at work and a number of extenal firms and trade associations so I am well prepared for these conversations.

Note I am not a lawyer, but educated in business and life.
 
#8 ·
Everyone has made some excellent points. I would just like to add one thing, and it has to do with the group's money issues. PETA has a website, and I implore you not to visit it. They justify the site's existence based on the number of daily hits, and by clicking over to it, no matter how morbid your curiousity may be, you are helping the organization to spread it's skewed views. Suffice it to say that this group depends on people who are followers, not leaders, who cannot and will not think for themselves.

I realize that by discussing their website some may want to visit it to see what I'm talking about, but I think that it's worth the risk. I'd rather have people know about the consequences of curiousity first. As a rule, I don't usually discuss PETA, because I simply don't want to acknowledge them. But as Juro has described, they have double and triple standards that can set the table for dangerous precedents.
 
#9 ·
Maybe this is where we, as sportsmen, need to begin focusing our attention in dealing with such groups. The Ontario government introduced the Heritage Hunting and Fishing Act giving Canadian sportsmen the right to hunt and fish. Alabama amended their state constitution in 1996 to include a guarantee to hunt & fish. Mississippi followed, I believe. If sportsmen have the constitutional right to hunt and fish spelled out, the anti-angling groups would then be infringing upon the sportsman’s constitutional rights, which arguably could also include the pursuit of happiness.
 
#11 ·
We Are What We Are

There's no question that being fought and reeled in is an unpleasant experience for a fish, at least from as far as we can anthromorphize our feelings onto these animals. This, however, is beside a point which hasn't been brought up enough or made strong enough, methinks.

We are, like the fish, a product of our evolution. As Juro points out, we're all animals in this together.

The human species evolved as hunter gatherers, that is to say, we're opportunistic predators. This predatory instinct manifests itself to varying degrees within us and takes its form in many ways, fishing being one of them. We feel the need to catch fish, to pursue fish, to strategize how to catch more and catch better fish because it's in our genes. Catching fish has helped our species survive to this point. Because most of us do not need to catch fish to survive, again is not the issue. We do not want to lose the instinct and ability to pursue and capture prey -- it may not be of vital importance now, but in generations to come, on a bombed out planet, it just may become important again. Fishing is our culture, our heritage, our capital in the survivorship bank. Keep at it.

Some biologist once described the primary drives of the species as the 4F functions -- feeding, fighting, fleeing and mating behavior. To this we may add a fifth: fishing.

Cheers,

Eric
 
#13 ·
Eric I do not believe that we have evolved, one of the signs of evolution is that a species always changes for the survival of the species. The "survival of the fittes thing", if it were true,acient north amercians would have alot more body hair then thoes of european decent, as it would greatly increase their chance of survival. Shure there are abbdatations in the natural world, but if species truely evolved, nothing would ever go extinct.

I believe that Man was made manager of all things natural, And we have greatly failed at this task, Man has misunderstood the natural world. We less then a centry ago, raped the verry resorces that sustained us, never getting our bellies full, many riches were made from greed. This doesnt mean that industry is all bad. I know loggers that have great respect for the eco-system that they harvest, they actually help the system, and set out to do so. When it comes to Industry, greed is the "culprit". We as a people know what is right and wrong. I have never done anything wrong without knowing it was wrong. I also never have felt that my fishing was wrong.


Peta: is full of people that have smoked all the reasoning cells out of their brain.


Nate
 
#17 · (Edited)
I do agree with them on this stupid abuse of an animal, I wonder how Mr. "Bubba The Love Sponge" would like this applied to him IN PUBLIC ?

In this case I would rather be alone with PETA people than Mr " Bubba The Love Sponge"

Note, I used to be a hunter but gave it up in 1971 when we came back from NYS with a bunch of rabbitts and squirrels and were to lazy to clean them when we got home. I asked my friend what he did with them ? He said he through them out. I asked myself what is the point in this.

Gave up hunting concentrated on fly fishing, skiing, and hunting women in the 70s. Yes they were very good years.

http://www.peta-online.org/alert/automation/AlertItem.asp?id=366
 
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