staffs are small. They struggle with the all many communication chores 

 and all the many problems they have, and the financial commitment is 

 usually small. The staffs are usually small and when the budget 

 criirich has come, usually the I and E program is the one that is first 

 thought of in terms of the budget reduction. Elegant state magazines 

 are easy to cut and are cut very early in the budget reduction series. 

 So commitments are small to what actually is a very large need. 



Now secondly--and I hope I don't walk on any toes here but I 

 think I need to say it--my second concern relates to the first and that 

 is inadequate commitment. That is, too often we fail to hire the highly 

 trained and highly skilled communication people to do the job that needs 

 to be done. How often is it true that we transfer people from the 

 operational agencies who have an interest in I and E into those kinds of 

 jobs rather than making the commitment to hire people with really 

 advanced training and advanced experience in that kind of work? 



Now a third peeve with I and E efforts is often the breadth for 

 the programs that result. And maybe that breadth is a symptom of the 

 first two concerns that I've voiced. For example, it seems to me too 

 often we still dwell on hunting and fishing matters. And I'm a hunter 

 and I'm a fisherman and I like it and I don't make any apoligies for it, 

 but our resource and environmental problems, today are so broad and 

 so complex we ought to be painting those problems. Often our hunting 

 and fishing problems are so inextricably involved in the broader 

 environmental issues that we ought to be painting those broader 

 conderns to the public more than we do, rather than sort of 

 entertaining with hunting and fishing types of stuff as much as we do. 

 And I'll not say that we shouldn't use that. But it seems to me that 

 the breadth of our programs need serious consideration. 



And then a fourth concern I think, is that too often we act like 

 stockbrokers. We don't like to talk about the negative or the 

 pessimistic. How often do we say, "Well, yes, we've lost some wildlife 

 habitat and so there's some problem there, but we've had a good year 

 and so probably it's going to be at least average if not better than an 

 average year this year." When in fact, every day we're losing habitat 

 and every day we're experiencing environmental insult which over the 

 long pull is inevitably reducing the wildlife and fisheries resources and 

 other resources. The public should be told that and I don't think we 

 do. We shy away from that kind of thing. Like a stockbroker, we 

 always assume that tomorrow it's going to be better. Not only does the 

 public need to know, but if they knew it, it might get them off our 

 back more because we tend to put forth an optomistic front. So, when 

 things aren't looking so good to the public and the public doesn't 

 understand why, they ought to know that the problems that are really 

 besetting wildlife resources and many of our other resources usually 

 take a backseat to the other demands on the land. As a result, so 

 often, we're powerless to do anything about it and things slip away 

 from us. Like Bill Brown said earlier, we don't really do much wildlife 

 management. It's mostly people management. And the reason we don't 

 do wildlife management is because we just plain don't have the power 

 and the influence to offset the other, more demanding uses of the land. 



