II is inevitable that we will mine vast quantities of coal from the 

 upper midwest in the intermountain states. Some people don't like that 

 idea because it is somehow inconsistent with their feelings about what 

 ought to happen to this part of the world. There will be, and again it's 

 inevitable, a general shift in certain elements of the populations. The 

 West is popular with retired people. You all know that. The sunbelt is 

 being inhabited by people who are retired, elderly and retired people, 

 people who want to come away from the megalopolis and live a different 

 lifestyle. You know that energy which is centered in the West is not 

 consumed in the West and must be taken some other place. 



On lop of that lies this curious understanding that people have about 

 the environment and the creatures that live in the environment. The 

 extraordinary commitment they have in a well-meaning, powerful, 

 understandable, sometimes frightening way. People with whom I deal 

 every day--and you're beginning to deal less frequently perhaps--who 

 believe that animal populations are a thing they can't quite understand but 

 they can understand the individual animal and become concerned about the 

 well-being of the individual, without understanding that the individual is a 

 part of a population. 



Almost all of the animal welfare and the humane groups have their 

 philosophies based on the idea that the well-being, the fate to the 

 individual animal is paramount to them and cannot comprehend the larger 

 issue of populations of animals. There are a great many people in the 

 tJniled States who dislike hunting. Unfortunately, there are a great many 

 more people in the United States who do not understand it and therefore 

 are not committed either way. They are not anti-hunters, they just don't 

 understand it and so are not committed and are vulnerable to being 

 persuaded to be committed one way or another. You had a discussion I 

 understand in the last day or two about the future of hunting. I have a 

 great concern about the future of hunting for the reason I just described. 

 A great many people in this country have no opinion whatsoever about 

 hunting and are very vulnerable to influence other people have, for 

 whatever reason, very fixed opinions about hunting. Couple that with the 

 idea of one-man, one-vote, the extraordinary power of lobbying 

 organizations, the extrarodinary power of the media when it's used for 

 these purposes, and we might one day assemble at a meeting like this to 

 talk about what was instead of what is. 



I am concerned about a variety of other things, but I think the 

 principal concern wrapped up in one, is the real issue of what it is we 

 shall do to bring some focus in the nation the problems of the environment 

 and the out-of-doors, recognizing that ironically and frustratingly, no 

 matter what the philosophy of the individual may be--anti-hunting, 

 pro-hunting, no opinion, whatever the philosophy about management or 

 preservation or exploitation may be--most people, almost all people, have 

 the same objective in mind. They want a quality of life. They want an 

 environmental quality, a world peopled with wild animals as well as the 

 human animal and they want that to be perpetuated into the future. They 

 just disagree on how we get there. They disagree about how we get to 

 that point. 



