RodeoProfessor

Part time rodeo clown 🇺🇸 Full time faculty clown

[RodeoProfessor @RodeoProfessor]

American, never let foreigners shame you about how we protect our wildlife.

Americans invented the field of wildlife biology (Aldo Leopold) integrating biology, ecology, and management. We were the first to create a national university system (starting with the University of Wisconsin’s program) to systematize the discipline of wildlife biology and grow our impact across species and systems. This professionalized wildlife science and management worldwide.

Americans created the world’s first national parks establishing the idea of setting aside public land for wildlife and recreation. Our model is emulated globally. I have half a dozen senior fish and wildlife professionals at any given time that come to study with us to learn how we do it and bring what we know back home.

Americans invented the idea of wildlife as a public trust (you own all of our wildlife, not a lord or a private land owner like in much of the old world). We passed laws to require rigorous science based management to inform hunting seasons. We saw the early errors of our ways and ended commercial game markets that decimated our big game. We invented the “user pays” system where hunters and anglers fund conservation via licenses and excise taxes on guns and ammo to the tune of $50 billion since our programs began.

All of these innovations enabled the most dramatic and remarkable wildlife population recoveries on record. Bison, reduced to ~1000 now number half a million thanks to public land, science, and management. White tailed deer were nearly eliminated by 1900 now see numbers greater than 30 million. Wild turkey, my favorite example of a major conservation innovation in our trap and transfer programs (paid for by hunters) recovered spectacularly. Elk, beaver, birds of prey, pronghorn, the list goes on and on. America has also done more than any other nation in human history to fund global wildlife conservation as well. Billions of taxpayer dollars sent to Africa, LatAm, and Asia to protect wildlife and train local scientists, a largely thankless gift from the US taxpayer.

Saying that our wildlife has been “exterminated” is just an insane and ignorant claim to make but don’t let that stop you from weighing in on our affairs!

[Birch Brother 🪓 @BjorkBrodern]

The mass extermination of American fauna just proves that European anti poaching laws were correct and just.

[RodeoProfessor @RodeoProfessor]

@TheAKGuy Landowners who get a lot of deer on their property should start watching for maggot filled wounds and immediately report to TPWD. If this gets into the herd it’ll be terrible. This is the most important wildlife issue in the country right now.

[RodeoProfessor @RodeoProfessor]

@Gusagain16 I’ll run his name through some things next time I’m in the park, I have it in my to do list, will let you know

[RodeoProfessor @RodeoProfessor]

Before Americans like Aldo Leopold invented the field of wildlife biology in response to overhunting, you could visit the “Bears Only Lunch Counter” right next to the Old Faithful Inn. Famous old rangers like Ranger Martin Phillip would manage a big garbage pile where black bears and sometimes grizzlies would come and eat before a crowd of national park visitors.

The site started because bears would scavenge hotel garbage dumps beginning around the 1880s, and by the 1920s-30s bear feeding was the most famous draw next to Old Faithful. They sold candy in the park shops to throw at bears from your car and there were beggar bear celebs that people would come to the park hoping to see.

Bears began to lose the ability to do natural foraging, they started to damage cars, and to injure people pretty regularly. In the 1960s-70s, the remaining garbage dump “bear shows” were ended with the rise of the professional field of wildlife biology and the professionalizing of wildlife as a scientific discipline at American land grant universities, which in the Rockies became big sources for public land agency staff. The idea became accepted that wild animals need to do natural behavior on suitable habitat rather than be fed, and the park’s focus shifted from feeding to observing.

[ynpforever @ynpforever]

Happy 122nd birthday to the historic Old Faithful Inn! On June 1, 1904, the Old Faithful Inn welcomed its first guests. It remains just as impressive today and an early example of "parkitecture."

Have you been to the iconic Inn? ✋

[RodeoProfessor @RodeoProfessor]

The Everglades, maybe more than any other case in conservation, shows how important it is to build broad coalitions that span political parties if you want to get big things done. Florida’s Republican governors break records for the amount of funding they consistently bring in for Everglades restoration, the biggest and most successful restoration ever tried by human beings. Love for the Everglades and the reefs of Florida can’t be mapped onto American political parties, Floridian conservationists are great at the this. The competing perspective held by “Pattie Gonia” and his NGO buddies is you want to shock people and make a scene/get eyes on you, which somehow changes hearts and minds about conservation, but how? I’d say it alienates way more people than it wins over, and conservation/public land, whether we like it or not, requires you to win people over.

[RodeoProfessor @RodeoProfessor]

“Pattie Gonia” doesn’t give a rip about conservation or anything other than his own massive ego. He doesn’t care that posing in a mini skirt and stripper heels in a creepily oversexualized NPS uniform next to the Interior Secretary torched the largely bipartisan goodwill that the National Park Service and its rangers enjoyed up until 5 minutes ago.

Rangers are a symbolic position on the front lines of public land and outdoor education. They’re the ambassadors to the most important part our public land portfolio welcoming Americans from all walks of life to our parks. Little kids love getting the junior ranger badges from park rangers, and when they’re older cite these interactions as reasons to go into a career in the outdoors themselves.

Subverting that or “queering” what are otherwise unifying symbols for the American outdoors makes a visit to our parks about his activist nonsense performance rather than nature/wildlife. He doesn’t speak for the parks, he definitely doesn’t speak for the majority of its employees who really resent the political firestorm when he stages stunts like draping a giant trans flag on the face of El Cap.

And I’m sure he wouldn’t take any responsibility for the fact that when I see anyone on his site celebrating public land agency employee firing, it’s his picture they share to show that the agencies lost their way, went batshit crazy, and ignore their statutory purpose in favor of goofy activism. And for what? Raising a couple grand here and there for nutty ideologue NGOs in his never ending quest to demand you give him attention.

Get crazy people out of conservation so we can get back to focusing on bighorn sheep and elk.

[ABC News @ABC]

Drag queen Pattie Gonia has publicly rejected a proposal from outdoor gear and apparel brand Patagonia, which the company said would help "resolve" the brand's trademark infringement lawsuit against the performer. https://t.co/C8wbA9OarH

[RodeoProfessor @RodeoProfessor]

@brim006 Stripper costume, hostage looking Interior Secretary, giant man in monster makeup. We’re promoting public land!

[RodeoProfessor @RodeoProfessor]

@CraigHarrigan1 @caseymurph1 @johnrich @GovKathyHochul @alex_fasulo Don’t flatter yourself, you’re trying to sell something and you know nothing about Casey or his situation so you make it up in your own head because you feel your fake consulting business is threatened. Boring.

[RodeoProfessor @RodeoProfessor]

@Babygravy9 The British yearn for the bass boat and SEC tailgate

[RodeoProfessor @RodeoProfessor]

@caseymurph1 @CraigHarrigan1 @johnrich @GovKathyHochul @alex_fasulo Every time someone comes after you on here they’re a charlatan consultant trying to sell something. Nobody on Casey’s side is against rooftop or parking lot solar. This is about keeping Americans on public land and preserving western ways of life, Craig.

[RodeoProfessor @RodeoProfessor]

JC are you licking Texas toads again brother? The black footed ferret program is a poster child program, one of the most successful American endangered species recovery projects of all time. The boys in Meeteetse know what’s up. In WY you can shoot coyotes on sight, no bag limits no permits.

[RodeoProfessor @RodeoProfessor]

@cigarsandlegs Whatever gets him maximal attention, doesn’t matter if people cite his nonsense as a reason federal land management agency employees should be fired.

[RodeoProfessor @RodeoProfessor]

@EchoesofWarYT This is awesome, I need to order a 12ft flag for the barn after reading this thanks.

[RodeoProfessor @RodeoProfessor]

@SamGilson13 Damn, that’s really sad and really interesting thanks for sharing. If you have any of his older stuff you helped on I’d love to read it.

[RodeoProfessor @RodeoProfessor]

Once again, in outer space, the once great magazine High Country News wrote this article and headline to make you upset that there’s a “public land sale” in Colorado (there isn’t, there’s a lease sale). They also want you to think this is going to be a free for all with drilling that will majorly impact wildlife, which is not the case in Colorado.

Before any drilling, BLM has to do a NEPA assessment analyzing impacts to wildlife. Courts have struck down some lease approvals for poor wildlife analysis. Colorado Parks and Wildlife manage elk by focusing on high priority habitat and BLM through Resource Management Plans (RMPs) which are now aligned with state standards for big game in CO.

BLM lessees are required to conserve seasonal habitat and connectivity for big game species in support of Colorado Parks and Wildlife goals. Oil and gas companies are subject to seasonal timing limitations (no extraction activity during winter concentration of elk or calving seasons right now). There’s no activity or very restricted activity allowed in wintering or migration habitat. There’s density limits on well pads, roads, and so on. Companies are required to mitigate certain disturbances like funding habitat restoration or clustering manmade infrastructure. These rules were all made through close collaboration between BLM, industry, and Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

Wouldn’t an article that’s meant to fearmonger about impacts to wildlife actually go into some of these specifics on wildlife mitigation within BLM leases for oil and gas companies? Like are there anticipated issues with seasonal timing considerations? Any issues with the high priority habitat being violated? No, this article isn’t about giving you real information and enabling you to learn more about oil and gas extraction on public land. It’s specifically written to make people dumber. HCN what happened to you?!

[High Country News @highcountrynews]

On June 16, the feds will open Colorado’s biggest public land sale in modern history, threatening wildlife and recreation. https://t.co/aKFPU5CNFm

[RodeoProfessor @RodeoProfessor]

@Pathofmostresi1 He loves attention, even this type.

[RodeoProfessor @RodeoProfessor]

@GaryGrumbach Yeah the discourse and social fabric in America is so much better with boomer orange man bad “journos”

[RodeoProfessor @RodeoProfessor]

@tonywendice1954 I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more terrible commencement speech than the one he gave at Wake Forest last year. Screaming at kids about orange man bad on their day. Absolutely mental.

[RodeoProfessor @RodeoProfessor]

@nikitabier @FrontRowBrian @mert Really great stuff

[RodeoProfessor @RodeoProfessor]

@PblcLndNtnlst When people cry wolf like this about public land sales it makes it a lot easier for people not to care when they actually do a land sale!

[RodeoProfessor @RodeoProfessor]

@rayzrlove @b2analog It’s a work of art!

[RodeoProfessor @RodeoProfessor]

Field season has begun, got to live a certain way though. This summer we are counting fish, taking water temps, collecting wildlife migration data, collecting public land data, doing stuff with turkeys and elk. Busy summer.