US Fish & Wildlife Service
Date of this Version
1982
Abstract
Well, it's been an interesting year. Somehow, it got to be very convenient for some folks to misconstrue what the Secretary had said. Some of those folks just seemed determined to make James Watt a household name-and they succeeded. And those same folks succeeded, too, in increasing the membership roles of a few of the environmental groups. But I don't think they succeeded very well in listening to and understanding what the Secretary said a year ago .... So, as succinctly and plainly as possible, I will spell out again that the goals of this Administration weren't designed to create the perfect agenda for environmentalism, nor for development interests for that matter. The goals weren't pipe-dream perfection stuff for anybody ... but common sense management, balanced economic growth geared to benefit the entire country ... through orderly phased development and resource use based on wise, scientific wildlife, fishery and resources management. And I'm happy to say we've stuck to that original goal-no matter how others have tried to bungle it or misinterpret it-and I'm delighted to report we've made some pretty important achievements in the last year.
Comments
Published in TRANSACTIONS OF THE FORTY-SEVENTH NORTH AMERICAN WILDLIFE AND NATURAL RESOURCES CONFERENCE, ed. Kenneth Sabol (Washington, DC, 1982).