re: Will environmental conservation ever become important throughout the South?

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Saltwater intrusion kills marshes,marshes are the development area for shrimps crabs and such. Put two and two together.

Still don't believe me? Is it just a coincidence that Louisiana has half the seafood output it had 30 years ago?

Edit:prime example of people who have no idea what they're talking about and have strong baseless opinions on incredibly important state issues

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I actually live in the area that produces this seafood you speak of, and have many friends in the industry. Here’s some points you’re leaving out

1. The decrease is mainly caused by international competition, so much so that the state just made a law that says you have to advertise if you are selling non-local seafood

2. There isn’t a commercial fisherman alive that will tell you they had a good season, as a way to artificially inflate the price and/or ask for handouts

3. Overfishing. The crabbers will blame it on BP, but their mine fields of traps have caused harm to the population

4. Saltwater intrusion doesn’t kill marshes. Erosion kills marshes


ETA: 5. The price of commercial fishing has gone up due to equipment, fuel, licensing, etc. There are probably way less than half of the full time fisherman as there were 30 years ago due to some combination of these points

Poverty is a huge source of our pollution. I live in a small town on a nice street. But, with weak zoning, there is a shitty rent house on the corner that is subsidized rent. The woman who lives there piles up her trash in the back yard (no fence, you can see it as you drive onto our street) and burns it all - trash bags, plastic, and whatever.

I assume she cannot afford garbage cans as we have city trash pickup. There is also trash scattered around her back yard.

Litter is a big problem in Louisiana.

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If Yellowstone was in the south, it would have been clear cut and strip mined 100 years ago, and what's left would have hunting camps all over it. Sorry to say, but its true.

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Yep. If we weren't so bad we coulda had some cool national parks and forests and named them things like:

Smokey Mountains
Hot Springs
Mammoth Cave
Kisatchie
Apalachicola
Bienville
Cherokee
Conecuh
DeSoto
Homochitto
Chattahoochee-Oconee

but, we fricked it up with our clear cutting and strip mining.

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Why are Yankees and West coasters such pompous assholes?

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He referred to the south as "we" in his post.

I hope so. What is strange is most southerners claim to be outdoorsman, but oppose any measures to protect our environment.

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One of my biggest issues with hunting as a whole is the subset that really doesn't give a shite about anything else but a deer or a duck. They will be the downfall of hunting. They are why I disagree with the whole "hunting is conservation" concept. It's not. Some hunters are conservationists, not all of them. It takes more than buying a license to be considered a conservationist.

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So if someone only hunts deer and ducks, they can’t be a conservationist? What about all of the other animals that eat your food plots/rice fields?


What about nuisance/predator control? Herd management? The whitetail was headed towards extinction less than 100 years ago, now there’s like 30 million of them

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The Northeast has every bit of the trash the South does.

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not even close

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We have some great natural areas but most of the population of the region appears to not care about protecting any of it.

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I can't speak for the rest of the South, but Alabama does a good job of using both public and private resources to deliver in this area: Forever Wild, Freshwater Land Trust, Cahaba River Society, Black Warrior River Keeper, etc, etc, etc.

The environment has always been protected better by private interests groups than the gov't. The private groups actually care about what they do as opposed to the gov't which generally doesn't give a shite about the environment (or anything else).

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Smokey Mountains

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Was highly resisted by the locals.

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Kisatchie

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Mostly was bought at sheriffs sales during the Great Depression after people lost their land for unpaid taxes. If not for that, it wouldn't exist. It wasn't voluntary, and people still bitch quite a bit about all the "government land." They sure don't mind having a place to hunt where they don't have to pay out the arse for a deer lease, though.