There has been some good news on the pond front since I wrote the piece in the June FAMA. We've had some good rain the last few months, and the late spring snow in the mountains around here has raised the snowpack to near normal. We still aren't out of the drought by any means, but it could be waning. As a rancher said on the news recently, " The reservoirs are filling, but at this stage, we're still only about three 90 degree days away from where we were." It's going to take a period of sustained precip to make up for four years of parching.
Some other good news on the pond front was that the state legislature adjourned without passing any legislation to decimate the pond industry. I should add that when the state looks at ponds here, they aren't just talking little backyard garden ponds. The ones that have them concerned are real ponds
- the kind you can float boats in. The problem is that when things like this start getting regulated, the ripple effect can be far reaching.
Several years ago, the state Fish, Wildlife and Parks department got worried about some of the crazy things people were trying to keep as pets and the danger to the natural ecosystem if they were released into the wild. There was also a story about someone finding a piranha in a local swimming hole, so the F,W, & P reaction was to introduce a bill to the legislature that would give them control over what people could keep. This wasn't a first or unique. Our bill was patterned after ones attempted in Utah, Oregon, New Jersey, and elswhere. It would basically have outlawed all creatures as pets, then built a "clean" list of those critters that the F,W, & P deemed appropriate. For an animal to make the list, someone would have to fill out the application, including an environmental impact statement and of course a filing fee, then there would be a hearing and a decision on whether that animal was added to the list. This wouldn't be allowed on a blanket basis. Each and every seperate individual species of marine fish would have had to go through the process for us to sell saltwater livestock, even though we are over 500 miles from the ocean at the closest, and with no saltwater bodies around, no marine fish could possibly have survived release into the wild. We hired a lobbyist, testified before committees, and eventually defeated the bill. I have to admit that much of the momentum behind this type of protective legislation is due to the stupidity of members of our own hobby. There are too many jackasses of the type who released the piranha into a local body of water. The few like that who have no regard for the repercussions of their actions are working to ruin thngs for the rest of us.
Jerks like that lend justification to the concept, but there is also a history of legislation being passed in spirit that gets turned to other uses when the letter of the law is scrutinized. One example of this is our own department of Agriculture. A law was passed decades ago that gave them power to monitor livestock feed. The spirit of the law was to ensure that feed was nutritious and met a minimum standard both for the animals needs and for the safety of the food supply. Twice I have had a representative of the Ag department come in and go down the rows of my fish food to see if all the brands I carried were registered with the state and had analyisis on reccored for each of their types of food. This isn't because the state of Montana has an overriding concern in ensuring neon tetras get proper nutrition, it has to do with the fact that each of those manufactureres has to pay to have their food approved for sale in the state. It has turned from a livestock protection bill into a revenue generating scheme. I am always leery when our government starts meddling in another previously ignored industry that their motives may always not be pure. Help yourself and the pond industry. In the words of Sgt. Esterhaus from Hill Street Blues, "Let's be careful out ther, people." And if you see someone releasing anything into the wild, knock 'em upside the head for me.