There have been reports about the increase in Massachusetts people visiting food pantries. It must be humiliating for proud people to enter a food pantry and feel as though they are begging for food. One has to wonder, whether the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and its community of non-profits are promoting a feeding the hungry program or is it propagandizing another welfare program?

Massachusetts has establish a Food Policy Councils to improve coordination among the many state agencies that regulate the Commonwealth’s food system along with bringing together interested parties across the state to improve the state’s food system and protect the land on which our food is grown. However, I have not observed any state agencies or the Food Policy Council recommend the high protein, low fat meat from wildlife as a source of food. .

In the past, especially, during the Depression years, many of the poor hungry people of the lower economic class in rural Massachusetts turned to wildlife to assist them in feeding their families. Hunting, trapping and fishing, allowed the people of the lower economic class (who are known as the working poor or the missing class) a proud feeling of putting food on the table; and with today’s freezer extending the meat for a future bounty and less hunger. Hunting, fishing and trapping helped stop the humiliating feelings of visiting a food pantry, especially, after a family had income vanished because of a job loss or another change in their economic situation, such as, a divorce.

It was supporters of Massachusetts non-profits, such as the Audubon Society, the MSPCA and others who helped take the self-esteem away from the missing class or working poor here. According to reports, these non-profits used a dog that lost part of its leg from a motor vehicle accident and they implied that the dog lost his leg because of a live catch foot-hold trap. This questionable information was put before the public during a political campaign here. The non-profits spent over a million dollars; with most of the money being spent on TV advertising showing the injured dog to support question one that was on the ballot in 1996. The results eliminated the low cost equipment use by the poor to harvest wildlife. The tools became illegal. Now a group of the regulated poor would have to visit food pantries and endure the embarrassment one feels begging for food rather than the proud feeling that only comes when a person self-supports their family.

There are bills before the Massachusetts Legislature, such as, an act valuing our natural resources (H 750) or an act allowing hunting on Sunday. Both are reasonable approach to help manage the Commonwealth’s wildlife population. Furthermore, with these law changes, the working poor or missing class will have additional devices to help feed their families as they did in the past. Moreover, as the working poor or missing class, follow the natural world in rural or suburban communities; they would be assisting the public where wildlife, such as beavers, is considered a nuisance rather than natural resources.

Other organizations, such as the Committee for Responsible Wildlife Management (CRWM) http://www.macrwm.org are trying to educate the legislature about the benefits of pro-active wildlife management. CRWM’s pro –active management course of action is supporting the working poor or missing class who will seek out natural resources with skill to feed their families. Everyone in the struggle could use the caring community to urge the legislature to help feed the hungry by encouraging the Massachusetts Food Policy Council to support all solutions to feed the hungry instead of regulating a group of people by administering government programs with its millions of dollars from taxpayers and business donations.

Residents should question their elected state officials regarding their safety, especially, with public health officials finding EEE in mosquitoes collected in cities and towns after the state sprayed pesticide. They should ask themselves and their legislators if the EEE is the results of an expanding beaver population and their dams keeping water inside of swamps for too long in the summer season.

Organizations such as the MSPCA, the Massachusetts Audubon Society and the HSUS spent over a million dollars using deceptive advertising practices 12+ years ago to convince the public to stop pro-active wildlife managing. Today, with their high priced lobbyist, they are keeping the unsafe condition and hurting residents of Massachusetts. Furthermore, professional wildlife biologists are voicing that a change in law is needed. Yet, the legislators are listening to extreme members of animal rights organization not the professional wildlife biologist. The legislators are looking for the public to flood their e-mails and telephones before the do the right thing and admit the mistake of years past.

 (3) Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Residence.

(a) Discrimination on the basis of residence, including preferential reservation, membership or annual permit systems, or user fees is prohibited on the Project site unless this provision is waived by the Secretary.

Massachusetts’s Law requires residents to participate in a Hunter Education Program in order to receive a hunting license, and issues a special certificate too archery hunters after completion of a special archery hunting course.    By the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife allowing communities to add separate requirements for license’s hunters to use public conservation land held by flush communities, it infers that license hunter are a marginal populations of the Commonwealth. Do these communities require persons in other activities to wear a picture ID on their person, to perform a proficiency examination for the activity or require (while using conservation land) to identify themselves, to anyone, on demand. Many domestic animal rights terrorist have been identify by the Federal Burial of Investigation (FBI) and the hunter has to identify themselves to all who ask. In addition, the community’s elite activity diminishes the creditability of the Massachusetts Hunter Education program.

It was around the 1960’s many of these affluent communities started to negligently mismanage the conservation areas for their town. Or, where the communities trying to keep minority population from neighboring communities the use their conservation land? They would not allow hunting, although hunting was used to keep a healthy deer population in the Commonwealth’s deer management program. According to publish reports, a deer hunting season for public conservation areas are coming about because town officials are concerned about the denigration of over browsed forests, increased local Lyme disease diagnoses, deer and automobile collisions all are creating a public safety issue. Communities are beginning to recognize that because of their neglectful hunting restrictions there is an overabundance of deer; and it is the cause of deer-vehicle collisions, damage to plants and Lyme disease. How long will it take before a lawyer start suing communities that don’t used proven scientific methods to manage Wildlife including deer populations in their town?

Furthermore, Private landowners who donate land, to a state agency, municipalities and non-profits, for wildlife habitat, farmland and scenic assets, for future generation is viewed by the federal and many state governments as providing a public benefit, one that is worthy of economic incentives. After the private landowner receives federal and state tax deduction, it brings the land to all the citizens not just to the privilege few, doesn’t it? Because of the tax incentive by the federal and state governments, the Department of Fish and Game should consider conservation land in municipalities that has been donated to the community by a private donor as public land, open to all Massachusetts citizens, and, Archery hunting should be governed by the rules of the Department of Fish and Game, no other.

Please stop these modern day “Jim Crow Laws” that are against residence of poorer Massachusetts Communities.