Governor Wants Political Autocratic Wildlife Decisions
A message from the Michigan United Conservation Clubs
Dear MUCC Club Presidents and Leaders,
This is a call to action. When you and your clubs first got together to form MUCC in 1937, you did so in order to protect our state’s outdoor heritage. You formed MUCC around the goal that sound science, not politics, should drive the management of our natural resources. With the passage of Proposal G in 1996, the people of the state of Michigan reaffirmed your goal.
In these dark days of economic turmoil, politics again threaten the management of our natural resources and your help is needed.
Governor Granholm has issued Executive Order 45 to recombine the Departments of Natural Resources and Environmental Quality. This could be a valuable opportunity to improve the management of our natural resources, improve services to you and others who use our natural resources and to improve the science-based management of our resources.
HOWEVER, this Executive Order also removes the authority of the Natural Resources Commission to appoint the Department Director, and instead, allows the Governor to appoint the Director. This is a significant shift away from the collective goals of hunters, anglers, and conservationists to remove politics from natural resource management. This power shift also severely undermines the fundamental principles Michigan citizens overwhelmingly supported under Proposal G.
To change this order, the Michigan Legislature must pass resolutions that REJECT the Executive Order and send it back to the Governor’s desk. The agricultural community has joined us in this fight, but our voices are not being heard among the crowd. WE NEED TO WAKE UP AND SHAKE UP LANSING!
FIRING LINE 1. Please call your Representative and call Speaker of the House Andy Dillon (Ph: 517-373-0857 or andydillon@house.mi.gov and urge them to take up House Concurrent Resolution 32 and vote YES for the sportsmen and women of this state!
2. Please contact Amy Spray (aspray@mucc.org) by the end of the day Monday (Nov. 2) and sign on to a letter to the Governor telling her to issue a new Executive Order that continues to allow the NRC to appoint the Director of the Department.
