STRIKE ONE: KVETCH KVETCH KVETCH

When the going gets tough, they say, the tough get going.

Not in Vermont, especially rural Vermont. There, when anything changes, the supposedly tough whimper.

The latest example of this phenomenon occurred last week when roughly 100 members of the Champion Land Leaseholders and Traditional Interests Association met in Ferdinand, in the core of the Northeast Kingdom, to talk to Mark Maghini, who is sort of their landlord.

Well, not really talk to him. At least as reported in Orleans County’s Chronicle, it was more like screech at him.

And why? Because…(steel yourself for the horror about to be expressed) everything is not the same.

Oh, and also because weeping and wailing have become the default position in the subculture of some segments of rural Vermont.

To elucidate, for those unfamiliar with the saga of what are still called the Former Champion Land, Maghini is the manager of the Nulhegan Basin Division of the Silvio Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge, the owner of some 26,000 acres that once belonged to the Champion International Paper Company.

A few hundred people lease small plots of this land on which they have built camps, as they did when Champion owned it. As it happens, the terms of their leases are much more advantageous to them now than in the Champion days (largely because they moaned and groaned, and were immediately placated by a cowardly Vermont State Legislature, but let’s let bygone wails be bygone wails).

What ails them now?

First, under the new rules, they won’t be able to use or possess alcoholic beverages while hunting. What would happen, one of them asked, if he was bringing beer to his camp and a deer cross the road. Would getting out of the vehicle to go after the deer by a violation?

Of course not, Maghini said in a telephone interview.

“Get out of the truck. Go after the deer,” he said, as if any explanation were needed. Clearly this was a crowd looking for something about which to complain ever though there was nothing about which to complain.

Refuge visitors won’t be allowed to hunt from the road any more, either. Nor is anybody else, at least not in this state (see Page 17 of the most recent hunting regulations).

But the problem, as one of the meeting-goers put it, was that “we can’t do what we have been doing for a lifetime.”

Oh, please. There are two things these folks should do up. Grow and shut. The world changes. The land they lease is now owned by the Federal Government, which has designated it a Fish and Wildlife Refuge. The primary mission of the Refuges is “to conserve the abundance and diversity of native plants and animals.” But as a matter of law and policy – oh, and by the way, in the interest of the economy of northeastern Vermont – they also try to attract visitors.

Who are less likely to show up if they worry about getting shot.

Okay, federal regulations can always be dumb, and one of these seems to qualify. If motor vehicles are allowed on the roads, why should bicycles be banned?

Maybe they won’t be for long, Maghiri said, under a “comprehensive conservation plan” now in the works.

The Leaseholders are a small sliver of the body politic, but a somewhat larger sliver of the local cultural mythology. These are (at least so they want us to think) the traditional Vermonters of yore—self-reliant, rugged, adaptable.

Perhaps we’ll have to adapt to the reality; they’re a bunch of crybabies.

STRIKE TWO: SMILE, YOU’RE (MABYE) ON TV

More than any generation before us, we command the resources for self-realization…But do we want to be artists, philosophers, pioneers of the natural sciences? No, we want to be celebrities—Hilary Mantel

But does the Burlington Free Press have to lead the way.

The Freep routinely goes bananas any time a Vermonter even approaches celebrity, like appearing on a TV reality show. But Sunday, it outdid itself, devoting 50 square inches – 40 percent of the “news” (that is, not advertising) space on the front page to tell us that a guy who used to go to Middlebury would be playing against the New England Patriots that day.

Not that Steven Hauschka is really a celebrity. Or really a Vermonter. He grew up in Massachusetts. But he did start kicking footballs at Middlebury and he is the place-kicker for the Baltimore Ravens who would play (and lose to) the Pats Sunday afternoon.

Meaning he might be (oh, contain the excitement) on TV.

Not that it wasn’t a story. (Sort of) local kid (sort of) makes good. And it was nicely done. But it belonged on the sports page, not all over Page One.

Oh, and is it turned out, Hauschka kicked no field goals Sunday, or even (so it seemed after a quick look at the game account) attempted one. No TV time after all.

STRIKE THREE: LAW? WE DON’T WORRY ABOUT NO STINKIN’ LAW. WE’RE THE NEW YORK TIMES.

The paper of record came to Vermont last week, right up to the Northeast Kingdom, to write about that moose. You know, the one that’s being fed doughnuts in an impoundment in Irasburg.

Cute story by Katie Zezima of the Boston office. Mentioned the doughnuts. Quoted the old farmer who’d brought the moose to the impoundment and the guy who owns it. Got into the chronic wasting disease danger.

Just one little omission. Never mentioned that the rescue, transportation and confinement of the moose are all, undeniably, against the bleepety-blank law.

Actually, a not-so-little omission. Not, at least, in a serious newspaper, which The New York Times is.

Was?

First, a program note: Today’s post, next Monday’s, and maybe even the offerings on the next two Wednesdays, will be relatively short and…well, not insubstantial, but perhaps a little less weighty than usual.

That’s because the News Guy has been and will be spending the time and effort weightiness requires on: (a) reporting some complicated and especially weighty stories planned for the next two Fridays; and (b) responding to a higher authority.

For today, though, let’s spend a few minutes pondering the Vermont localvore (sometimes spelled ‘locavore’) scene, which is clearly becoming more mainstream, almost by the day. (Though not so mainstream that the spell-check program of this relatively new computer recognizes the word spelled either way; we’ll have to speak sternly to it).

Just last week, the celebrated TV chef Emeril Lagasse came to the Northeast Kingdom to cook with the locally grown cheese, soy, and vegetables, taping it for his show, Emeril Green, On the Planet Green Network, affiliated with the Discovery Channel.

At least so said the report on WCAX-TV (Channel 3), than which one can get no more mainstream in Vermont. Channel 3’s report quoted Legasse saying, “The abundance of incredible products here is so exciting, people should be really, really proud about what’s happening around here because it’s really a serious movement.”

How “serious,” (which no longer means “serious,” but “significant” or “long-lasting”) remains to be seen. That it is a movement is no longer debatable. And if it began, as movements often do, inside a small subculture (the “granola-heads” to be both brief and offensively stereotypical), it isn’t any longer. Not only have First Lady Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey signed on, but there are increasing signs that getting into the localvore dodge seems to be good business.

Just check the “Green Mountain” section of Sunday’s Burlington Free-Press (as mainstream as Channel 3), devoted largely to the “eat local” movement. It isn’t just the articles, either. Some of the ads urge customers to buy from stores and restaurants that sell locally grown food.

Sounds like a way to make money. In America, that’s mainstream.

Needless to say, not everyone is on board. Led by the chain restaurant industry and agri-business, a counter-movement has sprung up, largely among those who insist that most Americans don’t care where their food comes from and prefer the sweet, the fried, and the fatty.

And the inexpensive. According to the skeptics, locally-grown food, especially if it’s also organically-grown food (often but not always part of the package) costs more than mass-produced food grown with the help of herbicides, pesticides, and petroleum-based fertilizer. They say all this “buy local” stuff will turn out to be a fad. The businesses that rely on it will go broke while the chain and fast-food restaurants thrive and customers continue to flock to the processed foods sections of the supermarkets.

There’s even an anti-localvore book: Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly, (Little, Brown) by James E. McWilliams.

Fortunately, we have an in-state experiment that may provide some hint of how this experiment will turn out. The pub on the first floor of the University of Vermont’s Davis Center, Brennan’s ,has transformed itself from a standard chain-food joint into a restaurant specializing in food grown organically, naturally, and locally.

The big attractions are probably still beer and (sometimes) live entertainment. But now instead of standardized fried chicken and Texas toast (whatever that may be) from World of Wings (WOW, but not to be confused with the homing pigeon association of the same name), a new Orleans-based franchise company, students can get, for instance, a breakfast of two cage-free eggs, organic scallions and sour cream, all produced in Vermont, and all for $5.75.

According to a front-page story in last week’s VermontCynic, the student newspaper, the impetus for the change came from the students. In response to an email, Pat Brown, the Director of Student Life, said, the “menu items and products now reflect  what  students asked for – a local sourcing of food products.”

As to the price, that $5.75 breakfast seems like a good bargain, but the Cynic story quoted one student who preferred last year’s “greasy college food,” and said this year’s fare “costs more.”

Brown said the menu was so “radically different” that comparing prices was difficult, but added that he thought, “the prices are in the same general range as last year  depending on  what one orders.”

But is the place making money? It seemed crowded enough one day last week, but Brown said it was “way too early to tell.” Like most UVM restaurants, Brennan’s is part of University Dining Services (UDS), which, Brown wrote, “provides food service to campus and is permitted by contract to  net a small amount, but the overall goal is to provide high  quality and reasonably priced food service to the campus.  The   traffic has seemed to reflect what we saw last year.”

But UDS is not autonomous. It is part of Sodexo, very much a profit-making corporation. As such, it isn’t likely to want to maintain an operation that doesn’t earn much. On the other hand, it doesn’t want the kind of bad publicity that would come from displeasing the student body. And Brown indicated that UDS, which he said “has been exceptional in working with local foods and many of the farms and orchards in the area,” appears to have a genuine commitment to buy as much Vermont product as possible.

Were it not for one little difficulty, we could end this post right here. Alas, UDS has decided to promote Brennan’s on its web site by proclaiming that the restaurant has “a new look with a sustainable menu that is literally ‘shaking’ up campus.”

Uh, folks, you work for a university. Meaning you really ought to speak English. An earthquake would “literally” “shake up” (or “’shake’ up”) campus. So might an artillery attack or a mortar barrage. Maybe even the entire student body jumping up and down at the same time.

But a menu? No, not “literally.”

(NOTE:

WHAT? THERE WAS SOME MAJOR POLITICAL NEWS YESTERDAY?

YUP. BUT YOU KNOW WHAT? IT WILL BE ABLY HANDLED TODAY BY OTHERS. THE NEWS GUY WILL LET IT PERK OVER THE WEEKEND, PONDERING IT (AS WELL AS THE WEEK’S OTHER IMPORTANT POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT) MONDAY.

About that moose, the one they’re calling Pete: There’s more to this story than meets the eye, at least such eyes that have been reading Vermont’s newspapers and watching the local television news, or clicking onto the You Tube and Facebook entries about poor, put-upon Pete.

This isn’t just a cute story about a moose and the old farmer who has befriended him (if “befriending” a moose is possible).

This is about politics. Not as in Democrats versus Republicans, but as in who has power and how should it be exercised. It is also about the uses and misuses of science. It is about natural resource policy, the rule of law, when violating it is justified, ethics and the philosophy thereof.

Oh, and money. As usual, money seems to be involved.

To begin with, the old (“73-and-a-half,” in his own words) farmer didn’t just stumble upon this abandoned moose. Nor, despite his flowing white beard and Northeast Kingdom roots, is David Lawrence some country bumpkin. He is a rather articulate fellow who knows just what he’s doing, knows it’s against the law, but thinks it’s the right thing to do.

He is, in other words, engaged in civil disobedience.

He is also part of an apparently elaborate animal rescue network whose other members also do not hesitate to violate the law, as they are doing in connection with this moose.

The moose, according to Lawrence, was discovered in early June of 2008, meaning it would have been no more than a month old, by two people from Bethel who were hiking with their dogs when they came upon a female moose with twin calves. The adult (and apparently one of the twins) ran off, leaving one baby moose apparently abandoned.

The hikers, Lawrence said, called the Fish and Wildlife Department where officials told them to do nothing, to leave the baby moose alone.

That’s the law, in Vermont and most other states.

For at least two reasons, one scientific and one…well, a combination of historic and philosophical. The scientific reason is that the baby moose may not have been abandoned at all. Female cervids (deer, elk, moose), say the wildlife experts, are likely to return to their young once they perceive that the “predators” (hikers and dogs in this case) have left.

(The dogs, by the way, had wounded the calf; so this whole controversy might have been avoided had the hikers had better control of their pets).

The other reason, as John Buck, one of the Department’s wildlife biologists explained, stems from “the public trust doctrine that the state’s wildlife belong to the people and not the king. Wild animals can not be owned by any individual.”

That moose doesn’t really “belong” to anybody, even the state; no bill of sale comes with it. But if it is nobody’s property, it is part of the public sphere or province. It doesn’t belong to the hikers, to Lawrence, or to Doug Nelson, on whose Irasburg elk impoundment the moose now grazes when Lawrence is not there feeding him doughnuts.

When the mother did not return after four days, (perhaps because people kept checking on the calf), the hikers decided to intervene. Somehow they found out about “a wildlife rehabilitator,” as Lawrence called her, who was part of the dissident animal rescue effort, and who therefore was apparently on the radar screen of Fish and Wildlife law enforcers.

“She knew that (if she took the baby moose) the wardens would be there and would destroy it. She called me. I’ve been known to do these things before. We believe in saving all the babies we can.”

As he had done at least twice in the past, Lawrence, a retired farmer who lives in Albany, took the calf to Irasburg, where Nelson keeps some 500 elk in 600 fenced-in acres, charging several thousand dollars for the privilege of shooting one.

“This moose was illegally taken, illegally transported and is now illegally being possessed inside an enclosure,” said Wayne Laroche, the Fish and Wildlife Department Commissioner. “My position is I need to be able to enforce the laws. We can’t have people just picking those animals up. I can’t selectively enforce the law. I have to enforce it the same, from the child that wants to keep a baby raccoon to the richest guy in the state.”

Nelson, a major dairy farmer, could be one of the richest guys in the state.

Keeping wild animals as pets, Laroche said, poses disease risks for both people and animals. It can also be dangerous, a judgment confirmed by Joel Berger, a moose specialist for the Wildlife Conservation Society and a professor at the University of Montana.

“Why would you want a pet moose?” Berger said. “As males grow older, testosterone will kick in, and people will need to deal with his increasingly aggressive behavior.”

Berger said a moose can be safely and humanely confined if its human keepers “know what they’re doing. It’s no different from the Bronx Zoo, if they’re accredited for raising captive animals.”

Nelson and Lawrence are not.

But Laroche has another reason for insisting that the moose leave that elk compound. He worries that Pete, along with perhaps 12 other moose and more than 200 white-tail deer inside the compound endanger the state’s wild deer herd because the wild deer could catch chronic wasting disease from the elk.

CWD, always fatal to deer, has not yet appeared in Vermont, but it has been found in deer in nearby New York State. The disease “leaped the species barrier from sheep to cervids. “ Laroche said. “It makes me very nervous.”

Nelson called CWD fears “totally (nonsense)” (He used another word, but this is a proper web site). He said a brain sample is taken from every elk shot on his property and is tested at a laboratory. None have shown signs of CWD, he said.

Kelly Loftus of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture confirmed that a laboratory in Wisconsin had tested the samples from 73 elk shot at Nelson’s hunting compound in 2008 and 43 this year. No CWD was found. The tests are paid for by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Despite these findings, wildlife biologists fear that whenever wild animals are contained, CWD is a legitimate concern.

“At this point, the literature suggests that artificially concentrating animals tends to exacerbate the danger of the disease,” said Bruce Smith, who spent 23 years as senior scientist at the National Elk Refuge in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. “It creates more of an opportunity for disease transmission.”

This doesn’t mean that Nelson’s elk are likely to have the disease. Probably they don’t. But “probably” isn’t good enough for Fish and Wildlife. Because even a small chance of CWD getting into the Vermont deer herd could decimate it. The hunting community would be furious, as would the many hotels, restaurants, and shops that rely on the patronage of hunters. For the department, it would be a disaster.

But there’s more going on here. By January, Nelson needs a permit from Fish and Wildlife if he is to continue operating his elk-hunting operation. The Department insists that, because of the CWD danger, he first eliminate (essentially, shoot) all the wild white-tails and moose, including Pete.

“I would assume they’d be coming in with the strong arm of the law, Nelson said.

Will he comply?

“I don’t know,” he said “We’ve got an awful lot of public support.”

He does. Even Gov. Jim Douglas said he hoped some means could be found to save Pete.

It’s that kind of talk that leads many in the Department to suspect (though Laroche would not come out and say this) that Nelson is using the tumult over Pete as a political device to pressure Fish and Wildlife to grant him the permit without destroying any of the wild animals.

Nelson, on the other hand, thinks the Department would like to shut down his entire elk hunting operation. He’s probably right. Fish and Wildlife officials never liked “canned hunting.” Many don’t even consider it hunting, since it lacks, in their view, the element of “fair chase,” defined by the Boone and Crockett Club the “taking of any free-ranging wild, native North American big game animal in a manner that does not give the hunter an improper advantage over such animals.”

In fact, confined hunting is now illegal in Vermont, with Nelson’s and one other operation “grandfathered” into legality because they were operating before the law was passed.

Nelson does not deny that he has a financial interest in the status quo. Killing all the moose and white-tails would “cost a fortune,” he said, and he already has “a fortune” invested in the deer “because we’ve fed them for nine years.”

Nelson needs the permit, because hunting is the only money-making potential of captive elk. For years, elk owners sold the velvet from elk antlers to Asia, where it is used as medicine and (with more hope than scientific foundation) an aphrodisiac. But several years ago, U.S.-produced velvet in South Korea was found to be contaminated with CWD, and Asian countries banned imports from North America.

This by no means proves that Nelson is motivated only by money. He considers his right to do as he pleases on his land “a property rights issue,” and by all accounts he is a genuine animal lover. He does not hunt. He argues that having hunters shoot the elk is more humane than some kind of mass slaughter.

He also agrees with Lawrence and his guerrilla animal rescuers.

“You know, it’s kind of human nature to nurture and protect the young,” he said. “The game warden said, let’ em die, let ‘em die. I’m a farmer by nature tend to try to help things live.”

Even John Buck of Fish and Wildlife acknowledged that it is “human nature to try to rescue something, to save something, a beached whale or an injured bird.”

But, Buck said, wildlife management “is concerned with the entire population, as opposed to individuals,” and keeping wild animals in captivity “doesn’t serve the conservation purpose of allowing animals to live freely.”

Laroche said the Department was trying to relocate Pete to another state. If that fails, he said, “we need to have the authority to control possession of wildlife in the state.”

He seems determined to enforce the law. Nelson and his allies seem determined to keep the moose and deer. This business is not over.