You spend millions on a campaign to raise awareness, you spend additional tens-of-thousands of man-hours speaking to the public, nailing signs to trees, producing pamphlets to educate the general public, then resort to interrupting holiday traffic and causing pandemonium at the boat launch for what?
A North Dakota man accused of introducing zebra mussels into a Minnesota lake last year has been fined $500 and ordered to pay $500 in restitution.
-via the Crookston Times
Invasive science has been more than eloquent. A foreign body can travel waterways at will, from your dirty little trickle to envelope both sides of the Rockies, can destroy native fisheries enroute to the Ocean, is able to breath air and is capable of impregnating your daughter, and for all these sins – for all the barren and scorched watershed left in its wake, you pony up $500 – or twenty hours of community service …
Under the above circumstance, were California contemplating a felt ban – and with a new set of SIMM’s nearly the same price as the fine assayed, why would I ever consider adopting the righteous path?
Figure the average warden covers about one thousand square miles, and Einstein postulates that he can only exist in one place at a time, suggesting my chances of being caught are already nil, and with the penalty so low, it’s merely another “45 in a 35”, and the officer doesn’t show for court anyways …
Fear is the only motivational tool that’ll make us knot headed Outdoors types toe the straight & narrow. Seeing some fellow at the boat ramp scrubbing goober off a dump truck load of cobble might give Mr. Dirty Boat Owner pause …
… especially when he finds out the sentence was, “…every weekend for the next decade …”
Just a five hundred dollar fine for an egregious bust suggests those agencies tasked with oversight are going to lose interest quickly, as five hundred covers about 20 minutes of the average stakeout …
Riddle me this, Batman … if state law says, “you drop a match in the woods and you’re responsible for the entire cost of suppressing the fire …” – why doesn’t a watershed-damaging invasive carry a similar penalty?
I’d think wage-garnishment for life would have me at the fly shop getting rubber boots and a double handful of prophylactics PDQ …
Best post ever.
Jeez, I bet there are folks out there who would gladly pay $500 for such a notorious label.
“Yup, Billy, I was the one who responsible for wiping out Cutthroat in the entire Western U.S. Only cost me $500”.
If you drop a match in the woods, you’re affecting the Big Timber boys. If you wipe out a fish species that can’t be commercially dredged or seined,it’s just a good excuse for Big Agri sucking more from the rivers
(“Well, there isn’t anybody fishing there anymore…”).
What do you want to bet the judge is a stockholder in both?
$500 is not nearly enough for a “crime” like that. How about keel hauling or maybe the rack. Maybe life without parole, because he killed that lake.
Mark