Senator Dorgan 1 NY Times 0
Senator Byron Dorgan (D- ND) recently set the New York Times straight by responding to an opinion piece the paper ran criticizing the Senator’s common sense plan to manage the overpopulation of elk within Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
Sen. Dorgan’s has been working on legislative language that will allow a limited public elk hunt in order to cull an overpopulation of the species that has emerged in the park. The New York Times blasted Sen. Dorgan with the editorial from July 7 stating, “The idea violates both common sense and the very idea of a national park.” It went on to criticize the possibility of establishing a precedent that could be applied to other parks while praising the use of “hired sharpshooters” as a “more efficient and less expensive way” of managing the population.
Sen. Dorgan responded with an opinion piece that offered a point by point rebuttal of the New York Times assertions. The Senator turned the newspaper’s notion of common sense back on the editors by explaining the obvious case that “allowing North Dakota hunters to volunteer their time, at no cost, and to take the animal carcasses out of the park themselves — exactly the kind of solution Teddy Roosevelt would have wanted.”
Common sense lessons from the government. Thank you, Senator Dorgan, for so well explaining the role that American hunters have played in wildlife management for more than 100 years. Although The U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance sent in its own rebuttal, we could not have done any better.
