Posts Tagged → stream
Two private property rights bills before PA legislature
Pennsylvania private property rights are under the gun right now.
HB1565 would provide a small fix to a patently unconstitutional regulation issued by PA DEP four years ago. That regulation takes 150 feet of buffer land from property owners adjoining Exceptional Value and High Quality streams. Pretty much nothing can be done inside that buffer. No compensation is paid, no tax write-offs are allowed, no charitable contributions are allowed or facilitated under this horrendous rule.
Smart Growth tools have long called for rewarding land owners who give up usage of private land for environmental purposes. Increased building density on the non-buffer land is a big reward and an incentive for landowners to contribute protected land to the greater good.
But the current regulation is not focused on working with landowners. Rather, it treats landowners like a piggy bank, which can be robbed whenever needed.
Protecting the environment is easy to do. Old fashioned top-down, command and control, big government, one size fits all regulations like the 150-foot buffer rule don’t protect the environment any better than carefully tailored rules. It’s not like this is a choice between environmental protection or none at all.
So encourage your state senator to vote for HB1565.
The other issue is SB76, which will provide relief to property owners who are being taxed out of their homes by teachers unions. Government school taxes account for about 80% of the annual property taxes paid, so dealing with government pensions and government unions bargaining positions should help alleviate the pressure on home owners and farmers.
Encourage your state representative to support SB76, which will lower private property taxes and reshape the way taxes are allocated.
Private property is supposed to be sacrosanct. I’d suggest anyone supporting the 150-foot buffer rule simply give up their front lawn to the neighborhood as a public play area. Put your money where your mouth is, or quit demanding that other people’s money get spent in ways you think are superior than the owner would spend it.
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow
Snow is magic, pretty, enchanting, a pain to drive in, a pain to shovel, and a huge boon to hunters.
Snow helps hunters (animals and humans alike) see prey better, because it creates stark contrasts. When a prey animal is moving, a hunter can much more quickly spot it. Tracks reveal where animals have been, and where they might be again.
Today was the last day to harvest a bobcat, and while I did not try to bag one real hard, I still feel a little disappointed. Our traps went out after the bobcat trapping season, and I did not get up to our northcentral PA honeyhole spot, so I can’t say I tried hard. But still, if you read enough hunting reports, you know that all it takes is that “one amazing moment” when the cat silently appears after you’ve been calling. I had hoped for that moment.
Kind of like that other hopey-changey stuff, my own hope was misplaced.
But I did take a lot of pretty photos with snowy backdrops. The white barn, dune-like ripples in the snow across a big field, dead foxtail grass waving in the deep snow…kind of like grass waving in the dunes at the sea shore. An old loop of barbed wire sticking up through the snow, with rabbit tracks hopping by on the right. Ice sheets across the stream, or nearly across, with deer tracks testing it up til its edge, and then backing away to find another route.
As I was snuck inside a field corner woods, blowing on the dying rabbit call, a giant snowy owl erupted from the other side of the hedgerow 150 yards away. One swoop over me, and it lit out for Canada. Not even camo fools those eyes. The last snowy owl I saw was 36 years ago, while I was out hunting alone in Centre County, walking along a field edge. Raucous crows alerted me to something special about to happen, and then it appeared, a majestic white owl, soaring ahead of the cawing mass. That owl just kept on going, leaving me mesmerized.
A black weasel came darting to the call inside a small wash, while I was perched on a stump and log way above. My mind first identified it as a black squirrel, then as a mink, and then as the weasel it was, as I watched it crouched under a fallen log, watching me with glittery eyes. I have a weasel mounted with the wood duck I shot with John Plowman nearly 20 years ago, out on the Susquehanna. The weasel is from Centre County, and is brown with a black-tipped tail. This is the first all-black weasel I have seen, although I have seen both an all-black fisher (in the ADKs in November) and a mink this year. Kind of like a three-of-a kind poker hand; the fourth must be a seal…
Nature is so simply magical. How people do drugs, I do not understand. The sun on the snow today was enough of a “drug” for me to last all day and night and into tomorrow. And so yet another hunt passed, without a kill, and yet, so fulfilling, nonetheless.