Interpreting the Edsel

[Outdoor Talk Network by Jim Slinsky]
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Interpreting the Edsel ©

By Jim Slinsky
10/27/07

Some of you may be old enough to remember Ford Motor Company’s infamous failure, the Edsel. I was just a kid when that part of American auto history unfolded, but I remember the fiasco and the car vividly. The entire scenario has become so entrenched in American culture it has actually become a cliché`. Ford spent $400 million developing the car, but the public didn’t buy it. The car caused furious internal battles within Ford’s management. From 1958 to 1960, the Edsel was with us. Ford ultimately admitted failure, cut the cord and stopped the financial bleeding.

A few weeks ago I received my copy of the Cameron County Echo newspaper. Plastered across the top of the front page was the story of a $10 million Visitor Center planned for Winslow Hill in Elk County. Usually dubbed “Interpretative Centers” I often wondered “what are we interpreting”? This is to be an 8500 square foot modern building housing state-of-the-art displays. Pouring good money on top of bad money, the PA Wilds story is beginning to sound more like the Edsel story with each passing year.

DCNR has worked hard and spent millions to promote the PA Wilds agenda. Their first official act was to advocate and accelerate deer reduction on the basis that deer destroyed forest regeneration. We now know our regeneration problems are far more complex. Unintentionally, or perhaps by design, deer reduction tremendously impacted the existing 100-year hunting economy. Without hunting, businesses began closing while DCNR was claiming eco-tourism will economically revitalize the area. With the loss of deer and businesses, depopulation began to occur.

None of this is my imagination. I can think of three rural Senatorial districts that were restructured due to the loss of rural population. Actually, one can take this out ten or twenty years and see enormous political ramifications. With fewer rural folks and fewer rural legislators to represent them, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh legislators will control the politics of PA. This situation currently exists in Illinois with Chicago politically controlling the state. It is the obvious reason why Illinois has repressive gun laws. I suppose New York and number of other states are in the same boat.

When we talk PA Wilds another obvious question comes to mind. You must ask yourself, “where is the substance to this program”? Does DCNR really believe hundreds of thousands will flock to our rural counties to look at leaves changing colors, stars and an imported animal from Wyoming? These attractions are available all over PA with the exception of the elk. At $3 a gallon for gas, elk are something you go and see once. It is not exactly a guided, African photography safari that draws one back again and again with its’ magnetism. Where are the written goals for the PA Wilds program? The primary goal I see is for DCNR to buy more land.

In spite of the obviously failures, the PA Wilds program continues on. Evidence of DCNR’s determination is once again manifesting itself in this new project, a $10 million “Visitor Center”. What visitors? The program can not muster a consistent 50,000 visitors per year. Interestingly, a portion of those visitors will violate the property rights of our rural residents just as the elk consistently do.

At this point in history I would conclude our rural legislators are in the same boat as our rural citizens. They are in the same boat as the Ford executives were almost 50 years ago. It is decision time. Should we allow DCNR to continue with a financially and politically disastrous program for our great Commonwealth? Should our legislators intervene, cut the cord and stop the bleeding? Once again, time has become our friend.

Actually, this entire scenario is playing itself out in various forms across the nation. It maybe wolves, mountain lions and grizzly bears destroying the farming, ranching and hunting communities out West, or alligators invading rural communities in the South, the results are the same, rural depopulation. Biodiversity and restoring our wild areas to 1491 is the constant theme for this radical agenda. In PA, it all started with killing the deer.

Our legislators are now faced with the biggest decision of their political careers. They could ignore the realities unfolding in this state and nation or they could act. Just like the Edsel, the people are not buying the PA Wilds program. Actually, the people are moving out.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to interpret what that means.

Jim Slinsky is the host and producer of the “Outdoor Talk Network”, a nationally syndicated, outdoor-talk radio program. For a station near you or to contact Jim, visit his website at www.outdoortalknetwork.com.

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