Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Gophers shut down land development in WA..

Western Washington and western Oregon are nothing but a wanna be California.

The should just put up a wall down the middle of the cascades and call the west half California too.

My first hunting was pocket gophers with a .410. It does take patience but I recall how excited I got waiting for the moment of truth!

THAT!! Those bastids cause millions and millions of dollars in road damage in this state.

It can. And I've done it - several times.. Just gotta get out there early when they're the most active; around 6:00-6:30 am here.

The big problem with this deal is that they even admit that they have no idea how many gophers there are. The 'endangered' part is pure speculation with no data behind it. It's regulation just to be regulating and that's flat out WRONG. This is a classic example of unelected bureaucrats making rules just to control us.

Also Burrowing Owls , spotted salamanders , gogher turtles. Red crested woodpeckers, cypress trees, wetland grasses and or soils, bald eagles, wood storks and a thousand other things stop developers dead in the there tracks.
I once had a orange juice plant held up for three years by the army corp of engineers because it was in the 100 year flood plain. No navigable waterway for two miles. They eventually made us create a two acre swamp with plantings and water control structures.
Ten years later the county did a condemnation on the swamp area and extended the road over it.

Why do you think I am from "Eastern Washington". We spend a lot of time and money running a gopher machine through our fields to get rid of the gophers.

And yes, the wet side rules our state with all their green ideas. Right now Olympia wants to spend 54 billion dollars on a light rail system, but the freeway infrastructure needs to be updated. Their solution is they are going to allow drivers to drive on the shoulders during the peak times of the day.

http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/news/2017/04/24/new-i-405-shoulder-lane-opens-afternoon-commuters

"Since it is cost-prohibitive to actually count gophers, which live underground and rarely surface, the aim of the conservation plan is to prevent building on the remaining land that is good for gophers"

So they really don't know how many there are and are unwilling to spend anything to find out. But they are willing to make landowners bear the entire cost burden of protecting them.

Fill every hole you can find with dry ice.......stomp it down cover with dirt.

some enterprising Al Gore type will start a "habitat bank" where people can buy rights to develop their own land.

that is called "planning and zoning". for the last 20 years i bought sights for independent senior living. all muny's in all states practice this type of extortion. then throw in the fed's and the cost of our projects went from 6 mill total to 13.5. all other costs were controlled but the state, county, and federal fees more then doubled our costs. inflation any one?