If we might envision the NYS Dept. of Environmental Conservation as a huge barrel filled with everything that could be remotely considered of true importance to our outdoor world, be it air, water, land, forest, wildlife and, oh yes, people. Now imagine what has happened to that barrel since our state has basically gone broke. Once high prioritized programs were let sink farther down as budgets, personnel and the ability to implement them no longer existed or were sufficient to be effective.

To backtrack to the late 1960s and early ‘70s when the big think tank in Albany began constructing plans for a mega department that would replace what they felt was an outdated NYS Conservation Dept. primarily interested in fish, wildlife, forests and their conservation management, I now wonder if any discussed the possible dangers in trying to do that if our state fell on hard economic times. The old Conservation Dept. was so successful because it was annually funded by sportsmen and operated basically independent of those that required general tax revenue to stay afloat.

Okay, boys and girls, here we sit with this monstrous do-all environmental department that appears to be hamstrung and may be for several more years. Consider New York’s credit ranks 49th in the nation. Not a very good indicator for major financial improvements any time soon. So what in that big DEC potpourri barrel may eventually see the light of day again?