A Republican Forest Preserve:
I love forest preserves, botanical gardens, redwood forests, giant canyons and other such ilk. To me each is a home away from home, the best place for contemplation, to relax, to feel contented, and to be in some kind of connection with the God created evolutionary process. For the most part, if I am not home I am out in nature somewhere wandering around lolligagging, reading, musing, or napping. Some people in my condo have 2 or 3 homes. I can't imagine why anyone would want to keep up more than one home. When someone tells me about their three homes I tell them about my 3 cats. I don't think it impresses them. I actually do have 2 other homes, but professional care takers keep them up, not me. One is named Cantigny and the other is named Morton Arboretum. I never take anyone with me to these other two homes, too much of a distraction. Maybe I am just selfish, let them find their own heaven on earth. If they married right they probably have.
When I moved here one of the attractions was the nearby access to several forest preserves. I like forest preserves, a chance to enjoy plants, trees, birds and wildlife. The forest preserves where I used to live---in Will and Cook County, were fun to walk through, teaming with wildlife. Thus it was a shock to find that the forest preserves here in DuPage County, a Republican stronghold of the state, are sterile. There are plants and trees, nice pathways, but nothing else. Any kind of wildlife noticeable by humans has been exterminated for being a public nuisance. It just seems Republicans, if I can generalize loosely here, find living nuisances everywhere---locally, statewide, nationwide, and world wide. All nuisances must be exterminated and that, in short suit, is their political dictum.
I suppose one might argue that a forest preserve, as named, is there to preserve the natural components of a forest. Humans, unfortunately, by their very nature, are not all that sharing. Any real sharing takes a labored effort, tolerance, compromise, appreciation of diversity. If there is any place left where wildlife belongs, it seems a forest preserve is the place. It used to be. Of course Republicans don't cleanse, exterminate, terrorize, subjugate or jail other living things without 'good' reason. If reasons can't be extracted from selected religious scripture then it becomes a matter of public safety, property rights, and when all else fails---majority rules.
While I see but rare instances of rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, most birds etc. the most noticeable absence are the deer. When Americans years ago slaughtered Vietnamese the manufactured reason was freedom. When DuPage County slaughters virtually the entire deer population in a forest preserve they coin the term Deer Management Program. Now who can argue with proper management of anything? Certainly not I. Deer populations can grow past the point of any forest being able to handle such a large population of deer. Uncontrolled growth is a disaster to the forest itself. Culling herds is a necessity. But exterminating herds is unconscionable. Deer, of course, can be traffic hazards. So are humans driving cars or crossing streets, kids playing in streets etc. Management means minimizing the risks while at the same time preserving the wildlife in a forest preserve, keeping the population of deer down so that there is minimal need for deer to go elsewhere to seek food.
In Cook County and Will County they probably don't cull the herds enough. To be honest it probably has less to do with Republican or Democrat then it does with finances. DuPage County is a rich county and has more money available to simply exterminate nuisances of any sort. In Cook or Will County people know, if you buy a house near a forest preserve, that deer are going to nibble at bushes in your yard. You expect it and are selective in the kind of bushes you plant. In Dupage County you don't have to make any adjustments in your yard plantings if you buy a house near a forest preserve, you simply demand the deer be exterminated. Of course the word exterminated sounds too selfish and blunt so the word management is used and grossly abused.
Still, one might think that anyone in charge of a forest preserve would try their best to strike a reasonable balance between the the rights of the wildlife in a forest preserve and the rights of citizens who pay their salary. But is doesn't work out that way. Waiting in the wings, like vultures, is a small cabal of fanatical illusionary hunters, who love to kill animals and think they are hunting. Killing deer in a suburban forest preserve is about as technically challenging as being given a license to shoot all the dogs in some neighborhood. I guess the challenge comes when there are only a handful of terrorized deer left in the preserve. Luckily, there are all kinds of devices these days to track and attract even the last remaining deer. Before sunrise and around dusk these 'yahoos' pull into the forest preserves with their oversized vehicles with oversized tires driven by undersized brains, and the hunt, if I can use the term absurdly, is on. Crack open the beer, set up a tailgate party and let the killing fun begin. If these yahoos really wanted a manly hunting challenge, you know---something which required any real courage and toughness----they would be out in the mountains of Afghanistan or the deserts of Iraq where there would be ample risk and daring forays into the killing fields. But shooting hapless deer in a forest preserve, then mounting antler racks on walls as proof of some kind of phony manliness is pitiful. A real stretch. Probably they get to keep the deer meat to eat, sell, or just give away as gifts.
Frankly, I don't understand why people of this sort are allowed to have any role in protecting a forest preserve. The Dupage County forest preserves are now nothing more than personal hunting preserves, no different than commercial game farms where you can pay a certain amount of money to go out and shoot, for example, a buffalo. That is ok. On these game farms the animals are not terrorized in the process, and no one running a game farm is pretending they are preserving a forest.
The forests, in any real sense of the term, are gone now from DuPage County. Any wildlife, like deer, have been driven to private tracts of land and into many neighborhoods where it is too congested to shoot them. Instead of a few homes bordering a forest preserve being subjected to deer as pest, it then becomes a lot more homes in a lot more areas which become targeted by the deer. Where the deer should be, they can't go, where the deer shouldn't be is their last refuge. Why the rabbits and squirrels and most birds are gone is still a mystery to me. Maybe these 'yahoos' shoot them too, or maybe they are poisoned, or maybe when the natural chain of wildlife is broken, other forms vanish too. Being in a DuPage County forest preserve is like being at a battlefield graveyard. Correction: more like being at a Jewish Holocaust Museum.
In Cook County and Will County I found the forest preserves teeming with families out to enjoy nature along with those seeking exercise via biking or jogging or walking. In the DuPage country forest preserves only the bikes and joggers can be found in any numbers. I mean, why else would anyone go into a DuPage County forest preserve? All that remains is a silent sterile shell of a forest---a skeleton of what once was. It will not change because that is the way the majority of people in a Republican County want it. Majority rules. Case closed. Obligation is not a big word in Republican circuits these days.
No need to feel sad for nature though. The future of today's kids is another thing. Nature always bats last. Always. From so many directions, the chickens are coming home to roost. In some parts of the world, and soon in all parts of the world, it will be nature terrorizing humanity for the many and varied ways humans have exploited the very environment which sustains us. In the not too distant future, Nature is about to 'manage' us in the manner DuPage County 'manages' life in a forest preserve. It will be us who will be terrorized and exterminated in great numbers. And like the deer in the forest preserve there will be absolutely nothing the next generation can do about it. I guess, in this amazing God created evolutionary process, what goes around comes around. We can really see it all coming, but like the deer staring into oncoming headlights, we will remain blinded and unconcerned until the splat.
