I don't think it's realistic that we'll get politics out, particularly not today the way endangered species and habitat protection involve such a wide variety of people. I talk to tremendous numbers of people who are concerned about wildlife. And most of them have very strong opinions, and most of them are different. If a politician wins a margin of 60% in an election, it's a landslide. If we have 20 or 30% of the people that don't think we're doing things the way that they would like to see them, it's a disaster. Politics has always been involved in Fish and Game. Politics is why the Fish and Game agency was created through public initiative in 1938. It was to get the partisan politics out of it. Wildlife management has always had and will always have a lot of non-biological consequences, a lot of social consequences. And any time you're dealing with social issues, you're dealing with politics. I don't think it's realistic that we'll get politics out, particularly not today the way endangered species and habitat protection involve such a wide variety of people. My hope is that the politics can be the politics of issues rather than the politics of parties.
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