In a recent commentary, Kate Troll characterized Jason Brune as the fox guarding the henhouse. Mr. Brune is an outstanding choice for the job as Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. He is smart, battle-tested, honest, experienced and very ethical!
He is a biologist by training. The governor couldn’t have made a better choice. Ms. Troll listed a litany of radical environmental programs, initiatives and legislation that the Resource Development Council and Mr. Brune opposed over the years. Most, if not all, of those would have negatively impacted Alaska’s economy and cost thousands of jobs with little or no improvement in real environmental protection.
For example, take the “Stand for Salmon” initiative. I personally stopped by several of the Stand for Salmon booths at various trade shows. I asked a simple question: Name me a salmon stream that wasn’t protected in which the run was harmed? The only answer I got other than a blank stare was the Eklutna River dam. That original dam was built between 1927-1929. In those days, no one even thought about environmental protection. So it was a solution chasing a nonexistent problem. I guess that is why the initiative was so soundly defeated!
In conclusion, after reading Ms. Troll’s commentary, I was left with the impression that if you have ever worked in the resource development field, you should automatically be eliminated from any job that has ever regulated you or your employer. However, I bet Ms. Troll would have no objection to hiring someone that has supported all the job-killing environmental agendas she mentioned. That would be more like telling the fox to kill all the chickens.
— John Sturgeon
Anchorage
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