John,

I've always thought that good, sound regulations would protect falconry more than some bureaucrat! I'm not talking about field personnel, but the administrators who come and go. Promulgated regulations give us legitimacy and withstand arbitrary and fickle interpretive administration.

Years ago, I lobbied to have good, sound regulations for eagle take and basically had them, endorsed by George Allen, but something happened and the proposed regulations were sabotaged and changed. This is verifiable! Right when the states were to take over the administration of falconry.

Too much time has gone by to make any reasonable stab at fixing them at this point. I wouldn't know where to start. The politics and language of eagle regulations today is extremely convoluted!

Promulgated regulations that protected the eagle resource, were fair, and enforceable would have been the way to go. That's all we wanted.

Bureaucrats can have fairly inflated egos also. I've heard it said that ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity!