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There was a time when our local governments protected us
from wolves by offering bounties on them. That worked so
well that there aren't any wolves left to protect us from.
And now that we're in the information age,
we need
to be protected from information about wolves.
Or so it appears here in mountain-rimmed Chaffee County, close to the middle of Colorado. Like many rural counties, we have a fair every summer.
Locals compete in everything from 4-H guinea pigs and rabbits to home-brew beer and oil-painting, along with the usual market livestock sale, a night of somewhat big-time country music and a traveling carnival.
In other words, it's a rather typical county fair, even to the propaganda and product booths that line the pathway from the arena to the sale tent.
Among those booths two years ago was one from Sinapu,
which means wolf
in the language of the Ute Indians
who lived here first. Sinapu is a Boulder-based group that
promotes wolf study and re-introduction.
Granted, any group based in Boulder, just on account of rural Colorado geographic prejudice, runs the risk of inflaming local rednecks, and wolf re-introduction has yet to be endorsed by any county stockgrower's association that I know of.
But there were no lupine-inspired assaults or fights at the 1997 fair.
The fellow who ran the Sinapu booth said that most people were pretty friendly, and even those who disagreed preferred to argue, not fight.
Sinapu says it has surveys which show that in 1995, 71 percent of all Coloradans wanted the wolves to return, and that even on the rural Western Slope, 65 percent favored wolf re-introduction.
In the hope of getting its message to a few more people at this year's Chaffee County Fair, Sinapu sent a booth application and $50 to the fairgrounds manager, Tom Clock.
What happened next isn't totally clear. The Fair Planning Committee met on May 3, and at that meeting, someone objected to having Sinapu at the county fair. A majority of the rest of the committee apparently agreed, and so on May 24, Clock called Sinapu to inform the organization of the decision.
Wendy Keefauver-Ring, Sinapu's development director,
said Clock told her the determination was made on account
of Sinapu's political views,
and that when she
pursued that, he told her that If another group was
expressing the opposite view we would have to let you
in.
The idea of equal time
at a county fair is
intriguing. In election years, the county Republicans and
Democrats have booths. Presumably these organizations have
political views,
which means they shouldn't be at
the fair unless those with opposing views -- Libertarians,
Wobblies, Royalists, etc. -- were also represented in the
fair's propaganda booths.
Or go further -- the bulk of the fair is essentially a celebration of red meat raised on small family farms and ranches. Where are the big corporate farms and the monopolistic processors who dominate food production in this country? Why is the fair allowing all the carnivore promotion when there's no vegetarian equivalent?
The county fair, by its very nature, isn't an equal
time
forum. It's a marketplace,
where fairgoers
can presumably make up their own minds about what's worth
buying into. This seems to have dawned on Chaffee County
officials as soon as Sinapu complained about Clock's
call.
You could call it a classic case of bureaucracy
getting out of hand,
County Administrator Tom Hale
said. The Fair Planning Committee is strictly an advisory
body that serves the Chaffee County Fair Board, and the
committee has no authority to deny anyone a
booth.
He encouraged Sinapu to apply to the Fair Board in time for its June 5 meeting, and that if Sinapu ran into any trouble there, the group could appeal to the Chaffee County Commissioners, who are ultimately responsible for the fair.
At that meeting, the Fair Board approved Sinapu's application for booth space, which means that at our county fair, Sinapu will enjoy the opportunity to warp our impressionable and unsophisticated rural minds. And who knows -- they might make a lot of local converts if they can demonstrate that wolves prefer to prey on Lycra lemmings, upscale fly-fishermen, trophy estate developers and land-yacht drivers.
Even better would be evidence that wolves feast on small-minded members of the Chaffee County Fair Planning Commission. There may be some things we need local bodies to protect us from, but the idea of wolf re-introduction isn't one of them. We can handle that.
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