Privacy issues: commercial access to public hunting and fishing license data

I was trolling through my emails on Tuesday evening, when
the following email popped up:

With the 2014 hunting season right around the corner, we are excited to share what we have to offer you at HUNTABC.com  [name changed].  We hope to make sure you have a memorable and successful season!

The State of Nebraska shared your contact information with us as someone who has hunted in the state in the past. We thought you might be interested in learning more about HUNTABC.com, and the exciting information and opportunities that we provide.

Well, that's interesting...my hunting license information was "shared" with an commercial entity?  How many of you were under the impression that your height, weight, last-4 digits of SS, address, and email, and credit card information might be considered public information to be shared with anyone who asks? 

I know that had not occurred to me.  It seemed especially odd, because I remembered (and a friend confirmed by showing me a screen-print of the hunting registration web page) that I was told that my information would NOT be shared with an outside entity when I registered to hunt.

So, on Wednesday, I wrote a constructive email to Nebraska Game and Parks Commission to note my concern.  I noted that I had found a state statute that prohibited the use of election roles for commercial use, and I offered to help NGPC change the state statutes for hunting and fishing license roles in similar fashion.

NGPC responded: 

Permit information has been public for years and as you have read, by state statue, it is public information so it is supplied on request to organizations or individuals wishing to view it or use it. It is not prohibited from commercial use. The language on the permits purchase section is being corrected by the State Office of Chief Information Officer.

It wasn't exactly the type of response I had been hoping for.  No apology for the completely false picture of security they had painted on their registration web site.  Everything, apparently, was my fault for being so completely ignorant of public records policies.  Regardless, I repeated my offer to NGPC to help change state statute.

Why am I concerned about this?  Why is this a potential nightmare scenario for state agencies?

Well, state agencies across the country have been trying to lure (pun intended) fishing and hunting participants back to "the fold".  The number of anglers and hunters has seriously declined in the past decades.  Millions of dollars have been spent on this mission--urban fishing clinics, hunter education workshops, Outdoor Expos, and more. 

And, then, this out-of-state organization comes to Nebraska and asks for all of the names and emails (apparently that is all that was provided) from the hunting and fishing license roles.  By state statute, that request was approved (an internal memo at NGPC notes that no youth information was released).  Most amazingly, the company was silly enough to state that they had received my information from the state.  I guess that honesty is one saving grace...

Privacy issues are at the forefront of concerns of the American public at the moment (e.g., more are concerned about on-line privacy than terrorism).  All hunters and anglers were told, when they registered, that their information was secure and would not be released.  Will news of this breech of assumed security harm recruitment and retention issues?  I assume it will.  Will this make it harder for University researchers to conduct surveys of the public?  Sure it will--the first question we are asked during these interviews is "will my information be kept confidential?"

If NGPC was a company, I would move to a different company to get my hunting license.  But, I can't. 

The best move for Nebraska Game and Parks Commission is to ask state legislators to pass a new statute that places license information in the same category as election roles.  There is no reason that hunting license information should be available for commercial use.  Period.

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Stormy weather affects wildlife as well

My state of Nebraska has seen its fair share of stormy weather recently, with 'twin twisters' this week, a large hail storm a couple weeks ago, and a variety of other weather that is common on the Great Plains.

As we think about the effects of stormy weather to crops and personal property and human life on the Plains, I thought I would post a couple videos to show the potential for weather to affect wildlife as well.

These two videos were from a project led by Josiah Dallmann, an undergraduate research student, and Lars Anderson, a graduate research associate, at the University of Nebraska during the summer of 2011.  We put videos on greater prairie-chicken nests to document nest attendance as well as nest predators.  These were taken on private ranch land south of Bassett, Nebraska.

The first video's purpose is to show you where the nest is, in the second video.  In this video, you should see a cute little clutch of light-colored eggs in the middle of the frame.  Then, at about 30 seconds, a hen returns to the nest after leaving to find food.  You'll see her come across the top of the image, and you can see the radio-collar that she is wearing--which allowed us to find her nest.  She settles on the nest and 'disappears'.

The second video shows a massive hail storm--the nest is not as easy to see, but is in the center under the taller vegetation.  During this storm, two other hens that we were monitoring died while protecting their nests.  The hen in the video survived the storm, and the video lasts until a hail stone hits the video cable and the video feed ends at that point.  You can skip towards the end of the video to see the hail...it starts with heavy rain and lightening.  Hail stones in the video are about the size of ping-pong balls!

We know that wildlife face tough conditions as they battle the elements to survive.  I have to admit that I never thought about what it might be like to sit on a nest through a large hail storm.

Short term versus long term: land ethic in action

I would suggest that Aldo Leopold's "The Land Ethic" can be condensed down to three words: "Think Long Term". 

These days, high land prices and high (although falling) commodity prices have most landowners thinking short-term.  And, as I like to say, "Who can blame them?"  If you are a landowner who has busted your back to make ends meet and the sky suddenly opens and the stuff that you are good at growing increases in value...there is a good chance you are going to think, "I should make more of this stuff."

And, that is the rub.  Not only are landowners in danger of changing the landscape (something that I care about) in this situation, but they are also prone to making personal financial mistakes (something that they should care about).  That is, they often over-extend themselves during these times.  They buy bigger machinery that plants and harvests "stuff".  They buy more land to grow "stuff"--the land costs more, but the high commodity prices will make it pay.  Right?  Well, maybe in the short-term.  Probably not for the long-term. 

I've done an analysis of the historic trends for land values in Nebraska, and it is clear that we will see some kind of dramatic lowering, or correction (another nice term for "crash"?) of farm land values in the next 2-3 years.  In fact, these crashes are occurring every 30 years.  Start with the Dust Bowl.  Then go to the recession of the 50's.  Then, you have the 1980's Farm Crisis.  And, that brings us to our impending change in valuation. 

That is not good if you are a farmer.  It may be an opening for conservation--because it is hard for conservation efforts to compete (think "CRP") with high-dollar commodities. 

It turns out that North American farmers and conservationists are not alone in their angst with thinking 'long-term'.  The BBC recently reported that the current ag subsidies in the EU, which were supposed to include efforts to "GREEN" the farm landscape, became so diluted (read: "easy for farmers to skirt around") that they were meaningless.  It's a problem in short-term versus long-term thinking. 

I'll quote directly from the article, which you can read here:

"A lead author, Lynn Dicks from the department of zoology at the University of Cambridge, told BBC News: "Politicians are talking about the greening of the Common Agricultural Policy - it's a nonsense. If a firm made these sort of claims it would be stopped by advertising standards. 

" "It was a good idea to make greening compulsory for farmers to get their grants but the trouble is that the plan was so diluted in the negotiations that it's completely ineffectual." 

"Ariel Brunner from Birdlife is angry that the greening, according to the report, will do little or nothing to help species like farmland birds which have been in freefall because of intensive farm methods. "EU citizens were promised a green reform but handed a 'greenwash'. Dramatic loss of biodiversity in the countryside must be addressed," he said. 

"The Commission's original greening plan came under attack from farmers and farm ministries in member states. Even the authors of the Science paper admit it is extremely hard to impose a blanket environmental policy across the diverse landscapes in Europe. 

"The Secretary-General of the EU farm union, Copa-Cogeca, Pekka Pesonen, told BBC News: "We do not believe the measures initially proposed by the Commission would have had any real beneficial effect on the environment.  

" "It also makes no sense to take land out of production when food demand is on the rise, and estimated to increase by 60% by 2050.  

"That is why Copa-Cogeca advocates green growth measures: measures which benefit the environment at the same time as maintaining production capacity, efficiency and employment. The final agreement on CAP reform is more realistic and practical to apply than the original proposal." 

"The authors of today's paper argue that is short-sighted. They say: "Intensification clearly provides some short-term economic gains for farmers and the food industry [emphasis: mine]. But these have to be weighed against the loss of public goods such as climate stability, landscape quality and biodiversity. The EU has lost a chance to improve agricultural sustainability." "

The bottom-line is that we're never going to make the world a better place if we only use the "We must feed the world" tag-line as the focus for every decision.   We've got to think long-term--which includes feeding ourselves and living good lives.  Will we want to live in the world that exists in 50 years, if we only think about food production as a viable use for land?