The Rattlesnake Hill Wildlife Management Area is a 5,100 acre upland tract, situated approximately eight miles west of Dansville, New York. Roughly two-thirds of the area lies in southern Livingston County, while the remaining third lies in northern Allegany County. The tract was purchased in the 1930’s under the Federal Resettlement Administration and is one of several such areas turned over to DEC for development as a wildlife management area.
The area is appropriately named after the Timber Rattlesnake, which may be occasionally found in the more remote sections of the “Hill”.
The area offers an interesting blend of upland habitats such as mature woodland, overgrown fields, conifer plantations, old growth apple orchards and open meadows.
The area is inhabited by a variety of game species and is open to public hunting. The white-tailed deer, wild turkey, ruffed grouse, grey squirrel, cottontail rabbit and woodcock are found on the area. An occasional snowshoe hare may be observed adjacent to thick creek bottom brush or conifer plantation habitats.
A number of small marsh units have been developed and provide limited hunting for waterfowl. Some of the area’s furbearing species such as mink, beaver and raccoon may be occasionally viewed at these marsh units.
Much like how junk food like hot pockets and candy bars are food and provide some substance, habitats with invasive species still offer a home to wildlife and are part of a healthy ecosystem. While invasive degrade an ecosystem they don’t destroy it like asphalt and buildings do.
I was reading the other day about Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s cuts to various agencies, outside of defense and policing. While I agree with Donald Trump and Elon Musk that we need to cut government spending, civilian agencies are not where the pork is. It’s in law enforcement and the sheer number of laws that need enforcing. If we had fewer laws, we could have fewer cops, fewer jails, fewer government officials. We need to transition law enforcement workers from public sector jobs to the private sector, where they can serve as an engine of economic growth rather than a tax on working folk. We need to repeal laws not create new ones.
Our government has gotten too big and complicated. The fear of the evil doer in combination with the corporate war profiteers have swollen our defense department. Even though the threat of terrorism is insignificant we spend trillions going after a phantom enemy. It all needs to be shrunk. While I’m sure many men and women in uniform work hard, they should be re-trained for private sector jobs. They don’t all need to be eating out of the public trough. Government is too big and burdensome.
While there is much that government does that is important, the over-regulation of private lives and the centralization of power is a threat to all Americans. Our leaders should work tirelessly to downsize government, not take from the neediest but from the fattest of fat cats that have made their billions profiting off of the fear of average Americans. Government should be in the business of repealing programs, especially unnecessarily punitive and expensive programs. Re-train government workers, and help them be the next generation of private sector professionals.
One way to shrink government is to end the war on drugs. It’s stupid to tell private citizens what they can or cannot do in their own private homes. I think all recreational drugs should be legalized. This would save billions in taxpayer dollars. If people want to use heroin and opioids recreationaly then that’s their choice to poison their bodies. People don’t die from overdoses, they die from consuming unsafe, unregulated illegal drugs. Government should stand back and only regulate these recreational substances to ensure their purity and safety, and to tax them to provide essential revenue including treatment programs from those who are addicted. Prohibition has always failed and its making our country broke with all the money we spend on corrections producing even more broken people.
Downsidegovernment. It’s the way we can move our country forward.
Somebody said that to me the other day as they frequently see me riding back and forth to work on Erie Boulevard.
I don’t think Erie Boulevard is that dangerous to ride compared to other city streets like Madison Avenue but I understand people’s concern, especially as the news media always makes a big deal about fatal bicycle crashes but rarely automobile crashes.
I would argue the health benefits to riding to work far exceed any risk of getting hit, especially if the crash is fatal. Feeling good and being healthy now is more important than the risk of death. Diseases that kill you slowly like obesity and diabetes are far more harmful to a life than a fatal crash which is likely to be immediate.
I’ve been bicycle commuting long enough to know all the danger points in my commute and I either try to avoid them or use extra caution by looking twice, reducing speed, and making sure I have good sight lines and visibility on my bike.
A lot of people don’t understand that the Eastern, Western and Texas grids all operate at slightly different frequencies, they are non synchronized.
This is the same reason you can’t plug a gasoline generator into your wall outlet and not blow a fuse when you are connected to the power grid. The phases will conflict.
Residential solar connected to the grid uses a specialized grid – tie inverter which ensures that the output of panel matches the sine wave exactly.
So it’s impossible to move alternating current between the different grids. So it’s not like they can just build ordinary power lines to connect the seperate grids. They do move some power between the grids using converted high voltage direct current but that’s expensive and complicated to do, so it’s only done occasionally.
And now some lyrics that Natalie Merchant and later Joan Baez made famous… Where in hell can you go Far from the things that you know Far from the sprawl of concrete That keeps crawling its way About 1,000 miles a day?
Take one last look behind Commit this to memory and mind Don’t miss this wasteland, this terrible place When you leave Keep your heart off your sleeve
“Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the Kaatskill mountains. They are a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family, and are seen away to the west of the river, swelling up to a noble height, and lording it over the surrounding country. Every change of season, every change of weather, indeed, every hour of the day produces some change in the magical hues and shapes of these mountains; and they are regarded by all the good wives, far and near, as perfect barometers. When the weather is fair and settled, they are clothed in blue and purple, and print their bold outlines on the clear evening sky; but sometimes, when the rest of the landscape is cloudless, they will gather a hood of gray vapors about their summits, which, in the last rays of the setting sun, will glow and light up like a crown of glory.”