Politicians and ‘conservation’

Here are the top 10 ways to become known far and wide and throughout one’s political district as a card-carrying, conservation-leaning politician while actually doing the bidding of Big Business and corporate polluters:

10. Get a prestigous award from an organization – any old group – whose name includes the word “environment” or “environmental” or “conservation.” Then parade the honor (and black cherry plaque) before the eyes of adoring constituents at every possible venue, including stops at local cricks with local bucket biologists and white-shirted bureaucrats from your state’s fish and game agency.

9. Develop, in fighter pilot lingo, the “situational awareness” needed to remain oblivious to the sight of roadkill carcasses, especially those of colorful songbirds like cardinals and robins and yellow warblers and red-tailed hawks whose habitat has just been destroyed to make way for another industrial park or “corporate center.”

8. Hail from a big state, like Texas or California or Montana. Shrimpy little states, like Vermont, Rhode Island and such have long-standing records of producing intelligent, but wimpy (on pro-business issues) candidates. Just look at how far Howard Dean the screamer made it.

7. Look spiffy in tan or olive-drab attire when standing alongside bucket biologists and politically-appointed game and fish agency chieftains at photo op time, even as the temperature soars into the 90s and higher. Carrying binoculars around one’s neck is an added touch, but good public speaking credentials are not a prerequisite. Always wear a ball cap with the logo of a firearms manufacturer or all-terrain vehicle maker and keep a

custom-made shotgun close at hand for photo ops during upland game bird hunting season.

Smile and look your best when holding the bald eagle (for the tee vee cameras) that had to be taken in by a veterinarian after the white pine supporting its nest was logged to make way for a strip mall or airport runway.

6. Carry C+ or worse academic credentials; preferably a bachelor’s from an elite East Coast university that offers degrees in forestry, wildlife management, political science AND business administration.

5. Have the uncanny ability to look hick and country and ecologically smart and savvy, even while wearing tailored business suits and attending chamber of commerce dinners and political party shindigs or swinging gold-plated shovels at groundbreaking ceremonies.

4. Surround one’s self with advisers (cronies) who are actually professional liars, cheats and general all-around scoundrels but who know how to weasel out of the worst public relations disaster and paint rosy scenarios at the scenes of oil spills, fish kills and eroded stream banks.

3. Develop a vocabulary that includes positive-sounding words like “clear skies,” “healthy forests,” “big fish,” “freedom from regulation” and “clean coal” while hiring pollsters adept at phrasing survey questions with such lingo.

2. Carry the skill to remain positive in times of pending disasters like flooding exacerbated by development or wildfires made more ferocious by global climate change. Be skilled in riding a non-polluting bicycle and reading children’s fairy tale books at times of great stress.

And the top qualification: The ability to dance like a butterfly and fight like a largemouth bass on a fly line when facing vicious reporters from the so-called liberal media.

 

The ‘war on wildlife’

Us Easterners don’t hear much about the “war on wildlife” that our federal government fights everyday out West.

But we should learn more since we’re footing the bill.

At the same moment that agencies like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spend what little they’re given by Congress to save endangered species and their habitats, another branch of the federal government goes out and kills wildlife.

It’s called Wildlife Services, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Now the real interesting thing is who benefits from a program that’s ostensibly set up to catch mean old predators – critters that catch and eat livestock.

Uh oh!

Ranchers out West – guys and gals in 10-gallon hats following cows and sheep across federal public land (mostly) – like to cry in their Jeeps (few actually ride horses anymore while herding their woollies and cattle) about how many animals they lose to mean old coyotes, re-introduced wolves, even common ravens.

What they should be crying about is the weather. After all, that’s the chief factor behind cattle and sheep fatalities, data compiled a few years ago by the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service shows.

“Only a negligible percentage of American cattle was lost to wildlife predation in 2005,” the conservation groups Sinapu and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility say.

“Yet, taxpayers and ranchers are spending an estimated $300 million per year on lethal and non-lethal predator control, more than three times the estimated cattle losses caused by wildlife.

“Poor weather caused substantially more cattle deaths [45 percent more] than all forms of wildlife predation . . . Dogs kills more livestock than any other species except coyotes . . . Dog-caused cattle deaths equaled the totals for the more storied predators [cougars, wolves, bobcats and bears]

combined.

“Coyotes were responsible for more than half of all recorded cattle losses.

At the same time, the number of coyotes killed by federal eradication agents is on a par with cattle killed by coyotes [90,000 vs. 97,000,  respectively].”

Some more stats. In 2005, growers had 104.5 million head of cattle. Illness, weather, rustling and other non-wildlife causes accounted for losses of 3.86 million cattle during the year while predators of all types killed 190,000 cattle.

Gee, the weather, disease and birthing problems cause more headaches for livestock producers than predators do.

“Ironically, producers can do nothing about the weather and calving but are willing to unleash a paramilitary assault using poisons, aerial gunning and hidden explosive devices against native wildlife,” notes Sinapu’s Wendy Keefover-Ring.

Ranchers and farmers spent $200M or so a year on fences and guard dogs. Taxpayers throw in another $100M a year to keep Wildlife Services agents busy killing native wildlife.

In 2004, those agents killed a record 2.7 million “nuisance” wildlife in response to requests from ranchers, towns, farmers.

Here’s the irony, if you haven’t already figured it for yourself:

“On one hand we have federal agencies spending millions to protect wildlife and then we have another federal bureau spending millions more to exterminate the same wildlife – and, of course, they do not coordinate with each other,” PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch said.

“Each year, bad weather kills many more cows than predators but no one is calling for weather control,” Ruch says.

Here’s an idea. Let’s try seeding the clouds – with tax dollars.

 

Dr. James Hansen

zlisten to a fine interview of Hansen, director of NASA’s Goodard Institue for Space Studies, at: http://wamu.org/programs/dr/08/06/23.php

And read about Hansen and climate change in Mark Bowen’s new book “Censoring Science”

A ‘real’ threat to human health!

Unless climate action is taken, global warming will pose a substantial threat to human health in the coming decade. Read more right here folks: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/effects/index.html 

25 to 30 Florida butterfly species fading fast

This (http://www.miamiherald.com/331/story/607868.html) is hardly surprising given the rampant habitat destruction that’s still going on in Florida.

Mercury in songbirds

Among the latest findings from the ongoing research into non-aquatic songbirds in the Northeast is this: the presence of mercury in non-aquatic songbirds. The data on Bicknell’s Thrush provide the most comprehensive information to date on mercury in a strictly terrestrial, insect-eating songbird. The results from this new study show that songbirds in mountain forests are accumulating mercury.

Visit the Vermont Institute of Natural Sciences home at http://www.vinsweb.org/cbd/MES/ for more information.

Erosion and sedimentation

I see – all the time, by the way – top soil cascading off home construction sites ine old valley. And it’s not just soil, either: try rocks, gravel, shrubs, turf, even trees washing down hillsides. The Little Nescopeck Creek used to run jet black from the crud washing into its sub-surface trainage pool (old anthracite mining tunnels).

 

Construction crews might very well be obeying erosion and sedimentation regs, but something’s not going too well.

 

A mile or so from where I sit, construction-boosted runoff is so strong that an entire bank of the Little Nescopeck is eroding away. The soil-colored water downstream is just part of the big show visible from an upstream road bridge.

The townships, boroughs – even the county and state – need specific rules for development in order to protect other homeowners and to keep sediment out of the Nescopeck and other waterways.

Some more words on climate change

The top scientists in the world have concluded that climate change is likely happening and that there is a 66 percent level of certainty that it is human caused. It is already affecting our lives and most important, even if society addresses it as a crisis today, we can expect its effects to dramatically change ecosystems worldwide for the next hundred years because carbon dioxide will remain at high levels in the atmosphere for at least that long.

 How much we will have to adapt is still a question. Now I understand why people don’t want to believe this (political persuasion tools?), but I do. That requires me as a citizen journalist to examine its impacts and to report on what is the biggest environmental issue in my lifetime, the century and perhaps more than a millenia.

A senator’s folk history of forest management

Read U.S. Sen. Larry  Craig’s folk history of U.S. Forest Service forest management right here: http://voices.idahostatesman.com/2008/07/16/rockybarker/craigs_alternative_forest_history Then enjoy a good hearty laugh.

Conservation in Pennsylvania

We’ve all heard the stories of what’s happening to Wild Pennsylvania:

-        Too many deer;

-        Not enough acres protected;

-        Suburban sprawl;

-        Flooding exacerbated by the sprawl;

-        Air pollution

-        Water pollution;

-        The demise of wild brook trout fisheries.

 

Pick a favorite species that’s native to the Commonwealth and chances are it’s one of those that conservation groups consider to be in trouble.

 

-        Consider the wood thrush: A forest-interior songbird that must have large, unbroken tracts of wooded countryside in which to nest productively;

-        Consider the missing element in the state’s natural diversity: critters with big teeth.

Consider the fragmented nature conservation movement in Pennsylvania:

 

- One group focused on birds, another on mammals, a loose coalition of people interested in insects, especially butterflies

- Local land trusts focused on preserving small parcels through working with conservation-minded property owners (and doing outstanding work).

- The shrinking and death of aquatic habitats.

 

Incredibly, no single conservation organization in Pennsylvania today has stepped forward to advocate the truly landscape-scale, science-based conservation models it will take to restore the full spectrum of Wild Nature to the Commonwealth.