There’s no talk of “catch-neuter-release” over there!
Thousands of pet cats in Beijing are being abandoned by their owners and sent to die in secretive government pounds as China mounts an aggressive drive to clean up the capital in preparation for the Olympic Games.
[…]
The cull comes in the wake of a government campaign warning of the diseases cats carry and ordering residents to help clear the streets of them.
The methods may be harsh. But the result is that feral cats who would otherwise starve in the streets and die miserable deaths are put out of their misery quickly. As well, a major disease vector is eliminated, and the damage that feral cats cause to the local environment, in terms of loss of endangered birds and small mammals, is reduced.
For all those who say it is impossible to round up all feral cats, and that TNR is the only viable alternative… I bet China will do a pretty darn good job. Reminds me of how Thailand eliminated the drug problem in 6 months… the methods were brutal, but it was enormously effective for almost a decade.
Then again, China may not want to advertise about the cat disease vector so glibly… that only causes people to dump the cats.
But then again, we are talking about SARS and other weird diseases. And, in my time in Asia, I did tend to notice how some pet craze would sweep a country. Heck, in Vietnam there is now a hamster craze!
Vietnam has launched a crackdown on hamsters, a wildly popular pet here in the current lunar Year of the Rat, fearing an influx of the foreign-bred rodent furballs could spread disease and destroy crops.
From next Monday, anyone possessing or trading hamsters faces stiff fines of up to 30 million dong (1,875 dollars), the Vietnam News daily reported, citing a new agriculture ministry directive to enforce a ban imposed last month.
Yowzers, $1,875 for possessing a hamster!
Mao once saw pets as pure bourgeois decadence. He had a point: people often spend far more on stray animals than on stray people.
Tags: feral cats
8:25 pm, March 8th, 2008
I never get plastic bags when I buy things. Well, maybe very occasionally.
But I always suspected there was something a bit stupid about claims that they do great, great damage.
Indeed:
The central claim of campaigners is that the bags kill more than 100,000 marine mammals and one million seabirds every year. However, this figure is based on a misinterpretation of a 1987 Canadian study in Newfoundland, which found that, between 1981 and 1984, more than 100,000 marine mammals, including birds, were killed by discarded nets. The Canadian study did not mention plastic bags.
Plastic bags may be a nuisance, but the fact that you use 1000+ plastic bags when filling up with a few gallons of gas in your car should give you some perspective. The fact is that ugly cities… cities filled with trash and rubbish will almost certainly result in more government spending and more focus on the “environment”. Indeed, most people consider the “environment” to mean scenic beauty. And so a few bags here and there will likely increase public sentiment to increase spending on the “environment”, and while those people may think that that spending will go to clean-ups, sure, it will also go to true environmental causes like watersheds, etc etc.
So next time, take the bag and don’t worry. (But maybe don’t drive as much in compensation!)
Hell, didn’t Edward Abbey recommend that people freely litter in cities so as to give the Boy Scouts something to do?
Tags: consumerism
1:48 am, March 8th, 2008
That’s my opinion when I read their latest newsletter.
Indeed, you thought that Angie’s List was a progressive place to find contractors? Something like a cool cousin to Craig’s List?
Well, it might be a good place to find contractors, but it is NOT progressive. Anything but!
Check out their article lambasting eminent domain in their latest magazine (it starts on page 16). It is a collection of sensationalist stories of people who have been “cheated” out of their property rights by mean-spirited and cold governments. It includes photographs of people with the following signs and logos: “Eminent Domain Abuse”, “This land is my land”, “Thou shalt not steal”. And it includes photos of a woman crying because of eminent domain, as well as a bulldozer ripping down a house “lost to eminent domain”.
There is ZERO discussion on the other side. About how eminent domain is an often necessary and important tool to clean-up blighted areas, to close down crack houses and slums, and to protect open space and wetlands. Indeed, the 2006 California initiative that the journalist references would have made it so that property owners could be exempted from ANY government “taking”: clean water, clean air, endangered species laws, zoning, farmland protection. All of these laws would have been rolled back under the banner of eminent domain “reform”. The journalist totally fails to understand the dimension of this battle.
Indeed, most of the articles is stuffed with quotes from the ominous sounding “The Institute for Justice”, a private-property rights and “libertarian public interest group”. The journalist even goes so far as to include a sidebar from them about whether states have passed “weak” or “strong” reform. Does the journalist point out the bias of this group? Of course not.
But, hey, can you blame the guy? This journalist literally seems to live in a fantasy world.
Tags: california, private property
5:20 pm, March 3rd, 2008
Good thing we have national monuments and national parks and wilderness areas! Why? Shoot, because without those protections there would be reckless exploitation of those lands… things like oil drilling and the like.
Oh, wait…
A subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum has notified the Bureau of Land Management that it would like to explore for oil in a central California national monument.
And a sad note on this monument…
Since its creation, the monument has been a battleground over cattle grazing. The refuge’s former manager, Marlene Braun, committed suicide during the height of those tensions, believing she had been sidelined by her superiors seeking to protect grazing rights despite the area’s new mission of species protection.
What the oil companies want, the oil companies get. After all, this isn’t the first national lands wrecked by oil exploration:
Oil exploration is under way within Padre Island National Seashore, bringing heavy truck traffic that park advocates worry will disrupt visitors and threaten the endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtle.
The BNP Petroleum Corporation has already drilled a natural gas well within the park, bringing truck traffic along 15 miles of the Gulf beach. BNP intends to drill several more wells at the seashore.
Tags: parks, pessimism
7:21 pm, March 2nd, 2008
Some preacher wants to put up a sign on his roof. “Property rights”!
Well, well… the dusty West wasn’t always so dusty. In fact, humans in the past 2 centuries have made it 5 times more dusty than it used to be.
As people spend more time communing with their televisions and computers, the impact is not just on their health, researchers say. Less time spent outdoors means less contact with nature and, eventually, less interest in conservation and parks.
I don’t know how true this is. Have you been to a national park lately?! Then again, I was at the magnificent new John Day Fossil Beds visitor center (note: creationists beware!), and I was the only visitor all day.
Suburbanites getting (slightly) greener:
Last summer, Mr. Tidwell attended a picnic where, he said, a guest had brought a plate of kiwi fruit imported from New Zealand. “This very nonhippie, not-environmental-cliché-type woman I heard asking another person, ‘I wonder what the carbon budget of these kiwis are?’ ” he said. “I was just astonished.”
If the United States is ever to reduce its carbon emissions, suburbanites — that is, roughly half of all Americans, said William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution — are going to have to play a big role. And lately, they are trying.
The death and decay of an environment…
… sometimes beautiful?
After a few steps he stopped and pointed with pride at a stalk of dead fennel standing in a bed of moribund, wheat-colored joe-pye weed. “Normally, people who garden would have cut this back by now,” he said. “The skeletons of the plants are for me as important as the flowers.”
Animal rights activists versus the environment (again):
First we lost the Baiji. Now will we lose Bangladesh’s unique freshwater dolphins?
In a country where the wildlife population has been denuded because of over-crowding and pollution, dolphins provide visitors with a beautiful and memorable surprise.
But conservationists say they are increasingly concerned over the future of the country’s river dolphin population, some of which they warn may even be at risk of extinction.
They say that it is rapidly declining because of over-fishing, a shortage of prey, pollution and declining freshwater supplies.
The LEED system is a bunch of crap. Pretty much everyone knows that. LEED Platinum or Gold probably means that the occupant of said building is a corporation looking to greenwash its sins. But more worrisome is how the LEED system may actually lead to anti-environment choices. Indeed:
But the growth of green design renders the loopholes in LEED more serious than ever. The point system creates perverse incentives to design around the checklist rather than to build the greenest building possible. Consider the example of the University of Michigan architecture school, whose dean, Doug Kelbaugh, is a lifelong believer in green architecture. His school is embarking on a major addition to its facilities, but Kelbaugh told me he’s on the fence about going for LEED certification. The addition is planned for the roof of an existing building—the greenest site possible, given that heat will rise up through the floor and no new land will be used. But LEED gives points for water-efficient landscaping, so a rooftop project that by definition has no landscaping is already down two points out of a possible 69.
Tags: media
11:46 pm, March 1st, 2008
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Is Brazil getting serious about protecting the Amazon? Doubtful! Still:
Three hundred police and security agents have been deployed to the Amazon in a massive crackdown ordered by the Brazilian government against loggers illegally stripping the forest, officials said Tuesday.
For that matter, is India getting serious about protecting its tigers? Doubtful! Spending around $10,000 per tiger may seem like a lot, but, shoot, that tiger could probably sell for $50,000 on the Chinese black market.
Tags: brazil, india
11:37 pm, March 1st, 2008
In 2002, Ireland passed a tax on plastic bags; customers who want them must now pay 33 cents per bag at the register. There was an advertising awareness campaign. And then something happened that was bigger than the sum of these parts.
Within weeks, plastic bag use dropped 94 percent. Within a year, nearly everyone had bought reusable cloth bags, keeping them in offices and in the backs of cars. Plastic bags were not outlawed, but carrying them became socially unacceptable — on a par with wearing a fur coat or not cleaning up after one’s dog.
So reports the NYT. Wait, I thought that “consumer choice” was the right thing for governments to do? Taxing plastic bags? What’s next?! Taxing gas and cigarettes?!?! Oh, wait…
Tags: ireland
11:35 pm, March 1st, 2008
Do you think feral cat enthusiasts would be so, uh, enthusiastic about catch-neuter-release if, say, nature corrected the imbalance and bumped said cats from the apex predator ladder?
Something wild tore a chunk out of Fortune the cat last fall, so when his owner, Diana Cooper, saw a weasel-like animal screaming on her neighbor’s lawn one night this spring, she was sure she had found the attacker.
Next thing you know, feral cat enthusiasts will be clamoring for trap-and-kill programs for these beasts! Indeed:
“It’s on my property and it’s killing my cats,” she said. “I want this thing killed.”
To that end, Wallace and Assistant Animal Control Officer Rosemarie Bishop received permission from New Hampshire Fish and Game to place traps in Wallace’s back yard.
The traps, which are not lethal, caught nothing for two weeks. Then last Wednesday, Wallace checked on the trap and found a fisher inside.
“He was just in there, quiet. He was actually kind of cute,” she said. “It makes me feel a little bit better knowing that we got the one that’s been hanging around my house.”
The fisher that was caught in the trap was shot and killed.
Domesticated and feral cats are apparently fine outdoors (even though they aren’t native to North America); but wild indigenous animals… no way! Trap and kill ‘em!
(Now wouldn’t things be so much better if cats were kept indoors and castrate/spay was the law of the land?)
Tags: feral cats
11:30 pm, March 1st, 2008
From The Nature Conservancy:
When the shearwater protection project began, Misaki thought, “Wow, so many cats! As we cleared away the brush, we found lots of bird bones and realized that the cats had used the trees as staging areas for their attacks.”
Feral cat predation of native fauna is a growing ecological problem, especially on islands. Arising from stray or abandoned unsterilized pets, feral cat colonies multiply rapidly in the wild and prey easily on smaller animals that had not evolved survival responses to evade these introduced predators.
Did The Nature Conservancy employ the stupid and ineffective “trap-neuter-release” program? Of course not. The cats were all euthanized. TNR is not a viable solution for feral cats and their direct, significant, and overwhelming impact on local ecosystems. The only solution is euthanasia. Trap-neuter-release is a “feel-good” strategy that, when compared to other strategies, leads to more feral cats, more cat predation on ecosystems, and more disease vectors.
What can you do, in order of importance:
- Do not own cats.
- Keep your cats indoors.
- Castrate/spay your cats.
- If your State/City/County allows it, destroy feral cats on your property or in areas where you may take such action.
- Continually report feral cats to county/city agencies.
- Do NOT report feral cats to “humane societies” or feral cat organizations. These animal rights organizations have a documented lack of concern for endangered species and will simply re-release feral cats AND OTHER FERAL CATS in that area. If you report a feral cat to one of these animal rights groups, it is likely that they will use that site to setup a new “colony” of feral cats.
- Tell your friends about the above.
Cats, particularly feral cats, are apex predators that are destroying huge swaths of our natural heritage day after day. While PETA and other animal rights organizations may not agree, these predators must be REMOVED for the continued survival of endangered birds, mammals, and reptiles.
Heck, even The Nature Conservancy knows that much! Isn’t it about time that YOU took action?
Tags: endangered species, feral cats
12:02 am, February 26th, 2008
I’ve given a few dollars to Seacology in the past… I’ve always thought that they had an innovative approach, particularly their “win-win” strategy. Specifically, they will often ask for a local tribe/village to declare a marine/forest area off-limits to hunting. In return, Seacology will build a school, community center, or water treatment facility. That’s really cool.
But, recently, I’ve started to wonder if their model is viable.
Let’s take a scroll through some of their OLDER projects (>5 years) that have had follow-ups (by Seacology) in the last year or so.
On Funchal:
UPDATE July 2005 - Former field representative Korrina Horta visited the May 2005 planting event and reported that the project is providing much-needed reforestation to the Funchal hillsides and that the children visibly enjoy the contact with nature and learning about native plants.
On Principe:
UPDATE January 2006 - Project leader, Manuela Nunes, visited the sites in December 2005. She found some equipment was missing from the facilities and bad weather had caused damage to one site. Ms. Nunes worked with the communities to replace materials during her visit and learned that another funding source has offered to repair storm damage. During her visit a short turtle and bird protection awareness campaign was conducted in the form of radio announcements and distribution of leaflets to villagers. She also noted that the schools in the area are conducting turtle conservation campaigns. However, turtle poaching remains a major problem.
In Utwe Walung:
UPDATE July 2007 - After her site visits in Micronesia, Seacology Senior Program Officer Karen Peterson reports that the Seacology-funded solar power system at the community center has not been functioning. A solar contractor in the Marshall Islands has been identified who could repair the system and train locals to maintain it. The road to the community center is also scheduled to be improved within the next year, which will enhance access. The area is still under protection, and there are several clean-up parties planned at the center. The center itself is in need of re-thatching but is due to be repaired in the near future.
In Palau:
UPDATE July 2007 - After her site visits in Micronesia, Seacology Senior Program Officer Karen Peterson reports that the area is well-demarcated with buoys and is along a beautiful stretch of mangrove coastline. The “floating ranger station,” which was originally built with local materials has recently been rebuilt with more robust materials. There is a small solar panel on the roof of the station, which will be hooked up to a light in the near future. The station offers a good vantage point of the entire reserve as well as the mangrove area, where most poaching takes place (at night).
In Palau:
UPDATE July 2007 - After her site visits in Micronesia, Seacology Senior Program Officer Karen Peterson reports that PCS director Tiare Holme stated that protection for the Ebiil Channel Marine Conservation Area, which was due to expire in 2006, has been extended in perpetuity.
In Fiji:
UPDATE October 2007 - Additional funds were provided in August 2007 to complete new house wiring before connection from the FEA. In September 2007 the FEA completed the connection to the three villages and electricity is now being supplied to village houses. Saula Vodonaivalu reported that villagers were very happy with the new electricity and asked him to send their message of sincere appreciation to Seacology.
Here’s my problem with Seacology.
On paper, many of their achievements sound great. Indeed, on their home page they have a little odometer that shows that they have currently protected 157,000 terrestrial acres and 1.8 million marine acres.
But in some ways this reminds me a bit of the news today that Kiribati established the largest marine reserve in the world (164,000 square miles). That’s great… BUT they only have a single boat to enforce the fishing ban in this area the size of California. It’s a paper tiger.
It’s pretty easy if you are sitting on an island in the Indian ocean to host a group of happy Americans and let them build a school for you… and you just have to agree not to fish in a certain area. But who enforces that no-fish zone? Simply putting up buoys to demark the reserve (as Seacology does in some places) isn’t really sufficient.
Similarly, many of Seacology’s projects haven’t apparently had any updates or visits for several years. And, often, the updates are simply about the status of the schoolhouse or community center, rather than the state of the protected area.
There appears to be no comprehensive and scientific scrutiny of the effectiveness of Seacology’s techniques. Marine life surveys before and during marine reserve setup, for example, should occur, and would help determine if poaching continues, and if the reserve itself is working. It’s not really sufficient to have a project leader come for a day or two once every couple of years and take a look around.
Finally, I understand that Seacology, as with many charities, is big on travel, and, particularly, inviting people to come along on their trips (for a donation, of course). That’s fine… but to what end does this serve the projects? Does squiring patrons around Fiji actually help a project, or does it fritter away valuable resources (staff time, etc.)?
A few years back I thought Seacology was cool in that, as a small charity, it is doing actual conservation work in innovative ways worldwide… and for a shoestring budget. But now I’m not so sure. Their projects sound great (although there seem to be an awful lot in beautiful Fiji), but it seems as though, in some ways, they are spending more time planning wildlife safaris for guests rather than doing comprehensive follow-through.
Tags: nonprofits, ocean
6:39 pm, February 19th, 2008
Here they are. Here too.
The next leg will declare marine reserves for more northerly areas.
When will Oregon get its reserves?
Marine reserves are so, so vital. Not only do they help protect certain areas, but they increase fishing rates pretty quickly. Larger fish (in the protected areas) are more reproductively successful.
Tags: california, ocean
2:44 pm, February 19th, 2008
Yet another victim of the outdoor and feral cat plague… highly endangered sea otters.
Indeed:
They’re cute, furry, and when they’re not chasing each other around kelp forests, they’re floating on their backs like miniature teddy bears. Hunted nearly to extinction for their luxuriant fur–the thickest of any mammal’s–the sea otters of California were making a comeback until they started mysteriously dying off. State wildlife officials recovered a record 281 dead otters last year, and this year looks to be even worse. Five or six wash up on California’s beaches and rocks each week. In August alone, 28 dead otters were cast ashore, including an alarming number of full-grown females.
And here is a BBC article with more detail:
A parasite carried by cats is killing off sea otters, a veterinary specialist has told a major US science conference.
The Californian researcher has called for owners to keep their cats indoors.
Cat faeces carrying Toxoplasma parasites wash into US waterways and then into the sea where they can infect otters, causing brain disease. […]
There are 73 million domestic cats in the US, and the number has doubled in the last 10 years; there are estimated to be another 78 million feral cats.
Keep your cat indoors. Not only do outdoor cats — even well-fed ones — kill huge numbers of birds, including endangered migratory birds protected by Federal law (read: you could be help responsible), but they are not implicated in the deaths of hugely endangered California sea otters.
Report feral cats and feral cat colonies to local authorities. Write a letter to your local newspaper alerting people to the plight of endangered sea mammals and the role of feral cats. Collect the names of feral cat mongers — if ownership of these feral cats is established, these mongers may be help criminally liable under federal law for sea otter deaths and/or endangered migratory bird deaths.
Do NOT flush cat litter down the toilet!
Here are some other news sources on this important issue.
The New York Times (and why preservation of wetlands is so vital):
Dr. Mike Murray, a veterinarian at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and Dr. Miller attribute the parasite problem in part to the loss of wetlands, which filter many pathogens and pollutants.
”Now runoff comes in and goes straight down a concrete channel to the ocean,” Dr. Murray said.
The London Times:
Hundreds of sea otters on the coast of California are dying of toxoplasmosis, a disease caused by the Toxoplasma gondii parasite that is carried harmlessly by up to 70 per cent of cats and passes into the environment in their faeces.
And:
The highest proportion of the exposed otters was found in the Morro Bay- Cayugas area, and the lowest proportion in the southern Monterey Peninsula. The Moss Landing-Elkhorn Slough region also had a high proportion of exposed otters but not in statistically significant numbers.
The Morro Rock areas has a confluence of polluting sources — tributary creeks, feral cats, urban runoff, sewage discharge and a concentrated human population, said Karen Worcester, biologist at the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board and one of the authors.
For Californians, ANOTHER important thing you can do to help protect California sea otters is to check the box on your State tax return to donate a few dollars to help this sentinel species! Here’s more info:
# When filling out your 540 form, look for line 60 labeled CA Sea Otter Fund, under Contributions. Fill out whatever amount you wish to donate.
Tags: endangered species, feral cats
8:42 pm, February 18th, 2008
Here:
And Metro, the regional government that manages the zoo, may seek as much as $90 million for a bigger elephant habitat, new veterinary hospital and new zoo education campus.
You are seriously about to ask taxpayers to pay $90 million… for elephants??
Now, look, I totally support your captive breeding program of Columbia Basin pygmy rabbits. I think the money spent on the condor breeding program is probably better spent elsewhere.
But now you want millions more to build a better home for a bunch of elephants? In Portland, Oregon?
Is that a joke?
And they will use whatever tactics they can to push this through:
Adding to the push in Portland is the fact that general elections draw more Democrats, especially in presidential election years, and they generally “are much more willing to fund progressive causes,” said Portland Commissioner Sam Adams. “That’s why everybody aims to November.”
How clever of quick-to-anger Sam Adams, and others, to take advantage of the peculiarities of different election cycles to get their taxes through!
Tags: portland, stupid
10:44 am, February 11th, 2008
“Biofuels”, “biodiesel”, and all of the rest of that junk are bad ideas and rely on bad science. In particular, they are bad for the environment, not only in terms of carbon emissions (they result in more emissions) but in loss of ecosystems and primary forest. Here:
Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these “green” fuels are taken into account, two studies being published Thursday have concluded.
[…]
The clearance of grassland releases 93 times the amount of greenhouse gas that would be saved by the fuel made annually on that land, said Joseph Fargione, lead author of the second paper, and a scientist at the Nature Conservancy. “So for the next 93 years you’re making climate change worse, just at the time when we need to be bringing down carbon emissions.”
It’s all one big interconnected puzzle of supply and demand:
Likewise, Dr. Fargione said that the dedication of so much cropland in the United States to growing corn for bioethanol had caused indirect land use changes far away. Previously, Midwestern farmers had alternated corn with soy in their fields, one year to the next. Now many grow only corn, meaning that soy has to be grown elsewhere.
Increasingly, that elsewhere, Dr. Fargione said, is Brazil, on land that was previously forest or savanna. “Brazilian farmers are planting more of the world’s soybeans — and they’re deforesting the Amazon to do it,” he said.
Interesting to note that Ted Kulongoski, Oregon’s most anti-environment Governor in a generation, has shoved “biofuels legislation” down our throats.
The basic equation is this: if Oregon farmers take advantage of this tax incentive they will do so by swapping from producing crops for food to producing crops for fuel. Now, this doesn’t somehow mean that the demand for that food crop will vanish… nope. It just means that the price point will move higher, and, eventually, it will move high enough that it makes economic sense for someone down in, say, Brazil to start clearing his land and planting food crops.
It’s this reason why, say, tortillas in Mexico are priced so high:
Soaring international demand for corn has caused a spike in prices for Mexico’s humble tortilla, hitting the poor and forcing President Felipe Calderon’s business-friendly government into an uncomfortable confrontation with powerful monopolies.
The fact of the matter is that the solution to most of our environmental problems is not more or alternative consumption. It is simply LESS consumption.
Tags: consumerism, energy
4:45 pm, February 10th, 2008
Here:
In a 2004 study of the environmental impact on transportation in the Atlanta metropolitan region, Mr. Frank found that the average carbon emissions per person per workday were about 10 percent lower in neighborhoods with six to eight dwellings per acre — a typical suburban layout — than in a more spacious one with only two to four dwellings per acre, simply because people drive shorter distances in denser suburbs.
Tags: climate, consumerism
12:26 pm, February 9th, 2008
Republican Ted Kulongoski, Oregon’s anti-environment governor, continues to push for Liquefied Natural Gas terminals on Oregon’s coast.
Heck, didn’t even fellow GOP governor Arnold down in California come out against LNG siting in California? Now I know that Kulongoski, without another election to win, is going to push his extremist right-wing agenda down our throats, but come on? First, he appoints GOPers to critical land use boards… well, I guess that is not so much a surprise as he is simply appointing people from his party. Second, he pushes for casinos off-reservation in environmentally critical areas of the Columbia Gorge. Third, he does nothing against Measure 37, and even pushes for a “compromise” that would have granted transferability to all: fortunately Senate Dems stopped the Republican Governor on this one. And now he is pushing to ruin the mouth of the Columbia by turning it into a mega-industrial zone…
What a loser!
Oregon Dems control the House, the Senate… God, losing the Governorship to the Republicans for the past several years has been hugely upsetting.
Fortunately, we have some Democrats standing up to LNG… Merkley, Novick, Bradbury, Kroger… where’s Macpherson on this issue?
Tags: LNG
7:54 pm, February 7th, 2008
This outstanding book, The Oregon Desert, co-written in 1962 by a cowboy and a scientist has some little gems. Peculiar among the passages is the continued focus on how Eastern Oregon could make a man a lot of money.
Here’s one that struck me as particularly… interesting:
Right now, 1962, badger fur is rather valuable, large ones from the desert selling up to five dollars. An enterprising person could develop a market for the little ones as unusual pets.
And in a long discourse on the types of hunters in Eastern Oregon, read this passage and contemplate how things have changed:
The Amateur Naturalist. There are several subspecies, but these folks actually aren’t out there to get a deer. They take rifles and may get their share of deer, but that isn’t their purpose. They hunt because everyone would think them queer if they just wandered around out in the hills without any plain purpose. Actually, that’s what they want to do. I am not talking of photographers, artists, writers, and professional naturalists. I am talking of farmers, sawmill workers, lawyers, and persons of all trades who get more enjoyment out of being in the hills than out of any other one thing. They get it just by being there. They have to hunt as an excuse.
You can’t imagine a man going to his boss and saying, “I’ve just got to have a week off to wander alone out in the woods.” The boss would be calling in a psychiatrist.
Incidentally, in terms of the recent “stand your ground” laws that allow people to shoot to protect their property, what about this anecdote:
A few years ago a woman and her husband were hunting out of Burns. They went to a certain mountain where they knew the terrain. […] A fine buck came bounding over the hill and the wife dropped him with one shot. She tied her tag to the antlers and was dressing her deer when a big man with brand new hunting clothes came up with an open knife, cut off her tag, threw it into the sagebrush, and tied on his own. The Burns woman, too astonished to argue at first, said, “What do you think you’re doing with my deer?” The man said, “It’s my deer now.”
This lady from Burns was of sterner stuff than most. She said, “The hell it is, mister,” and placed a shot carefully through his shoulder, below the bone. He began to yell, a car appeared on the road below, four companions came and led him away, the woman retrieved her tag, and went on cleaning the deer. She explained to her husband, “I didn’t want to kill him, but I wanted to teach him never to do a trick like that again.”
Now come on… surely this is apocryphal?!
Tags: desert, oregon
12:03 pm, January 30th, 2008
Each of these probably deserves its own post, but I simply don’t have time.
Tags: endangered species, logging
11:17 am, January 29th, 2008
Interesting to see that he isn’t using any reference to Lewis and Clark Law School, as he so infamously did in the past.
Tags: measure 49
11:05 pm, January 23rd, 2008
This is weird.
I read this story about the dastardly Council of Conservative Citizens and their support for Mike Huckleberry, or, rather, Huckleberry’s support for them.
Now, on their Statement of Principles, you get the usual claptrap such as:
We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind, to promote non-white races over the European-American people through so-called “affirmative action” and similar measures, to destroy or denigrate the European-American heritage, including the heritage of the Southern people, and to force the integration of the races.
And:
The traditional family is the basic unit of human society. We believe in the traditional family as the basic unit of human society and morality, and we oppose all efforts by the state and other powers to weaken the structure of the American family through toleration of sexual licentiousness, homosexuality and other perversions, mixture of the races, pornography in all forms, and subversion of the authority of parents.
BUT, as well as these crazy “principles”, check out their last one:
Protection of the Environment and Natural Heritage. We believe that the natural environment and resources of a nation are among its most precious, valuable, and irreplaceable treasures. We believe in the protection of the environment from reckless greed as well as from irresponsible government. We support the protection of truly endangered species of wildlife and areas of natural beauty.
That’s really pretty interesting, no? When even the most far-right fringe groups start to support conservation, well, you know that the tipping point has tipped, and that there’s vast, vast, vast public support for conservation, limits on reckless development (and greed… thanks CCC!), and support for endangered species. Let’s hope that this next slate of candidates realizes that!
Tags: endangered species
1:06 am, January 19th, 2008
Instead of killing 30 of them, can’t we do as feral cat mongers do and trap-neuter-release the sea lions that are killing salmon at Bonneville dam?
No we can’t.
There is no historical evidence that California sea lions ever came up this far. Mankind, by eliminating its predators and indirectly reducing populations of competing species of sea mammals, has prodded California sea lions to radically expand their range. Then, to make it worse, we build huge dams that cause salmon to pool in one spot — an inviting buffet to sea lions.
Now we are in a situation where this species is decimating endangered salmon runs.
Anglers and biologists have grown increasingly frustrated with sea lions that swim up the Columbia to Bonneville Dam, where they feast on salmon gathering to climb fish ladders upriver. Last year, monitoring crews counted sea lions eating more than 4 percent of the salmon run, although biologists suspect they probably ate more.
Close to a third of the salmon eaten by the sea lions were from stocks listed under the Endangered Species Act, the fisheries service said. That’s undercutting fish runs battered by dams across their migration routes and by deteriorating habitat.
The sea lions must be euthanized. As must all invasive species destroying native populations of endangered animals.
Tags: endangered species, feral cats
8:09 am, January 18th, 2008
We need some Australian environmentalists in the USA to deal with the ridiculous feral cat problem…
Environmentalists called Wednesday for hundreds of wild horses to be shot dead to prevent a unique Australian national park becoming a “horse paddock,” with little room for native species.
Around 1,700 feral horses — known in Australia as ‘brumbies’ — have caused havoc in the Kosciuszko National Park, according to the National Parks Association of New South Wales state.
[…]
It says current plans to deal with the problem by trapping the horses are ineffective, accusing the state national parks authorities of caving in to sentimentalism. The association itself is a non-government body and is not directly involved with the running of the parks.
An invasive species, even if it is cute and cuddly, is an invasive species… that includes feral cats, horses, goats, pigs… it is these formerly domesticated invaders that often cause the most damage to particular ecosystems, from extinctions to predation to loss of food.
Tags: australia, feral cats
5:07 pm, January 16th, 2008
Is it just me, or do “stand your ground” laws, like in Texas and many other GOP states, seem totally ridiculous, particularly when they make it totally fine to KILL someone to defend property from being stolen (even IF that property isn’t even yours). Read this case and shudder:
Horn became increasingly agitated during his 911 call, saying he wasn’t going to let the men get away with the break- in.
“Property’s not worth killing someone over,” the operator told him.
Later in the call, Horn said, “You hear the shotgun clicking, and I’m going.”
The Texas penal code allows the use of deadly force to protect property, including a third party’s, under certain conditions.
Tags: texas
11:10 am, January 16th, 2008
At least when it is this sort:
IT may not surprise you to learn that much of the pork and chicken and beef and milk that you buy at the grocery store comes from huge, industrial-size operations that bear little resemblance to the quaint family farms that adorn many food packages.
But you may be surprised to learn that your tax dollars have helped pave the way for the growth of these livestock megafarms by paying farmers to deal with the mountains of excrement that their farms generate. All of this is carried out under the rubric of “conservation.” Congress is about to renew the program — and possibly even expand it — as part of a new farm bill wending its way through the Capitol.
Incidentally, what is with the New York Times lately? I can no longer tell which of their stories is a “blog entry” and which is, say, a legitimate news article. Much of their journalism now includes self-referencing and sarcastic sentences like the following:
They don’t smell very nice, either. So I’m sure families living downwind of the lagoons would be pleased to learn their tax dollars helped to finance them.
That’s not a quote, that’s the journalist writing that. Strange.
Tags: farms
6:44 pm, January 13th, 2008
