Critical habitat, climate change, “endangered species,” polar bears, shiners, suckers, manatees, and how to deal with it all
By Julie Kay Smithson, Property Rights Research [here]
Most of us are laymen, not experts in the fields of “endangered species,” “critical habitat,” etc. We do, however, have the ability to read and ponder. We can understand when something is not what it seems. If a species is touted as “endangered,” “throughout all or part of its historic range,” we must wonder how the experts know what that species’ historic range was. Sometimes, though not always, “science,” as employed by federal agencies and their partners, can be boiled down to something that more closely resembles justifying one’s paycheck.
For example, how can anyone decide what is — or is not — “possible habitat”? Speaking for myself, because I might want to live somewhere at some time does not justify setting aside that place (reserving it, so to speak) for the time when I might want to live there. How can U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service use such a phrase to remove people from their homes, businesses, custom and culture — thereby stealing their property rights — under such a guise? It was tried here in Ohio ’s Darby area, where the Big and Little Darby creeks flow. So what if we have “possible habitat” for the Indiana bat, a specie that USFWS says is “endangered”? The bat’s name implies that it is an Indiana species.
The Canada goose is a Canadian species. We are overrun with this species and must avoid it on golf courses, farms, restaurant parking lots, airports, etc. Few people that live where these geese have wandered, set up housekeeping and proliferated would buy into any argument that the Canada goose might be “endangered,” so USFWS has carefully steered a path around this species.
However, the polar bear — originally a few wandering brown bears that kept going north from their original territory to satisfy their apparent wanderlust — does not have the benefit of lots of people keeping an eye on its population. Most of us only know about the polar bear from what is fed to us, courtesy of National Geographic specials and newspaper ramblings that seek to convince us of the imminent danger of extinction.
Hogwash and balderdash, folks. A few excellent connections in places like Nunavit (part of northern Canada ) and Alaska — connections that have experience in polar bears and their habitat — say that the polar bear is in no such danger. The only danger, they say with candor, is from the U.S. Congress and its “green” influenced lobbyists that seek more and more money in order to “manage” something that needs no management, to “recover” something that does not need recovery. Expeditions of taxpayer-funded “scientists” are planned to invade the polar bear’s frozen neighborhoods, trek about and invent “threats” where none exist, and funnel megabucks into these “studies.” While it makes for nice “documentaries,” how much is fact and how much is fiction remains for the viewer to discern. The polar icepack is not “melting at an alarming rate.”
Puny timeframes we have for the measuring of temperatures only cover the past century or so. Global weather cyclic patterns take far longer and people’s presence is not making a “terrible threat” to polar bears or virtually every other species. Rain forests, being in the equatorial region of the world, are in the most favorable growing and regrowth area. Anyone visiting Florida for any length of time knows how quickly green things grow. Multiply that by two or more and you get a reasonable picture of vegetation growth in equatorial regions where rainfall is plentiful. “The destruction of the rain forest” is not leaving a path of “devastation.”
Our own “critical habitat” is being invaded by illegals from all parts of the world, coming here, not to become naturalized citizens, but to attach to the host until the host no longer has the ability to feed the parasite. What do “our” elected officials do about this very real and present threat to the “critical habitat” of Americans? Ask them! It’s an election year! … [more]
