And What’s Wrong With The Endangered Species Act?
Posted by Tom Remington on January 30, 2008
It’s getting worse before, if ever, it will get better. Abuse of the Endangered Species Act is at an all-time high and rising like a rocket. Something must be done! (Scroll to bottom to find links to related articles)
Can it get any worse? Millions of dollars are being spent on lawsuits aimed at preserving habitat and some species of wildlife needlessly, with no end in sight. The ESA is being used as a lethal weapon that will destroy our property rights and further sink us into economic recession. It’s out of control.
In yesterday’s Tucson Citizen, B. Poole has an article that focuses the most of its attention on one such over the top environmental group called the Center for Biological Diversity. This is how Poole describes the efforts of this group.
The Center for Biological Diversity staff brandishes the Endangered Species Act like a blunt-force instrument. Leverage from its petitions and lawsuits - more than 500 in 18 years - helped gain protection for nearly a fourth of the 1,351 endangered or threatened plants and animals in the United States.
This has been much of my argument in the past about why we need to do something about the ESA. A piece of legislation that was created to insure that we humans wouldn’t knowingly wipe out a species of animal or plant, has now become a “blunt-force instrument”, costing taxpayers billions of dollars.
It doesn’t help anyone when the author of this piece states that the USFWS’s purpose is to protect endangered species.
Critics accuse the center of helping to hobble Fish & Wildlife, the federal agency with the task of protecting the nation’s endangered species.
The USFWS recently revised its “Mission Statement”.
Our mission is working with others to conserve, protect, and enhance fish, wildlife, and plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people.
I fail to see here where the purpose of USFWS is to spend nearly every penny it has fighting lawsuits. The job of the USFWS is far more complex than protecting only endangered species but groups such as CBD are tying the hands of the agency by draining the budget that should be used for other purposes. This blatant act of suing the USFWS is only one tactic used to draw attention to the group in order to better be able to raise money. Donations are expected to exceed $6 million this year.
According to the article, the USFWS’s annual budget used for endangered species is $5 million. Since the year 2000, USFWS has used all of that money, $35 million, just on court cases from groups like CBD.
Jamie Rappaport Clark, who is executive vice president of Defenders of Wildlife, another preservationist, animal rights group that spends all of its time in the courts suing USFWS, told the U.S. Congress that USFWS is in trouble and needs more funding. His complaint is that the USFWS has had to take money away from endangered species programs to fund other programs. Can Congress not see that this is an indirect request to put more money in the pockets of groups like DOW and CBD?
President Bush requested $146.5 million dollars be spent on endangered species. Clark is asking for that amount to be bumped up to $185.2 million. I would suppose in order to give her and her group more opportunities in court.
Incidentally, Defenders of Wildlife just announced they plan to sue the USFWS over the latest proposed ruling regarding management of wolves in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. The feds announced they would ease up some restrictions to make it easier to protect game animals and property owners in the event that the effort to remove the wolf from federal protection gets tied up in court for the next several years. As many as 27 animal rights and preservationist, environmental groups have threatened legal action once the USFWS makes the announcement, which is expected perhaps in March.
The Pacific Legal Foundation, a California-based group that advocates property owners’ rights, has challenged some center lawsuits. Foundation President Robin Rivett accuses the center of exploiting the Endangered Species Act requirement for speedy habitat designation.
Once certain parcels of land are designated protected habitat for endangered species and/or a species is placed on the endangered list, it is nearly impossible to get it removed, as we have witnessed many times. The money being spent on lawsuits to stop this action serves only to line the pockets and promote the personal agendas of these groups and does very little if anything to protect species.
Even Rivett says the way the Endangered Species Act is being manipulated and interpreted falls into the hands of the protectionists.
“I don’t think it’s helping. It seems to be litigate first and talk second,” he said.
The Endangered Species Act requirements leave judges little choice but to side with the center, Rivett said.
“It’s like shooting fish in a barrel when it comes to critical habitat,” he said.
Judges ruling in favor of the Center for Biological Diversity shows in that the Center has won 86% of the court cases they have fought. But some are saying that part of the reason for this success is the result of too little challenges from anyone, perhaps the result of lack of funds or organizations to fight back. It is clear to me that the USFWS does very little to fight back. They are so cash strapped they can’t afford to fight these groups and have found it easier to give them what they want. This is not in the best interest of Americans.
In Arizona, Jim Chilton, Jr. fought the CBD in court and won. He was awarded $600,000 in damages in a defamation lawsuit. The CBD posted photographs on its website claiming that damage done to land, deemed critical habitat for the Sonora chub and Chiricahua leopard frog, was done by his cattle.
Even thought the Center claimed in court that the photos were put up by mistake, we all know this is just part of the many unethical tactics used by such groups in order to strong-arm their way to get what they want.
And who’s behind this movement? Perhaps this will help shed some light on the kind of person and the mentality associated with them. Kierán Suckling, one of the founders of the Center for Biological Diversity and has a degree in philosophy, had this to say about why we think the way we do about animals.
The center’s work goes far beyond biology for Suckling, who has a master’s degree in philosophy from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. There are deep cultural bonds between people and animals that start soon after we are born, he said. From Garanimals to stuffed animals to familiar icons such as Big Bird, we wrap our children in wildlife from birth, he said.
“We don’t surround them with images of people. We surround them with images of animals,”
Unfortunately, much of what Suckling is saying is true, although I strongly disagree with his statement that “we wrap our children in wildlife”. This is much of the problem with this entire mindset. He is not drowning his kids in “wildlife”. He is presenting to children the myth that animals talk and play games. There is nothing about wildlife in how our kids are being presented animals.
Kids have found comfort and solace in hugging a teddy bear. At some point in their lives they need to be taught that it is only a stuffed animal and does not resemble the real bear in any way shape or form. We do not wrap our children in wildlife. We are telling them that animals have personalities. That there are mommy and daddy animals, with cute little kids that grow up to be just like us.
People like Suckling may find this a suitable means of educating their own children but not all of us agree. There is something just as perverse in teaching your kids this way as probably Suckling thinks is wrong in teaching kids about bears, wolves and mountain lions that attack and kill people and that people kill them back.
With organizations such as these that I have spoken, given a chance at exploiting a broken Endangered Species Act, there is very little that can be done until we decide to do something about the Act. I know I’m sick and tired of my money going toward enabling these groups that in my opinion are harming our society far more than most people may know.
Tom Remington
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There Will Be No Satisfaction No Matter What The Determination Of Polar Bear Protection
It’s Time Something Be Done About The Endangered Species Act
Safari Club International Joins Lawsuit To Fight The Overturning Of Grizzly Delisting
Feeding Wildlife A Legal Infraction Of The Endangered Species Act?
Maine Lynx Trapping Lawsuit Settlement Reached
Time To Toss The Endangered Species Act
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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service does not spend billions of dollars fighting lawsuits. Though most of it’s listing program budget (about $5 million annually) is taken up complying with court orders, as my story states, the service spends just $100,000 per year on legal fees and actual court costs. The remainder of that $5 million goes to listing programs, such as listing and habitat proposals, 90-day findings, 12-month findings, economic analysis, final listing and habitat designations and administrative costs, that the service theoretically would be doing anyway. The Center for Biological Diversity and others maintain the work was not being done UNTIL they filed their lawsuits. The Fish and Wildlife Service has not put an animal on the Endangered Species List or designated habitat for an endangered species in many years without a court order.
February 5th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Is there really a lot of difference between administering court costs, much of which has been generated because of lawsuits and “fighting” lawsuits? And over the past years how long does it take those $5 million budgets to total into the billions?
Okay, perhaps a bit of an exaggeration but it is still my opinion that the money and time spent on battling in court over these issues is very difficult to justify.
February 5th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Again, the $5 million has nothing to do with court costs. It is endgangered species work done as a result of lawsuits (work that judges have repeatedly agreed should have been done in the first place). What should they spend their listing budget on, if not listing endangered species and proposing and approving critical habitat? Would it be wrong if they had spent that money doing the work without court orders? Environmentalists say they only sued because the work was not being done, and judges in all parts of the nation have repeatedly agreed. The lawsuits force the federal government to follow its own law. At $5 million per year, it would take 200 years to spend a billion dollars.
February 5th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
The USFWS is getting sued because they’re not enforcing the existing laws, and the fact that they’re losing court battle after court battle has little do with a lack of challenges or manipulation of the ESA.
It’s that they’re not doing their job.
As for “talking” their way before litigating, I think the actions of the administration’s political appointees — several have been booted from their posts for subverting or ignoring the best available science in pursuit of political goals — pretty much forestall that.
And of course, you don’t have really have any idea what happens before a lawsuit is filed. You’re blowing a lot of hot air to justify an at-best tenuous position.
February 15th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Let us cut back on human land and food and then we will see who is bitching. Wolves have more right to this land than we do. Money would not be a problem if people just stopped complaining about losing a few lambs. I understand it would get frustrating but come on if your not satisfied with the territory thats your fault for moving there in the first place.
February 16th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
a FEW lambs, huh. Wow!
February 17th, 2008 at 1:32 am
It’s good to see this kind of exposure. It’s about time people realize that these radical environmental groups are not so slowly and ever so surely taking away our lands for their elitist purposes. Their agendas are truly frightening, and people need to start understanding what is at stake. Thank you for working to expose these issues and inform the public.
February 17th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
The Center for Biological Diversity is a political action organization, not a science based organization. The sum of their political action motivation can be reduced to - if it harms or threatens the rural people’s existance here or accomplishes the rural cleansing (political)agenda they worship via their supporting role for such as the Re-wilding Institute.
This political agenda is ecologically bankrupt. More and more real on the ground best science that takes into consideration the benefits that the high level of stewardship prevalent
amongst the people of the land here shows that natural abundance and diversity is greatly increased by this historic presence and influence. This fact is totally ignored by the CBD as it does not jib with their not so hidden political agenda of social engineering the people off the land.
True best science shows that their lawsuits and those of like pollutical agendas such as Forest Guardians and Defenders of
Wildlife and the resulting control of land agencies charged with protecting and enabling our natural resources has destroyed more habitat and species across the west in a destruction reaching catastrophical proportions. They truly anthropogenic landscapes of the west depend on man’s management to survive.
Removal of this resident stewardship in the form of healthy forest thinning has destroyed vast areas of habitat and species through mega-catastrophic fires are destroying (not renewing) entire forest genetics which have come forward since the ice age along with their human stewards.
These organizations have also been truly polluting the information stream with strident mis-information campaigns based on the Hegelian dialectic. Creating phantom evils and catastrophes unrelated to the truth on the ground and demonizing innocents - all problems that can be solved by removing innocents, good stewards from their lands - the lands these imposters so covet.
The proof of the pudding is easy to see if you do some real research outside normal media/TV/enviro “education”. Every ounce of their energy, you will see, is put to destroying the rural people, a complete counter-indication to their stated goals.
February 17th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Abbey - Part of the problem with your argument is that the majority of these people already lived there long before the wolves were brought back. The only validity to your argument deals with those who move there SINCE the reintroduction.
February 18th, 2008 at 8:28 am
There are two major problems with groups like CBD.
It is not about the Endangeered Species Act. This group and others like it make their living bringing lawsuits. Yes they have tied up more private property and put more people out of work on misinformation and they do it by having their own people in federal agencies to slip information to them or to work in conjunction with them so the federal agency does not show up to take deposition. When the case comes before the court the federal agency does not even show up so there is no way the court can rule but in the direction of this environmental group ensuring that all their misinformation now becomes fact and that their lawyers are handsomely paid.
Heads they win, tails we lose.
What about that species? Now the federal government will cough up millions of dollars to scrutinize this planr or animal. But what do they ever learn. You would be sadly, amazed at how much can be spent and how little information gathered. But it sure keeps a bunch of people employed.
What have we learned?
We are keeping a lot of attorneys and so call biologists and botanists employed. But I had the occasion to listen to one of these “scientist” on the witness stand. It was embarrassing.
February 18th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Like so many things in life that aren’t black and white, a lot of this article and the resulting discussions tend to mix apples and oranges, specifically the ESA versus the actual implementation of the ESA. A law is only as good as the enforcement of it and everyone can take a look around on every level and see where THAT goes!
The ESA was written with good intent and a recognition that human culture, as we are currently living it, is generally not harmonious to our environments. We CREATE our environments through farming, grazing, mining, cutting timber, etc. and then fashion our environment through our ability to manipulate natural resources.
This in turn causes disruptions in the in these very systems that we depend on to “extract” our resources from. There was and is, a recognition by the “environmentalists” that if we fail to take care of these environments sufficiently, we are just cutting our own throats by “crapping in our water”, so to speak, until we no longer have water to drink, etc. and of course, everyone will suffer.
THAT was the idea behind the ESA and other environmental protection laws as well. There is not a single person that will read this that cannot recount some story of “one bad apple” through their greed (whether it be corporate, government or just the financially elite) that took advantage of a situation and literally dumped the people with the resulting problems from their “industry”. There are horrific stories all around about wastes just dumped somewhere or “over extraction” that depleted the resources while the offending party ran off with the profits and left the locals to deal with the consequences. Sometimes this was sick children, sometimes it was land that wouldn’t grow crops anymore, sometimes it was taking all the water - whatever - they did it and people suffered and had little resources to try and fight them, stop them or get some accountability.
Any of you people every actually TRY to fight the government or a big corporation? Do you have any idea what that is like?
So the ESA and other laws were good IDEAS but as usual, its trying to get them implemented correctly that seems to cause the problems because……humans just can’t seem to learn or at least, not enough of us.
After passing all these laws, it becomes business as usual, profits, resources wars, political corruption, back room deals, buy offs, lobbists, there’s a million ways and USFWS is no different.
They AREN’T doing the work and the work they do is often found to be skewed to protect profits, not the environment.
Then there is “protection” that is granted that never was about the species or the ecosystems but was just one giant hoax perpetuated on the American people to grab our land, our resources, our access to our own country and lock us out and lock those resources up for the political or economic elite.
Furthermore, there is not a single one of us on the entire planet that knows ENOUGH about these very ecosystems to actually protect them and we are very arrogant to even pretend.
All the ESA and all our other laws is just a big feel good band-aid to try and pretend that we actually CAN do something to “balance” our exploitative lifestyles with nature. We want what we want when we want it and that is our “right”, even in the “liberals” eyes who are often behind these lawsuits.
Setting here at this computer screen, writing out my thoughts to strangers costs electricty, metals, factory plastics, and is teaching me nothing about how to live on my planet, in harmony with these ecoysystems or species. When done, I will walk to my kitchen and pull a meal from my fridge and mull over the “terrible state of affairs” during the commercials on tv.
The complaints about the hypocrisy of it all in this article mirror our own inability to deal with our own hypocrisy. If we all don’t wake up a little more(I am including myself!)about how to resolve these problems that arise from our current outlook about “our right” to live this way, or even more importantly, our ABILITY to live in a fashion that is not healthy for the world we absolutely depend on, the last species to be listed will be us!
February 18th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Cindy - I don’t know where you live, but I live in a very rural western area. I think the greatest tragedy are the sustainable cultures, those who know how to live with and are an enabling part of nature here and around the world being destroyed for fantasy notions born of such as “wilderness” - a fantasy state as our North American forests and plains are interactively synergistic in nature. Once this ancient relationship between man and nature here is forbidden through ESA regulations or such restrictive designations it is most often lost forever. This unnatural state of “preserved” wilderness is becoming the starting point for the rapidly accelerating in size and number catastrophic mega-fires that are totally wiping out virtually all historic ecology from vast areas.
Though portrayed as “renewing nature” these fires are doing nothing of the sort, and are turning the west into a shrubland monoculture - biologically desertified.
Genetics from hugh ecosystem areas is being lost forever for the first time since man and the forests together followed the melting ice sheets. Wilderness here is causing diseased fire prone thickets where once magnificent and abundant Ponderosa savannas had been created and maintained even into modern times. Rural life, outside of hugh agribiz industry is family, community, and land based. You must take care with your land, it is you and your children’s future.
It was the small family healthy forest, silviculture type forest harvest that kept our forests, watersheds and all that lived here healthy and abundant. It was they who went to the Forest Service and pleaded that the industrial logging practices they were adopting would be bad for the forest.
There have been decades of biological surveys showing that privately managed land here supports abundance and diversity while on government managed land ecological values drop drastically. It is true as Cindy Macdonald says above that the courts by NGO influence proliferate bad science. Land agencies someimes contribute by stating under oath that “cows eat fish”, and “cows step on the redds (egg nests) of fish” (In this case nests of particular fish that don’t even lay eggs!)
In fact, the most reknowned fisheries biologist in the SW has reported that he is aware that these same fish have gone extinct on vast reaches of the areas rivers because of removal of cattle from drinking at the rivers. accoding to him they thrive where creeks pass through corrals, where vehicals splash through river crossings and where cattle water and create the broad, shallow, braided refugia.
They obviously never thrived in the area untill the small family herding/grazing cultures moved in or have ajusted to their presence. And yet, the federal code of regulations for crital habitat under the ESA lists that all the human activities that cause these fish to survive and prosper are threats. Insane!
February 18th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
What is wrong with the endangered speices act… they have no common sence, and our Government is stupid for ever letting them have any say so as to what goes on in America.
This country will be ruined because of these groups, the logging shut down because of the spotted owl, now the grouse in Wy. putting alot of people out of work while it makes a nest LOL how do all the other birds manage to hatch there young with human civilization?
These groups that have messed up people making a living is wrong, and America is going to pay a very big price because of it, we all will be under government care when the dust settles,
When is Americans going to stand up and say we have had enough? What will it take? little by little our rights are being taken away, when will there be a revolution?
This country cant continue to go the way it is going.
February 19th, 2008 at 12:32 am
CBD is a litigation bank, making money by winning or prevailing on a part of its individual complaints. It’s really easy, because environmental laws have enough holes to drive a busload of environmental lawyers through. I even came up with a lawsuit that a pro-bono legal group brought for me, and won, and I’ve not spent even a day in law school. It’s how cynical groups like CBD and Earth Island Institute (another animal rights group) make their bread and butter.
Moreover, it’s usually not about species, but about local “populations” of them. For example, the western snowy plover lives from the Gulf of Mexico to West Coast beaches. It’s listed Threatened only at West Coast beaches, even though it’s abundant throughout the majority of its natural range. In Oregon, where I live, it cannot nest in its century-ago abundance primarily because the federal government planted invasive species in the late 1890s to stabilize dunes and sand spits. The grass spread, and changed habitat from one that used to favor ground-nesting plovers to plover-eating predators like raccoons, skunks, crows and ravens.
Some of us sued to get it delisted. USFWS had erroneously stated in 1993 Federal Register rule of threatened status that it was “genetically isolated” from its inland population, even though in the same document it cited cases of beach plovers (based on leg bands) at inland breeding locations during the nesting season. But, when they looked, no beach plovers were actually copulating, so they concluded that they could make the incredible conclusion that they’re genetically isolated.
To respond to our lawsuit, they simply changed the standard and cited “behavioral isolation” without doing even one more examination of inland nesting grounds. We don’t know, for example, whether they looked at inland sites only once, and not a week or two later, back in the late 1980s when they concluded that they don’t interbreed and now, therefore, are behaviorally isolated and can remain on the ESA list.
Another is the so-called Distinct Population Segment of marbled murrelet, a tree-nesting seabird here that nests on rocks in the Aleutian Islands. In 2004, USFS concluded there is no listable population south of Canada, but did not delist the “species.” We sued again to compel action by USFWS. It responded that the ESA didn’t clearly say they had to do anything, so it’s still on the list.
CBD and others try to say that a Bush Administration official queered the “science.” We know better than that. There’s several million potential nesting trees for the appx. 6,000 pairs of marbled murrelets south of Canada. That is a fact; no politics involved.
Take the brown pelican, another species that never should have been listed. Now it’s proposed for delisting, and greens are going to fight that, too. It could be that a couple of seabird biologists who’ve made a career studying the pelican on grants are now retiring, so they don’t need the auspices of the ESA to keep the money coming.
The alleged “Pacific Coast subpopulation of western snowy plover” costs us access and use of public land from March 15 to Sept. 15 every year since 1993. The non-listable but listed anyway DPS of marbled murrelet costs us timber jobs and America the use of our extensive forests, so we have to import logs and wood products from foreign countries to meet domestic demand for wood products.
Now there’s good national policy: import what we should be producing ourselves, often from countries that don’t give a rip, or much of one, about environmental protection. What happened to their vaunted concerns about anthropogenic global warming? To preservation of forests? To respect for third world people who depend on forests for their lives and culture?
They don’t care, because it never was about the environment. It’s about money and influence and cushy jobs. It’s easier to file lawsuits than to do honest work outdoors, to supply America with food and raw materials and keep our economy going.
CBD is not a publically-traded corporation. Pensions are invested in publically-traded companies. It’s incredible that unions, particularly public employee unions, can’t wake up and smell the coffee. As our economy and competition corrode, as more people live off public payrolls and fewer have good jobs that pay into “the system” CBD and its ilk are laughing the the bank.
Look at the roster of delisted species and subspecies. Most are taxonomic errors, went extinct or are from foreign countries (Palau). I haven’t found one, ever, that was recovered due to the ESA. Of the few that aren’t in the error or foreign category, all could have been delisted due to other laws. The gray whale is a prefect example. Nothing was done to the whale’s habitat, the Pacific Ocean. The International Whaling Convention of 1946 laid the groundwork for whale “recovery.” The ESA had nothing to do with that “success story.”
February 19th, 2008 at 2:46 am
John - Some great examples of ESA abuse and “what’s wrong with the ESA”. I have written also about the Canada lynx. The Canada lynx is healthy and thriving, where it’s normal habitat and range are. Studies show the lynx will migrate in relation to the snowshoe hare.
The state of Maine and other northern U.S. states that have marginal lynx populations, are on the boundary of habitat areas. In these areas lynx populations will vary considerable depending on available food, in this case the snowshoe hare.
Groups are suing to get the lynx listed and declare millions of acres of land in Maine protected habitat for the lynx which will cripple Maine forest economy.
This is similar to what you are writing about, John. This is regional and fringe habitat areas where listing a species is foolishness at best and extremely costly.
February 19th, 2008 at 7:45 am
Tom
Lenin and Trotsky used this controlled oppostion tactic of environmentalism leading up to the Bolshevik Revolution, which was funded by New Yorker and Elite Banker Jacob Schiff, I assure you Al Gores fathers buddy Armand Hammer was involved as well, 20 million in American gold helped to rid Russia of Free Rural farmers, first by disarming them and then slaughtering them later. Thus our Elite bankers created Communist Russia. The very same people today are behind this nonsense in America, I’m just looking forward to the day when this comes down in America, because the Bolsheviks killed the traitors of their own country men, those Russians who turned green and against their farming gun owning hunting Russian rural people. The American freedom hating environmentalist will be killed right alonside of us, Fools. Al Gore gives away the Armand Hammer award annually for good and proper government to some stooge of his choice. Its Communism in America, only it is the u.s. corporate empire long war at home and abroad. So in short these enviro people are cutting their own free throat along with mine. I love it when the non-reading non-researching American, or excuse me u.s corporate citizen cries out, Oh that will never happen in America, unhuh, I refer you to Russia and Germany, even ancient Rome which were all Republics at one time before failing from the same ruse we fail from now. So I will say that the FWS is controlled opposition by these groups sueing them as they really do not want me to hunt wolves in my home state of Idaho themselves, FWS is not prepared at this time to defend against those suits, nor is IFG, Frankly Tom I do not want to waste a bullet on something I cant eat, stinking DOG. Ive put many elk and deer in the pot in my day but them critters is gettin mighty thin around these parts, What will be next on the endangered list? Me? Them? or elk.
A Cowboy ponders.
February 19th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Greg - Your last question, I think I will opt to not answer that and instead bury my head in the sand! LOL
Freedom is perceived quite differently would be my guess. For me, freedom is enjoying life and being able to be happy and prosper…..without having to look over my shoulder to see what will be the next law of the land and/or restriction placed on me because as a human I am considered at either a lower or even playing field with animals and plants.
Freedom for others is the freedom to impart their ideals through laws and control onto others who just want to be left alone.
Which course of freedom will win out?
February 19th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
We have said it before and we will say it again. FROM OUR COLD DEAD FINGERS.
February 19th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Excellent comments!
The root of the problem is in the language of the ESA that gives animals rights over humans.
Our Constitution was not written by animals, nor agreed to or signed by animals. Animals have no rights, because rights are form of contract agreement and only people can perform that function.
Whenever animals are given rights over people, our Constitution is violated. The ESA has engendered repeated usurpations of individual human rights, including property takings and life endangerments, that are expressly forbidden in our Constitution.
That strikes at the core of what this country is all about. Saving species is a nice idea, but protecting human rights trumps that. Or should. When just one citizen’s God-given, Constitutionally-protected, human rights are violated in favor of an animal, we all lose. What we lose is very precious, much more precious than a wolf or a snail darter.
February 20th, 2008 at 12:02 am
[...] by Tom Remington at Black Bear Blog [here] [...]
February 20th, 2008 at 12:17 am
I just had my daughter’s 2nd grade teacher give her an assignment which would require my daughter to do “research” on the Defenders of Wildlife website. (Well, you start out on the kidsplanet.org website, which then redirects you to the DOW website… how cute!)
When I saw this, I emailed the teacher and told her that there is no way my daughter is going to do her research on this website. She will do the research elsewhere, with our help.
The project also involves some mention of the ESA. I told the teacher that, in my opinion, the ESA is a controversial subject which is also too complex for 2nd grade, at least if you intend to explain its full impact on the world as a whole, including the inescapable economic consequences. However, we are fully prepared to tackle the subject at home and present a fair explanation of it to our daughter. I also told her that we hope that being the “professional” that she is, she will present a balanced view in class. [Thinking to myself... 'fat chance!']
No doubt most of the other kids and parents went ahead and did their research, and followed blindly just like the teacher told them too. But my husband and I just couldn’t let it go without letting the teacher know that our daughter has a powerful weapon against public school indoctrination — parents who think.
April 7th, 2008 at 10:15 am
EMC
Good show and bully for you EMC. Rockefeller and Dewey have stupified America in less than 100 years, time for it to stop!!
I was flipping channels yesterday and stopped at this kid movie cartoon flick, can’t think of the name of it, but this forest ranger ladie has a grizzly bear living in her garage as a pet, and the bear has a one antlered deer buddy and they run around looting convience stores, also had some hunter dude chasing around in his old chevy truck wielding his rifle like some nut case while hunting the bear and deer.
I just thought that was some great kiddie indoctrination from a cartoon flick. Some body wants to indoctrinate freedom, individuality, even self preservation right out of the human mind don’t they. Then we got Polar bears wearing ribbons and drinking aspertame coke.
Now we got Californios boy-cotting Wyoming because a few wolves got culled last week, I say good, I wish America would just get outta my yard, we don’t need no more ESA help around these parts. Seems like folks would learn to quit poking their nose over some one else’s fence.
Course I think we should bring back the rattle snakes down yonder, there just isn’t enough of them crawling around down there no more, maybe then those folks would watch where they walk, and shut up.
April 7th, 2008 at 11:10 am
EMC - You are remarkable to do this and I applaud your efforts. If only all parents did as you did and cared enough to do it. KUDOS
April 7th, 2008 at 1:43 pm