Our World and Everything in It

Not long ago I wrote a blog about H.R. 5852 (The Great Ape Protection Act) to protect our closest DNA relative from both mental and physical pain of suffering. Well, an article in USA Today stated that in Europe, apes could receive some of the same rights as humans very soon.

The article stated, “A Spanish parliamentary committee adopted resolutions last month that would give great apes, such as chimpanzees and gorillas, the right to life, freedom from arbitrary captivity and protection from torture.” It’s expected to be approved next year.

A specific court case in Austria is poised to go further and declare a chimp a person so that it can have a legal guardian and funds for upkeep. The European Court of Human Rights is considering this appeal for Matthew Hiasl Pan, a 28-year old chimp.

The only major legal argument against this is that it may conflict with a human’s rights somewhere down the line.

Spain’s legislation, however, stresses that this is about the basic rights not to be arbitrarily mistreated and killed. It would also “outlaw using great apes in experiments, circuses, TV commercials or films. Apes could be kept in zoos, but conditions would be improved.”

The case in Austria hinges on Matthew, who has always been treated as a human. He has lived in a Vienna shelter for 25 years and it’s going bankrupt. If Matthew has no place to live, he could simply be killed even though donors have pledged money for him, not the bankruptcy. A British animal rights activist who has worked with Matthew for 10 years will be his guardian.

The case wants about 4 out of the 50 human rights enjoyed by Europeans bestowed upon the animal as follows: the right to life, limited freedom of movement, personal safety, the right to claim property, and to a legal guardian.

This issue is being blown out of proportion as if Matthew’s lawyers are trying to get all human rights for a non-human animal “so he can go to college. This is about basic rights not to be killed.”

“Not to be killed” was a consideration for all living things in Bonn, Germany this year where representatives of 191 nations discussed putting a cost on saving nature. They looked into trying to make a highly profitable business out of saving forests, whales and coral reefs and to stave off extinction of the many species that will follow.

German Environment Minister, Sigmar Gabriel stated: “This conference deals with economic interests. It is critical that we assign ‘a measurable cost to the loss (of environment),’ or else we run the risk ‘of deleting data from nature’s hard drive.’” According to an article on the Mathaba News website “the initial results of a study, initiated in collaboration with the European Union, on the global costs of species and habitat loss amounts to 6 percent loss of global gross domestic product. Poor countries are the hardest-hit. The annual cost of species and habitat loss amounts to as much as half of their already modest economic strength.” So preserving biodiversity pays much bigger than destroying it.

It’s sad we have to go through all of this, put a price tag on life to give it value, when a good dose of morality/ethics that insures we have reverence and a deep abiding respect for all life that was given to us should be the norm in civilized society.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2008-07-15-chimp_N.htm

http://www.mathaba.net/0_index.shtml?x=593303

Chimpanzees are being threatened in more ways than one. We like to think of Africa and point over there when it comes to the species closest to man, the little chimps that make us laugh and that everyone remarks are “so like us.” And they are. We’ve spent millions of dollars on the study of apes, on how much they are similar yet not exactly like us as we’ve come to find they have emotions, families, mates, tribes, and live life much like we do mourning death, being afraid, stressed, defensive, angry, happy, and depressed. Scientists have successfully taught large primates sign language, and they have conversed with humans too. There is only 1 percent difference in our DNA and their’s.

So to read the heart-wrenching stories of chimpanzees and other large primates used in research is depressing to say the least. What are we thinking spending millions to find out if a species is similar to humans, and when we do, use them as objects for research? The old cliché that “we have to do that to save human lives” is outdated and has been a crock for quite some time. Breeding research animals is big business. The medical community has been divided on the use of animals in research for years.  Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, NEAVS or New England Anti-Vivisection Society, In Defense of Animals, the Humane Society, Doris Day Animal League, and plenty of other organizations have been trying to get the message out in the mainstream that the use of animals for experimentation is no longer necessary. There are other and better alternatives.

How many times have we heard that a certain drug or procedure tested fine in animals, but not in humans? And we’re only lately seeing the results of what is known as a virus “jumping species.” When viruses jump species, from animal to human, dog to cat, etc., the virus usually becomes virulent or deadly to the new species host, i.e., the bird flu. So when the new human host of an animal virus passes that virus onto another human—look out. It could become a deadly epidemic. In this scenario, using animals for research should not be the norm, not to mention being outright inhumane? How inhumane are we? Read what Theodora Capaldo, president of NEAVS, and also a licensed psychologist with over 35 years of experience helping humans highlights in the NEAVS Newsletter about the lives of 3 different research chimps and their rescue into a sanctuary:

• Rachel [a chimp], raised in a home like a human child, was abandoned to a laboratory and spent the next eleven years in research. Even though she is now in sanctuary, her emotional breakdown left her prone to terrified screaming and attacking her own hand as if it were a stranger’s.
• Jeannie spent most of her life in a lab, being used in research that included cervical biopsies and HIV studies. She suffered what can only be described as a complete emotional collapse. She self-mutilated and screamed to the point that the lab considered euthanizing her. She was rescued and spent nine years in sanctuary before she died.
• Bill Jo endured repeated “knockdowns” during his 14 years in research, surrounded by groups of men while he was shot with darts of anesthesia. For years afterwards he couldn’t bear to have more than a few familiar people near his sanctuary enclosure. He died after nine years in sanctuary.

Theodora says that rescued research chimps display human symptoms of “trauma and abuse like hypervigilance, dissociation, depression, self-abuse, and relentless anxiety.”

This is just one misuse of primates that I’ve read about lately.  I also watched what happens to the chimpanzees and great apes imported for the express purpose of using them in shows, movies, even the circus. The TV special about entertainment primates aired on PBS not long ago. We think “Oh Hollywood is filled with rich people that are animal right’s activists,” and self assure ourselves the animals in show business are treated better than some human kids but that’s not the case. When the apes get older and unruly, they are simply shipped off in the most expedient manner to an immediate place, and by no means are they guaranteed a nice sanctuary somewhere.  Think about it. Young chimps are imported from the wild, and trained for a particular purpose in the entertainment industry. This means they get constant attention and stimulation from humans. They have names, are fed and taken care of, get medical attention, and bond with people. As they age, hormones kick in and many times the apes become erratic teenagers. This is when humans simply throw them away. They are discarded to all types of locations.

I watched a small, innocent chimp end up at a research facility that was no longer in use. There were a lot of cages and space available in buildings what looked to be out in the middle of nowhere. The little chimp was locked in a cage in a small room with little to no light, no other animal around, in dead silence, only to be given food once a day. There were no toys, no stimulus of any kind in that cage. The chimp was given a solitary confinement sentence for simply growing up.  He wasn’t cute or funny anymore, no use to humans. 

Hopefully since the series aired, he’s been given freedom at a sanctuary. Other entertainment apes won’t be as lucky. They’ll end up in research facilities going through what Rachel, Jeannie, and Billy Joe endured.  I’m surprised I haven’t found that some of these castaways ended up in a canned hunt in the U.S. somewhere–yet.

The practice of importing these apes for entertainment remains the same. It’s a cycle that needs to be broken. As fast as they are discarded, new apes are imported. Their lives are expended in order to achieve a little more laughter, a little more entertainment for humans. And it isn’t only chimps and apes that suffer this abuse.

Research and entertainment aren’t the only industries that are culprits in the abuse of the species that are the closest to human beings. The savagery of the illegal bushmeat trade is unbelievable. So unbelievable that I have to include the picture I received in a newsletter from the Jane Goodall Institute here:

The left half are what appear to be gorilla parts, the hands being a prized possession for a collector. Mind you, a gorilla named Suzie learned sign language and spoke with her human companion. That’s twisted irony.

The right half looks like cooked and/or dried chimpanzees.

People are starving. There is a world famine going on. These pictures are the result of both greed and starvation. Greed is an unordinary desire for wealth, whether for money or treasure. Starvation on the other hand, is the outcome of the unfulfilled basic human need for food. They are opposite on the spectrum of what is necessary, and what is outright wasteful and inhumane. We can do without both.

This is just a small snapshot to what is happening with many of our animal populations, animals we love, and have been aware of since we were children. Chimpanzees and apes are some of the biggest draws at the zoo, not by coincidence, but because they are so much like us. But we’re abusing them worldwide as we are each other, not only by fueling global warming, but also by our neglect for reverence for life, all life. It’s our world, our domain as humans and we’ve abused it to the point people are starving and eating anything. What’s next? I already did a blog on cannibalism as a next step. Tell me that in the picture above and on the right that it doesn’t look like a charred person lying there with an arm up near the head.

I’ve said all that to say this. There is a U.S. House Bill, H.R. 5852, the Great Ape Protection Act, that’s being considered in committee right now. This bill would end testing on chimpanzees, all breeding for invasive research on them, and retire chimpanzees currently in research to sanctuaries. It’s a brand new bill that I’m going to urge my rep to co-sponsor. Contact your rep to get this bill out of committee with few changes and onto the floor, or to co-sponsor it. 

We can do something immediate about research on apes. Great Britain, New Zealand, Austria, Sweden, and the Netherlands have already banned chimpanzee research.

Unfortunately, the greed and starvation causing the illegal death of chimpanzees and other apes have no immediate solution.  We need to practice the grandness of our humanity by being humane, not by the arrogance and unempathetic tendencies of which we are also capable to the detriment of our world and everything in it.

Good news for the world’s second largest rainforest as the Democratic Republic of the Congo announced its intention to designate over 50,000 sq. miles of it as protected area. That’s quite a big improvement over the approximate 8500 sq. miles that is currently protected or conserved.

The Congo Basin in Central Africa is 700,000 sq. miles of tropical forest that extends across six countries. Area wise, the Democratic Republic of the Congo or DRC is the third largest country in Africa and contains the largest part of the Congo Basin forest. The DRC is not only establishing new protected areas but also insuring sustainable use by the inhabitants. This is the amazing part. Some of the indigenous inhabitants are Pygmies. And even though many of the Pygmies cannot read, GPS units designed for non-literate people allow them to participate in mapping the forest. In their travels they locate resources, like edible and medicinal plants, and other significant areas. The Pygmies select an icon to mark an area, and the GPS records the data for resource maps.

The rainforests in the DRC contain all types of species of plants to animals including chimpanzees, white rhinos, and the famous mountain gorillas. It will take a concentrated effort by many nations to accomplish the task of keeping this vast area protected. As it is now, many of the rangers and people concerned about the forest have disappeared, either killed or driven off from the Second Congo (civil) War from 1998 to 2003. It’s the second deadliest war since WWII. I did not know that.

The announcement was made in Bonn, Germany, which is host for the Convention on Biological Diversity or CBD. The CBD believes:

Protected areas are the foundation for safeguarding ecosystems, species and genes in all their

abundance and diversity. Protected areas are the backbone for the stability and functioning of

ecosystemic processes and the provision of ecosystem services such as natural carbon storage,

water cycles, pollination, control of diseases and flood control. Properly designed and

managed protected areas support livelihoods of local communities and strengthen local and

national economies. Protected area networks are our “Safety-Nets for Life on Earth”. Thus the

establishment and long-term maintenance of protected areas is in the interest of humanity and

requires a common effort of the global community. The CBD Programme of Work on

Protected Areas is a global framework for the establishment of comprehensive, representative

and effectively managed national and regional protected area systems. Parties agreed to close

the gaps in the existing systems, enhance management effectiveness and secure adequate

financing.

 

The “Life Web Initiative” aims at supporting the implementation of the CBD Programme of

Work on Protected Areas through enhancing partnerships at a global level. The purpose of the

initiative is to match voluntary commitments for the designation of new protected areas and

the improved management of existing areas with commitments for dedicated (co-)financing of these areas.

 

The German minister thinks these new protected areas of rainforest in the Congo should become part of “Life Web.” Germany is presently providing the Congo Basin region with over 53 million euro for protection. The concept of Live Web is a good read and may be the wave of the future where industry and nature will exist well together.

Read more about the Congo rainforest and Live Web Initiative @

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2008/2008-05-27-02.asp

http://www.cbd.int/doc/meetings/cop/hls-cop-09/other/hls-cop-09-lifeweb-de-en.pdf

 I just got a letter from Earthjustice today about the polar bears. It seems that AGAIN the Bush/Cheney administration pulled a fast one with Dirk Kempthorne doing their bidding. They put the polar bears on the endangered list but didn’t provide any real protection for them or their habitat. How convenient for all the oil leaseholders.

There are holes in the judgment for the bears, so that big oil can still feasibly drill in polar bear habitat. You know, like most criminals, if this administration would just take the time to put as much effort in doing something good for our world and everything in it as they do to connive, cheat, steal, and mislead the public to do the exactly the opposite, they would go down in history as one of the better administrations in a time of great global need instead of hitting an all time low.

So according to Earthjustice, (who always catches up with their maneuverings), Representatives Jay Inslee and Maurice Hinchey introduced THE POLAR BEAR SEAS PROTECTION ACT last week to protect polar bear habitats until “essential environmental impact questions are answered and the Dept. of the Interior, [that would be Dirk] clearly designates critical, protected habitats.”

Let Congress know that you want this Act supported, and you want polar bears, their habitat, babies, grandbears, and great grandbears protected. I don’t know about anyone else but I am so sick and tired of chasing down this administration. It is like an evil child, like Damian of “The Omen” that pays little if any attention to ethics, and is manipulative and conniving to the point they just can’t be trusted. When they announce something good for the environment anymore, it looks like I’m not the only one looking around for the real angle.

This act covers some of the holes they’ve purposefully constructed. We’ve got polar bear allies in Congress that just need to hear from us—AGAIN.

Go to Earthjustice to send your message:

 http://action.earthjustice.org/campaign/polarbears_0508

The Farm Bill is on the senate floor this morning getting its final going over. The Farm Bill has some very good changes compared to all the years it went on as is. The following is a summary of the new changes to the S2419 Farm Bill I found on gov.track. I highlighted the items that many people and organizations like The Sierra Club pushed to get through.

·  The following summary was for the Passage With Amendment for this bill on 2007-12-14. The bill may have changed since then. It hasn’t.

·  -Creates a tax penalty for transactions designed exclusively to avoid federal tax (Sec. 12522).

·  -Lowers an income tax credit for ethanol blenders from 51 cents to 46 cents after the sale of 7.50 billion gallons (Sec. 12315).

·  -Establishes the Agriculture Disaster Relief Trust Fund to provide disaster assistance for crop losses (Sec. 12101).

·  -Ends assistance by the year 2010 for persons who have an average adjusted gross income of $750,000 or more and earn less than two-thirds of their average adjusted gross income from farming, ranching, or foresting (Sec. 1704).

·  -Reauthorizes the Federal Food and Nutrition Program, the Commodity Distribution Program, and the Nutrition Information and Awareness Pilot Program (Secs. 4801, 4802, 4803).

·  -Extends the Conservation Reserve Program and the Wetlands Reserve Program through 2012 (Sec. 2311, 2321).

·  -Establishes programs to provide assistance for improving land for wildlife and forests (Sec. 2313, 2331).

·  -Establishes a mandatory labeling of country of origin on meats (Sec. 10003).

·  -Increases loan rates for sugar producers (Sec. 1501).

·  -Requires the Department of Agriculture to purchase certain dairy products to support their prices, extends the Dairy Export Incentive Program and the Dairy Indemnity Program, and extends the Dairy Promotion and Research Program (Sec. 1601, 1603).

·  -Provides a tax credit for energy generated from wind (Sec. 12301).

·  -Expands and extends programs that provide credits for renewable fuel production (Sec. 12311, 12312, 12313, 12314).

This Farm Bill doesn’t appear to have any changes since December 2007.  The only thing I see missing that is really important is tax incentives for good stewardship of the land, which gives farmers more freedom to rotate the crops of their choice. Our country pretty much locks farmers into 5 crops: corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and hay. As a result of all the corn, we end up with high fructose corn syrup in practically everything that’s packaged. One would think the HFCS would have a high enough caloric value to use as fuel instead of dumping it into our food. I bet some farmers in the Tennessee hills know how to make that stuff into high octane.

Look up the different sections in more detail @ http://www.nationalaglawcenter.org/assets/crs/RL34060.pdf

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?tab=summary&bill=h110-2419

The polar bears made the list! I can’t believe the Bush administration finally listened to the courts. Dirk Kempthorne, Secy. of the Interior, begrudgingly gave in. He made it emphatic that this will in no way affect efforts to drill in the Arctic. He is one of Bush’s handpicked cronies that continuously pits the environment, animals, and their habitat against industry.

Kempthorne’s remark that he wasn’t stalling on adding the bears to the endangered list in lieu of the sales of big oil leases is a crock if you followed the story. Heck, he looked to put the bears on the list way back in 2006. http://www.doi.gov/news/06_News_Releases/061227.html. What ever took so long?

Even though the bears made the list, the problems are not over. Prepare for more slight of hand dealings by the Bush Administation.

.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2008/2008-05-14-10.asp

I received this e-mail from Defenders of Wildlife:

The Senate will vote on an amendment to the national Flood Insurance Bill offered by Senator Mitch McConnell (KY) and co-sponsored by Senator Pete Domenici (NM) that threatens polar bears and other wildlife.

Rather than addressing high oil prices and dependence on foreign oil by moving toward better alternatives and practical solutions, this amendment promotes more drilling in more places for more oil profits. 

This is not a solution, it’s a sell off. Please take action right now…

1. Make the call. Either today or tomorrow morning, please call your Senators at one of the numbers below:

 Carl Levin - (202) 224-6221 or (313) 226-6020 - http://levin.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm

 Debbie Stabenow - (202) 224-4822 or (517) 203-1760 - http://stabenow.senate.gov/email.cfm

 If you are calling after 5:00 PM or before 8:00 AM Eastern time, please be sure to leave a message.

2. State your name and where you are from and tell your senators to “OPPOSE the McConnell-Domenici amendment (#4720) to the Flood Insurance Bill. This awful amendment would allow harmful drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, promote the use of unproven coal-to-liquid technologies, promote environmentally harmful shale development and end the decades-old moratorium on new drilling off the coasts of Florida, California, Virginia and other coastal states.”

3. Report your call. Your feedback will help our activists on Capitol Hill more effectively target their efforts to defeat this awful proposal.

The McConnell-Domenici amendment is the latest in a long string of ill-conceived, cynical and increasingly desperate attempts by the oil companies and their allies in Congress to industrialize our wild places under the guise of “energy security.”

Here are some facts about the amendment that the oil companies don’t want you to hear…

• It won’t lower summer gas prices in America.
  New drilling offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge wouldn’t hit the market for many years. Even then, its effect on prices at the pump will be small. In fact, U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) data indicates that in 2030, when oil discovered in the Arctic Refuge would be near peak production levels, the effect at the gas pump would be only about two pennies per gallon. 
• The MConnell-Domenici amendment will threaten polar bears.
  The noise and disturbance caused by drilling in the Arctic Refuge — the most important onshore denning habitat for America’s struggling polar bears — could cause polar bear mothers to abandon their cubs to die. Such drilling would also further extend America’s dependence on climate-changing fuel sources that are threatening the very survival of these and other animals.
• The MConnell-Domenici amendment will threaten birds, sea lions and other wildlife.
  Last year’s disastrous oil spill off the coast of San Francisco, which killed birds and raised concerns about the long-term impacts on the area’s sea lions and harbor seals, demonstrates the dangers of increased oil production and shipping off our coasts.      
• The amendment will undercut efforts to fight global warming.
  The McConnell-Dominici amendment would not only extend America’s addiction to oil, it would also encourage the use of coal-to-liquid technology technology — which emits high quantities of greenhouse gasses – and promote environmentally destructive oil shale development.

I made the calls locally to Senators Stabenow and Levin just a half an hour ago.  Just tell them you want this bill opposed. My calls were answered by a person who recorded them, and I’ve reported my calls to Defenders so they have a head count to oppose this on Capitol Hill. It’s extremely important to call, especially since I just posted that scientists have evidence upon evidence that man has affected the environment for thousands of years. We’re the culprit and to just continue to pollute is absolute suicide first for the animals and eventually for us. If you care about generations to come stop big oil once and for all.

“Strange Days on Planet Earth” series from the National Geographic channel previewed the North Pacific Gyre, a swirling clockwise vortex, of ten million square miles. We wonder where all the debris goes that gets into the water.  It ends up where it’s ashamedly known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Among other things tons of plastic has accumulated here. Some argue plastics do eventually bio degrade, well, not so much. Plastic photodegrades, which means it gets smaller and thinner, and thinner until it is in micro pieces.

Most people are not aware of this gyre. Others know to avoid it’s swirling outer perimeter and the dead calm center. So many haven’t actually experienced the mess. In the series “Strange Days,” a boat decided to motor across the gyre to cut down on time on its way to another environmental study. It would only take a week to cross. But once the boat entered, the captain could not believe what he encountered day after day. He said it was literally a cesspool of large items and what appeared to be floating flakes. The captain decided to lower a skim for plankton that pretty much looks like a cheese cloth wind sock meant to gather plankton. What he gathered were small plastic particulates in the millions. According to Wikipedia: “These pieces, still polymers, eventually become individual molecules, which are still not easily digested.^[1] Some plastics photodegrade into other pollutants.”

Birds and other mammals are feeding on this stuff. Birds feed it to their offspring. Industrial plastic pellets are washing up near shorelines also, and look like fish eggs. Baby albotross’ dead on the beach showed exposed stomachs filled with plastics of all kinds. There is more polymer in the N. Pacific Gyrate than there is plankton. According to Wickipedia: “Besides ingestion and entanglement of wildlife, the floating debris absorbs toxins in the water which, when ingested, are mistaken by the animals brain for estradiol, causing hormone disruption in the affected wildlife.” This is evidence of more hormone disruptors that affect the genetics of young life. We’re seeing gender bender fish, wait until we start finding gender bender birds and mammals. That’s food for thought. Right now we’re eating into this polluted animal chain, and will more than likely suffer the same consequences in the future if not already. So keep using and throwing out plastic of all kinds and keep saying man doesn’t have an affect on his environment and that recent rapid changes in climate are happening naturally. Sure. 

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/oceans/pollution/trash-vortex

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7312777.stm

http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/the-plastic-killing-fields/2007/12/28/1198778702627.html?page=fullpage

From my e-mail, I read that Earthjustice attorneys filed a case to stop the wolf slaughter in the northern Rockies. A coalition of environmental and animal rights groups like the NRDC, the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife and the Humane Society urged Earthjustice to use its legal expertise to stop the killing immediately and “compel the federal government to reinstate Endangered Species Act protections for wolves until true recovery is achieved.

This didn’t come out of the blue. Earthjustice filed intent to challenge the decision to take wolves off the endangered list, but the USFWS didn’t answer. So now they go to court because as Earthjustice charges: “The USFWS failed to take into account basic principles of conservation biology, disregarded its own policies, and departed from past practice in delisting the wolf.” And Earthjustice will argue in court that the USFWS

used an outdated and biologically inadequate standard for determining the number of wolves that must be protected in order to maintain a genetically viable population;

ignored the agency’s own requirement that wolves in the northern Rockies’ core recovery populations must be connected and interbreed before they can be deemed recovered; and

failed to take into account that state laws that currently govern the fate of the wolves in the absence of federal protections allow unregulated wolf killing.

What angers me most about this is the time and expense that goes into something like this that shouldn’t have happened in the first place in the U.S. of America. You know from my postings that petitions with signatures in the thousands hit the USFWS before the delisting, as well as, thousands of phone calls. Washington went ahead anyway, a total disregard for their responsibility to us—again. And none of this will bring Limpy or the other 19 wolves back.

I’ve already blogged that Idaho and Wyoming’s own state statistics show elk and deer populations are far over the limit for their species. The proper scientific limit for wolves to be secure from extinction should be near 3000, yet the number 1500 seems to be the norm for these states to begin to eradicate wolves because they pose a threat to deer and elk populations???

The hunt has already begun. Defenders of Wildlife states: “Locals have organized weekend eradication “wolf hunts” to kill any wolf that they find. One group tracked a wolf for 35 miles on snowmobiles before shooting it dead.” Now that’s real sporting. You know we’ve had a war going on for how long, isn’t that enough blood thirst for most Americans, or has it heightened the sense of the kill for some so much that they can’t turn it off? On the other hand, has it desensitized us to pain, suffering, and death that we just bury our heads anymore? To look forward to killing animals that are clearly being eradicated for no viable reason except for the sport is an indication of a nation’s decline in my book.

But the biggest testament to a nation’s decline is knowing full well we’re being lied to about many, many things, and doing nothing about it, even something that could be championed like this wolf slaughter issue. A study by the Dept. of Agriculture proved wolves are not attacking cattle in huge numbers either. And this N.Y. Times article just 2 years ago shows how badly the wolf populations were suffering from the parvo disease. It shows a pack of new wolf cubs that died shortly after the picture was taken. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/national/15wolf.html So in 2006, the gray wolf population declined from disease, yet two years later wolves are out of control?  What a pack of lies, and the liars head up departments in our U.S. government.

A lot of people think no big deal. But it was a big deal when the first gray wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone not very long ago. The rangers there have good things to say about the balance the wolves restored to the forest. As part of this reintroduction and study, many wolves are numbered, their packs have names, and some of the wolves have been viewed so much they gained notoriety and names, like Limpy, number 253M. Defenders says: “Limpy was many things to many people – to wolf-watchers, he was the hobbling member of Yellowstone’s famous Druid Peak Pack. To Utahans, he was the first wolf to be seen in the state for more than 70 years.”

For wolf novices the Druid Peak Pack was the second pack introduced to Yellowstone from Canada, and one of the most observed. Check out one girls sighting at her visit to Yellowstone and her video of the Druid pack on You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNeFetdSHrQ. We’re talking tourism and educational fodder here.

I don’t know if the girl saw Limpy with hind legs that were crippled in a fight. No matter now, Limpy was shot dead in Wyoming on elk feeding grounds the first day wolves were taken off the endangered list. Remember elk numbers are beyond where they should be in these states. The wolves were out doing their job. Limpy obviously wasn’t speedy enough as a cripple. Two other wolves were shot with him.

So what we have here is the beginning of a slaughter perpetrated by lies from U.S. officials to practically eradicate a species that have only reached half their peak. Meanwhile, people have posted pictures on You Tube and commented on their trips to Yellowstone and the opportunity to see the notorious wolves.

You know what this reminds me of? Natives in Africa, deprived of an education, with very little means of sustenance for survival that kill endangered species in order to take the habitat over for farming, as well as, eat the bushmeat. Once the natives are taught that protecting the animals brings tourism to the area to view the animals, and all types of new income opportunity is opened to them, they embrace it wholeheartedly and the animals begin to flourish under the native’s good stewardship.

What’s the excuse for the states of Idaho, and Wyoming? They are neither stupid nor starving, but appear to be shooting themselves in the foot relative to tourism by killing the wolves, or there are ulterior motives worth a heck of a lot more money. It can’t be the hunting industry. It will only flourish from wolf hunts for so long. A few hunting seasons and the wolves will be gone, and then what’s to shoot? Oh yeah, all those excessive deer and elk populations.

My best guess for ulterior motives still lies with Bush’s plan to reverse the Roadless Rule, where Idaho might find themselves stripped of a heck of a lot more than the wolf population. If that happens, the second largest forest in America will slowly disappear from mining, drilling, and logging. Wolf hunters could face eminent domain issues in the future and it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch.

Click on Defenders at the right to sign a petition to stop this senseless slaughter.

As for Limpy, he’s famous.  Just search “Limpy the Wolf” on the internet. There are pages of urls for him.