Our World and Everything in It

An Environmental News Service article stated: “The Canadian government has announced that it will protect more than 450,000 hectares (1,737 square miles) of Arctic wilderness in the Nunavut Territory, including a globally significant Important Bird Area, by establishing three new National Wildlife Areas.”

The Canadian government is contributing $8.3 million to the effort. Prime Minister Harpter said, “This is a real demonstration of our commitment to protect our species and their incredible habitat in the North.” Too bad it’s not our North like ANWR.

Now watch how example works America. The article also stated that, “In another recent announcement, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, pledged to permanently protect 225,000 square kilometres (86,872 square miles) of boreal forest in the northern area of the province. Covering more than 20 percent of Ontario’s total land mass, the area to be protected is roughly the same size as the United Kingdom.” Outstanding!

The boreal forest is one of the largest undisturbed forest and wetland ecosystems. And it’s quite a carbon storage facility storing 186 billion tons. Quebec joined in the preservation program earlier in May pledging to protect “18,000 square kilometres (6,949 square miles) of forest and wetlands in 23 new conservation areas. Fifteen of these new conservation areas are in the boreal zone.”

Great for Canada. What about us selling off parcels of our national parks and forests to private ownership for the highest bid? We’re still not getting it.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/sep2008/2008-09-04-01.asp.

As someone with a daily environmental blog, I’m more than interested in Sarah Palin. Environmentalists have known about Palin for quite some time. And it’s those environmental groups that were targeted first for attempting to protest at the RNC. 

There is much footage out there of the emptied EarthJustice bus of protestors left by the side of the road by the Minneapolis police. It appears to be overkill and ridiculous with at least 10 police cars surrounding the bus as if it carried felons escaping prison. What a display of force to stop protestors for the environment. From many accounts, the Republicans had plants inside of these types of groups to report what, when, and how they would be going about protesting at the convention in order to stop them from reaching their destination. http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/31/raids/.

This is frightening for the U.S.A. More news has shown up on video on websites of outright abuse. One article stated that 3 homes where protestors were staying were entered by police SWAT teams. Citizens banned for peacefully assembling in protest, especially before they do so is a direct hit on our constitutional rights and perpetrated by our own federal government. SWAT teams? Just a tad bit of overkill. Obama’s bigger convention didn’t utilize SWAT teams or infiltrators. When I saw a GOP rep head butt, yes, head butt an ABC reporter, well, how juvenile, not to mention mean.

It’s not right. Without protestors, many citizens are being denied, albeit short term, the facts of Palin’s horrible environmental decisions and her ruthless record of predator management, which is the aerial killing of wolves.  Besides that, the state of Alaska under Palin sued the USFWS to keep the polar bear off the endangered list stating that their numbers have increased and they are a stable population.

I’ve already given the definition of endangered in another blog. The meaning should resonate with Palin since she has a BA in journalism and knows well that it means: “exposed to danger.” If anything could be more exposed to danger it would be the wildlife of Alaska under Palin and her buddies (SCI) Safari Club International who believe it’s their right to hunt any animal, endangered or not. SCI still pushes to allow hunting polar bears.

Palin stands strong against lobbyists, maybe, but only the lobbyists of her choice, because on the other hand she sought millions in earmarks for Wasilla, Alaska. Environmentalists have known that she’s bad news for our environmental future with a script right out of the mouths of big oil—drill more.

  http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/09/01/Palin_making_use_of_hated_earmarks/UPI-34181220275668/.

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=6c588f46-da6e-4816-a4be-789a4836b478

As a Democrat, I couldn’t be happier with this pick. I had to laugh when it was said her campaign for governor was run on “ethics.” OMG!

Wait until the large environmental groups disclose her ethics.  For example Rodger Schlickeisen of Defenders of Wildlife issued this statement already about Palin’s destructive environmental policies:

“Sarah Palin, whose husband works for BP (formerly British Petroleum), has repeatedly put special interests first when it comes to the environment. In her scant two years as governor, she has lobbied aggressively to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, pushed for more drilling off of Alaska’s coasts, and put special interests above science. Ms. Palin has made it clear through her actions that she is unwilling to do even as much as the Bush administration to address the impacts of global warming. Her most recent effort has been to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove the polar bear from the endangered species list, putting Big Oil before sound science. As unbelievable as this may sound, this actually puts her to the right of the Bush administration.”

To be to the right of the Bush/Cheney regime is a scary thought. That’s pretty far out there. Sarah Palin is a scary thought for wildlife. Alaska’s predatory management program is barbaric. I recently blogged about 14 wolf cubs shot in the head on the spot after an illegal stakeout by Alaskan Wildlife Agency employees? Bears have been added to the predatory list now. Funny how wolves and bears have always been a part of the Alaskan landscape, but now they are intolerable. Animals in Alaska do not have a friend at the governor’s house.

I don’t think Sarah likes living things as much as money. That will come out sooner or later. Cruelty is not a nice trait to see in a woman. 

Sad to say, despite door-to-door grass root efforts that got 75,000 voters in Alaska to the polls to vote to permanently stop the aerial assault on wolves, the initiative failed.

Those lovely guys at Safari Club International, who think it’s their right to shoot and kill just about ANYTHING, lobbied for the kill, and talk about a pro-active government/lobbyist relationship in Alaska. Coldhearted Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska paved the way and added $400,000 out of the state’s coffers to keep the kill going. After Ted Steven’s indictment, I think everyone should direct more attention toward Alaska.

The reason the assault on wildlife continues, is that sport hunting is a main industry in Alaska, therefore, Alaska will slaughter predators to preserve that game for humans to hunt for fun and Alaska’s profit. But the predator management system is out of control according to residents of Alaska. http://www.wolfsongnews.org/news/Alaska_current_events_1626.htm

It looks like the taste of blood is irresistible after all. The current predator management in Alaska includes bears too. Are we going to start killing the bears because they eat too many salmon and it interferes with sport fishing?

What I want to know is what are the great white hunters are going to kill when the population of critters is diminished not only by hunting but by loss of habitat from industry and global warming, and the many diseases that are going to crop up in the future as a result?

People are already being hunted. I posted a blog about hunting albino human beings in Tanzania. And the bushmeat trade is near cannibalism in my book.

It’s as if the example we’ve been given over the past decade by the Bush/Cheney group has infiltrated our spirit here in America, and the example continues off of our shores. How are we to tell Canada not to club baby seals, or Japan to quit whaling and butchering dolphins, when we’re slaughtering our own wildlife everywhere? And everyone knows it’s for the MONEY!

This type of cruelty is a growing concern to me. If we have a generation of kids that never enjoy nature by stepping away from the Internet long enough to go outside, it’s not hard to imagine that empathy, sympathy, and responsibility for nature, all the traits that are supposed to put humans a step above the animals, will be gone

If this cruelty continues against innocent wildlife, where a hunter can just walk up to a den of small pups and plug each one in the head with a bullet without flinching, my prediction that seniors will live in gated communities in the future for safety sake is just a generation away.

We must break the growing cycle of cruelty against nature for our own human sake.   

Owen Lutz bequeathed his Victorian era Farmstead property of 300 acres to Livingston County to help preserve the wild places he loved so much. It is located a half-mile north of Cohoctah Road, near Lutz Rd. in Deerfield Twp. The property was just dedicated last week.

The county is going to try to keep the area as original as possible but still accessible to the public who can walk along trails of wood chips and enjoy nature as Owen had intended.

I hope this dedicated land never faces the threat of slant oil drills like the Mason Tract, another wilderness area dedicated by the head of the Mason family. Mr. Mason, an auto industrialist, donated the land to preserve the experience of the river and the wild, that is, until an upper Michigan utility company started to build a road near the Mason Tract area with the intention of drilling for oil there. If Earthjustice hadn’t intervened, the area would have been ravaged. Considering it has some of the best trout fishing in the lower 48 states, that would have been a travesty. And an irony, when we consider it was the express desire of the person dedicating the land that it remain a sanctuary against development of any sort.

Meanwhile, thank you Own Lutz for loving nature enough to hopefully preserve it forever.

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080824/NEWS05/808240394/1007/NEWS05

There was a reason Bush reluctantly put the polar bears on the endangered list but then curiously omitted protection for their habitat. Not so curious anymore. It seems in the latest round of attacks on the environment by the Bush administration and more than likely in support of oil, coal, and the natural gas industries, the president doesn’t find habitat protection necessary. To quote an article on NRDC’s website, the president will argue, “that studying and protecting the places that are essential to species survival is unnecessary. Specifically, the Department of Interior is planning to insert language into all future critical habitat designations that argues that these protections have no value in species protection.” Ah and Dirk Kempthorne, Secy. of Interior is at it again.

Protecting animals but allowing their habitat to go unprotected is so straight out of the dogma of big oil and other fossil fuel industries that we don’t even have to wonder why this underhanded push is happening. I say underhanded because the same article on Defender’s website stated that: “The first attack, contained in a rider on the House version of the Defense Department appropriations bill, would have arguably given the Secretary of the Interior sole discretion regarding where and when-and whether-to designate critical habitat for endangered species. Although the appropriations bill still contains a damaging ESA exemption for the Department of Defense, the more radical rider was defeated by the House on May 21.” Sneaky.

The Bush administration may not get their way the second time around either but there are other rotten ways of doing things.  The administration appears to be overly restricting funds for species protection by the USFWS. Bush only requested a measly $9 million dollars for it this year even though the agency knows it would take $153 million or more because there is a backlog. Congress even requested more money for the agency in the past to no avail. So no one is actually keeping track of or properly protecting our wildlife habitats because there is no money.

This is a “frightful” disregard for living things. If this administration can so ruthlessly overlook one natural resource for another, oil vs. animal habitat, than it’s not a stretch to think humanity is not being overlooked in the process either. We’re not suffering all that different a scenario from the animals on the endangered species list really. By continuing with the quest for oil and possibly more fossil fuels, our habitat won’t be around much longer either. What is it people don’t get? The earth is a closed system. If we put too much pollution into it, it will eventually break down. If we go on the way we are, we are no better than a cancer to our environment.  Yet this administration is destroying our habitat right under our noses while we go on believing someone is looking out for our best interests.

I hope that someone isn’t specifically Dick Cheney. Because when I watch what’s happening all I keep remembering is an article I read back in 2004 about Cheney. John Perry Barlow, a former Cheney supporter, said, “He has the least interest in human beings of anyone I have ever met.” That explains a lot.

http://www.nrdc.org/media/pressreleases/030528.asp.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/6450422/the_curse_of_dick_cheney/.

I just did a blog about our becoming accumstomed to violence, killing, and guns. Then I read my e-mail that STATE WILDLIFE AGENCY PERSONNEL in Alaska illegally staked out a breeding den/area for wolves, and aerial shot and killed 14 of them. The wolves were parents to 14 little pups. They shot all the pups in the head at close range.

View this video of 4 week old wolf pups and imagine plugging the cute little things in the head. It takes a heartless person to do this.

http://www.everythingwolf.com/sitewide/videolib/p1020310.wmv  

On the same website as the video, I read about people adopting wolf cubs, and even potty training wolf cubs. This is counter to the image of wolves as blood thirsty, indiscriminate killers.  

http://www.everythingwolf.com/forum/threadview.aspx?thread=1340p1.   

The big execution in Alaska was to boost caribou populations. There are approximately 950,000 caribou in Alaska. How many caribou do we need? What’s the target, a million?

 http://www.adfg.state.ak.us/pubs/notebook/biggame/caribou.php.

Alaskans are outraged over this aerial killing movement and are moving to “end the Board of Game’s barbaric aerial hunting of wolves through a ballot measure,” according to Defenders of Wildlife. Defenders website has a drive that ends today to help this ballot initiative with new ads. It also said that: “On August 26th voters can pass this ballot measure and band this awful practice before another deadly season begins.”

Defenders of Wildlife is “helping Alaskans for Wildlife, a coalition of local grassroots activists, hunters, and citizens who secured the 55,000 signatures to put this measure on the ballot. Already, they have reached thousands of voters across the state with their hard-hitting mailings.”

Collecting 55,000 signatures is a daunting task in the heart of hunting territory like Alaska, but everyone involved is close to meeting their goal of collecting $80,000 and running ads that will get voters out to vote for this ballot measure. The ads essentially say, “Real hunters don’t shoot wildlife from airplanes.”

I think aerial hunting is gutless. I also think shooting helpless pups is heartless. And I’m starting to think humans need to be kept in check more than animal populations. We’re starting to show our animalistic tendencies far too much, forgetting about empathy and compassion for all living things in our world.

http://www.defenders.org/newsroom/press_releases_folder/2008/07_23_2008 _statement_regarding_illegal_killing_of_14_wolf_pups_in_alaska.php

This Sunday’s article in the Detroit Free Press about conservation easements was pretty enlightening to me. I thought I’d share it. I don’t think I’m the only one who wishes their property would remain as is into the future. I don’t want anyone cutting down my apple, pear, and cherry trees, or anything else I’ve nurtured to grow. I want the wooded parts to stay wooded, and the animal habitat left alone.

The couple in the article has acreage on Beaver Island outside of Petoskey where many of the locals see the encroaching development. This couple decided to keep their property as is in the future by getting a conservation easement. This is an agreement that limits development, and protects property forever.

Hurray. There is something a private property owner can do to keep development to a minimum and protect wildlife habitat forever. I’m thinking about all the wild open fields that use to be near my house that went the way of subdivisions that are only half filled. All that habitat, trees, grass, bushes, and shrubs were mowed down to create those egg frying concrete subdivisions by summer, that really turn bleak and empty in winter. I’m thinking about what a conservation easement might have done. With only half the houses, these same subdivisions might have retained small areas of woods, open grasses, bogs, and huge, ancient trees that can’t possibly be replaced in a hundred years.

I also think of all the people I know that bought property “up north” in Michigan for the express purpose of being in the boonies. That list of people is growing. As it grows, the wild areas shrink, clearing areas for the homestead.

The couple in the article said that we as individuals have to protect the land. Well, if you’re someone who wants the view out your window to remain that way, you may want to try for a conservation easement.

For more info: http://www.smlcland.org/about.php

We’re finding more and more that the environment may be impacted in unforeseen ways. An article on ABC news website found that virtual reality–television, the internet, and video games are breeding more than couch potatoes. This new generation of videophiles rarely goes outdoors, let alone to run and play. They have no connection to nature.

I recently listened to a comedian talk about when he was a kid. He said entertainment back then could be summed up in one word “outside.” Not so any longer. As a result, children are not only obese and unhealthy; they don’t have a real respect for nature, never having left the a/c of the great indoors. Like they say, “if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it.” If you don’t have experiences with something, you will not likely have empathy for that something either. So involvement in the great outdoors is taking a real hit these days.

Fishing, hiking, and visits to parks are down since the 80’s. The 80’s spawned tons of video games, so the link is not all that hard to see. Our younger generation is disconnected from nature in lieu of video. People in their 20’s don’t actually know there are good bugs and bad bugs. When I asked a clerk in a store for a natural sponge, he didn’t know what I meant. When I explained about sponges on the ocean floor, he looked at me like I was kidding. Many young people don’t know what half the fruits and vegetables at the market are either, what they taste like, or how they nourish the body. I know because young clerks ask me what the items are at the checkout.

I was outside from morning until dark as a kid, making pets out of caterpillars, fireflies, and baby rabbits rescued from farm fields. I learned about good bugs and bad bugs, and reptiles from my parents while in the garden, and about the rest of the furry critters and birds just from being outside.

The realization about these drastic differences between generations and our relationships with nature hit home when I was at a party. A 25-year old ran out of a garage screaming about a huge bug, and to kill it! When I walked into that garage an absolutely huge, beautiful dragonfly made the mistake of flying in. It was one of those with markings on the wings, a white body, and other bright colors. I lifted him off with my fingers and sent him flying from harm’s way. Of course only a few knew about dragonflies and appreciated it, the rest looked at me disgusted from having touched a bug.

This does not bode well for living things in the future. Nature is a very delicate balance that we are just now grasping in the era of global warming. I think science is amazed at how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together between earth, air, and water. Adding life to this mix increases the intricacy of the living machine, which is our planet.

We cannot allow a generation of people to mature that have no affinity for the living things around them. Those living things will have no one to champion their cause. Our young people don’t know what they are missing by remaining indoors on beautiful summer days, but parents do. Get your kids out and involved. Bringing home frogs, snakes, turtles, bugs, and abandoned baby animals to nurture is part of the process of learning life, a well-rounded life that is, one that will include a relationship with nature and all that it holds.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=4241416

 I heard on ABC news this morning that the deer population has gone from 330 thousand to 30 million deer. The news had video coverage of deer walking right inside the door of a house and jumping through a picture window. There was video after video of deer in homes and businesses in different urban areas too. The question was to shoot or not to shoot?

The deer invading everything from homes to yards to downtown stores are usually young deer that don’t know any better and have no fear of humans. Consider also that one village with homeowners up in arms over deer munching on their landscapes has a population of only 20,000 that decided to live in an area with 2,000 deer. So who is invading whose territory? 

And why are we eradicating natural predators like wolves? Seems like we’re not going about this right. We have the wolf depicted as a ravenous carnivore that threatens a dwindling DEER and elk population, as well as, people, children, and pets. Except the deer are hardly dwindling. There are more than enough deer to go around for double the wolf population. Wait until the coyotes follow the deer. Wolves keep coyotes down too.

Simple solutions have been offered to use a speaker instead of a gun for both deer and wolves. Deer have a keen sense of hearing, and certain tones will repel them. Wolves honor another wolf’s call over territory. A strange wolf call will repel them.

A speaker system, instead of a gun to kill what we deem invaders, seems like the sanest solution for now, at least until we figure out who the real invaders are.

 http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=5478591&page=1