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Don't Call It a Comeback

 

 

August 19, 2005

 

 

By Jackson Kuhl jk@jacksonkuhl.com

 

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Bio: http://www.techcentralstation.com/biokuhljackson.html (see below article)

 

Tech Central Station

 

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 group of scientists has proposed to "re-wild" North America with elephants and lions, thereby replacing large megafauna that became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene about 12,000 years ago.

 

The proposal's authors, led by Cornell University graduate student Josh Donlan, include paleontologist Paul Martin, the father of the overkill hypothesis.

 

Their commentary appears in the August 18, 2005, issue of Nature.

 

Overkill theorizes that hunting by humans led to the extinction of large mammals like mammoths and mastodons as the last Ice Age drew to a close.

 

Many overkill proponents also believe "reintroducing" similar species like African and Asian elephants will restore the North American ecology to what it was prior to mankind's interference.

 

Just a few weeks ago, University of Florida ornithologist David Steadman stated that the extinction of ground sloths 4,400 years ago on Cuba and Hispaniola was caused by humans when they reached the islands -- even though he offered no evidence of human activity in context with sloth remains.

 

Steadman also suggested filling the ecological niche left empty by extinct 1,200-pound ground sloths by introducing 10-pound tree sloths to the islands.

 

But never mind that.

 

Donlan and the rest want to transplant African and Asian elephants, lions, and cheetahs to private western ranches where the populations can be overseen and managed.

 

Not only will this generate ecotourism, but [it will also], in the words of a Reuters report, the plan "could spark fresh interest in conservation, contribute to biodiversity and begin to put right some of the wrongs caused by human activities."

 

Wrongs such as overkill.

 

To give one example, the authors believe the pronghorn antelope owes its speed to being chased by an extinct American form of cheetah.

 

Introducing African cheetahs to the American wilderness will "restore what must have been strong interactions with pronghorn."

 

Overkillers feel that North American megafauna were "na?ve" to the hunting techniques of the first Americans and were easy targets.

 

They argue that megafauna in Africa , which co-evolved alongside humans, was conditioned to avoid two-leggers and therefore survived.

 

So the reintroductionists' doublethink is this: American megafauna went extinct because their behavior was different from that of African megafauna, but introduced African megafauna will fulfill the same ecological role as American megafauna because their behavior is identical.

 

To be fair, such "reintroduction" has already taken place accidentally with wild horses and burros in the west and other isolated areas, like the ponies of Maryland and Virginia 's Assateague Island .

 

All of these equines are the apparent descendants of escaped riding and pack animals.

 

While these populations necessitate roundups and other management steps, it's safe to say they're welcome to most. The Assateague ponies are probably the island's main tourism draw.

 

Donlan is a strong supporter of eradicating invasive species on islands, though I suspect he's more inclined to kill rats and tree snakes than ponies.

 

Yet his advocacy of introducing some species into an environment -- while terminating others -- suggests he is more concerned with preserving an idealized stasis than he is in determining the long-term consequences of such actions.

 

By all means, let's have private parks where the elephants roam and the cheetahs and the antelope play, where tourists can enjoy an African safari without hepatitis and polio boosters.

 

Throw in a timber-frame lodge and dinners of hot chili under the stars, and my boys and I will be the first to buy tickets.

 

And if the parks promote and conserve these species, so much the better.

 

But let's not kid ourselves -- Donlan and company are not reintroducing anything.

 

They would be introducing foreign species into an environment that has proven it can sustain itself just fine without them.

 

Considering the controversy surrounding the reintroduction of gray wolves into Yellowstone , I'd say the authors have their work cut out for them [by] adding lions and cheetahs to the mix.

 

Why not? What do I care? Just like Donlan, I live in the east.

 

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Jackson Kuhl writes about archaeology, history, and travel.  His articles have appeared in Reason, the New York Post, Dig,and other publications. 

Prior to becoming a freelance writer, Kuhl was the Sci-Tech Producer for Foxnews.com. He also worked for a number of years in both online and print publishing. More of his articles and commentary are available at: http://www.jacksonkuhl.com

Jackson Kuhl article archive: http://www2.techcentralstation.com/1051/searchauthor.jsp?Bioid=BIOKUHLJACKSON

 

Copyright 2005, Tech Central Station.

 

http://www.techcentralstation.com/081905C.html

 

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The New Environmentalism: What we are trying to freeze is actually the present.

 

http://www.techcentralstation.com/012703A.html

 

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Rewilding America - Depeopling America

 

 

August 18, 2005

 

 

By Jim Beers jimbeers7@earthlink.net 

 

 

There is no greater example of the mortal dangers posed by the environmental extremists and animal rights radicals in our midst than the following front page article in the August 18, 2005, Washington Times.

 

The years of dumbing-down our children -- and desensitizing us to the value of human life and the steady eradication of the liberties, freedoms, and rights that were the hallmark of this great nation -- have come down to this.

 

This next step in the dehumanizing and paganizing of American society should serve as a wake-up call to all Americans. Unless and until we understand what is occurring, we cannot begin to take the increasingly radical countermeasures necessary to offset this increasingly evil and injurious agenda growing all around us.

 

I believe that after you read this, your blood will boil as mine has, ever since I read this article this morning. It is deeply disappointing that a newspaper treats this not only non-judgmentally, but also in a humorous -- and even frivolous -- manner.

 

This is truly a deadly serious matter, one that clearly indicates the revolutionary transformation throughout this nation that must be stopped.

 

I will quote from the article sequentially with comments on each quote and a summary at the end.

 

 

1.) TITLE:

 

"Lions on the Plains Would Alter Order of the Food Chain - 'Rewilding' of Mid-America"

 

Comment: Lions loose anywhere in the U.S. would cause catastrophic impacts. Altering the "order of the food chain" would not even be on the screen compared with the deaths, injuries, and property loss and destruction they would wreak.

 

2.) "Denver - Lions in your back yard? Elephants in the driveway? Cheetahs on the terrace?"

 

Comment: Think hard about this. They really mean it. We accepted wolves destroying families, ranches, hunting, etc., and we have looked away as cougars and bears kill and maim in our towns and cities. We have smirked at hunting as a control on the numbers and distribution of predators. We have outlawed dogs and traps to take predators.

 

This is the next step that these radicals always knew would come -- and that none of us would accept as possible.

 

Like the fate of western ranchers or elk hunters destroyed by wolves, these power brokers depend on urbanites and the well-to-do to smile and think how "cool" that would be -- and how they could enjoy it without actually being near it (for awhile at least).

 

The annual loss of human life, human injuries and property destruction in Africa to elephants, crocodiles, lions, leopards and other dangerous animals, is startling but never spoken about.

 

To propose transferring that to the U.S. -- like fostering its continuation in Africa (through United Nations policies) -- is not only tragic, it is unconscionable.

 

3.) "Josh Donlan, a graduate student at Cornell University and one of the plan's co-authors, concedes that skeptics may worry more about the people on the Great Plains who could become extinct at the mercy of the lions."

 

Comment: Cornell University -- one of the "secret" partners of the "secret" U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service operations for nearly two years to get money and set the stage for massive land control in the southern US for (an?) Ivory-billed Woodpecker, whose existence or origin cannot, was not and is not verified as this is written.

 

How cute, that he "concedes that skeptics may worry more about the people on the Great Plains who could become extinct at the mercy of the lions."

 

Reread that, and think of what he is dismissing in so cavalier a tone.

 

This is the drivel that drives the UN, U.S. Federal, and increasingly, State bureaucrats. This is what U.S. Politicians increasingly support with our tax dollars -- and Universities enable with their lies and propaganda (today's misnamed "sound science").

 

This is pagan animal worship that equates each of us to any animal and is a means of placing our sovereignty and freedom in the hands of dictatorships that are every bit as callous and self-serving as the worst in history.

 

4.) "Obviously, gaining public acceptance is going to be a huge issue, especially when you talk about reintroducing predators. There are going to have to be some major attitude shifts. That includes realizing predation is a natural role, and that people are going to have to take precautions."

 

Comment: Again, please read that carefully. This is not just about your steer or your sheep or your golden retriever: your child, your mother, your grandfather, your wife -- all are fair game to offer up on the altar to the deity touted here as the "natural role."

 

5.) "Nevertheless, the scientists say the relocated animals could restore biodiversity on this continent to a condition closer to what nature was like before humans overran the landscape."

 

Comment: If "relocated animals could restore biodiversity," how come every professor, bureaucrat, politician, and radical (as my dear mother used to quip) "from hell to breakfast" has been wailing and gnashing their teeth for years about INVASIVE SPECIES? They admit that some of these species NEVER occurred in North America.

 

I thought -- according to such ‘logic’ -- that all Invasive Species DECREASED BIODIVERSITY (per the news releases, propaganda, and "studies")? I thought our "Native Ecosystem" was a fixed and sacred thing? So if the elites can just bring whatever they want and release them, how does that differ from introducing fish and birds and plants we want and use? "Before humans overran the landscape"?

 

What self-hate and self-loathing for humanity is contained in that statement; but of course "they" don't think of themselves in that context.

 

You and I will be forced from our land but "they" (the bureaucrats and organization radicals and professors) will live there and appear on nature programs in khakis and wide-brimmed hats. What is good for the geese (bureaucrats, professors, radicals) is obviously not good for the ganders (hunters, ranchers, pet owners, fishermen, loggers, campers, etc.).

 

6.) "The idea of "rewilding" the Great Plains grew from a retreat [meeting] at the Ladder Ranch near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, a 155,550-acre spread owned by media mogul and conservationist Ted Turner."

 

Comment: Mr. Turner is synonymous with the UN. His record of using illegal fences on his properties and offering expensive hunting opportunities -- while working with Federal bureaucrats to implement things like wolf programs that decimate hunting opportunities for middle-class Americans on public lands -- is legend. Several state governments acquiescence to him. His power and his employees is also legend.

 

The fact that the high mortality of women and kids in Africa -- from unmanaged elephants, crocodiles, hippos and lions -- could be duplicated here in the U.S. poses no threat to the Turners of the world and their minions, from Washington, D.C., to the Statehouses. I am not one of his minions. You should not be, either.

 

7.) "While most modern African species never lived on the American prairie, the scientists believe that today's animals could duplicate the natural roles played by their departed, even larger cousins -- mastodons, camels and saber-toothed cats -- that roamed for more than 1 million years alongside antelope and bison."

 

Comment: Q. When is something an Invasive Species? A. When those "in charge” say so! "Today's animals" -- and today’s "natural roles" in the United States of America -- are what each State government, and the voters who installed them, say it will be. Cornfields, woodlots, towns, families, hunting, fishing, scout troops, gardens, et al, are what we have built and where we live. Such arrogant notions and pernicious plans are every bit as repugnant as anything Hitler or Stalin ever dreamed up. This worldview of other humans -- be they African children or rural Americans -- differs from Hitler's race policies only in the magnitude of the death rates and property loss so blithely proposed. The difference between starving millions in the Ukraine (Stalin in the early 1930s) or working people to death in Siberian Gulags -- and releasing animals to trample, kill, and maim -- is differentiated only by immediate magnitude. How can this be so nonchalantly reported?

 

8.) "Relocating large animals to vast ecological parks and private reserves over the next century would begin to restore the balance and offer new ecotourism opportunities."

 

Comment: There is NO such thing as "balance." It never existed, cannot exist, and cannot be "restored." Every environment has been in a state of constant change since the beginning of time. Ask yourself how these "introduced Invasive Species" can create "balance," but the species that arrived here in the past 200 years are only able to wreak havoc? Ecotourism? Ask the ruined logger families and communities in spotted owl country about "ecotourism". Ask the rural Arkansas restaurants "selling T-shirts" in Ivorybill country. Look to Africa where this ecotourism shift is cause for worry about losing their "ecotourists."

 

The truth is that the best thing that could happen to Africa and Africans is the same thing that the constantly-vilified Europeans did to North America: Clear the land, rearrange the plants and animals, plant crops and champion families, communities, businesses and guaranteed rights and freedoms FOR ALL -- under a truly elected government with clearly defined, limited responsibilities and competing branches of government.

 

All this, by the way, is exactly what Ted Turner, the UN, et al, intends to crush with their agendas.

 

9.) "Some ecologists said it is important to try such a bold plan. Otherwise, they said, hundreds more species are likely to go extinct in coming decades, and entire ecosystems -- such as grasslands -- will fundamentally change."

 

Comment: Ecologists live in a bizarre world with no boundaries. They have become the fringe element of the study of biology. Biology has become an art (as opposed to a science) when compared to chemistry and physics where true "rules" exist, are studied, and result in "real" -- as opposed to contrived -- consequences. That "hundreds of species going extinct" stuff worked 35 years ago in the environmental stampede for legislation. If it works again after the past 35 years’ history, we will have proved Abraham Lincoln a fool, as this would show you can "fool all of the people all of the time."

 

Grasslands changed during the Ice Age.

 

They also changed when Asians arrived, when Europeans arrived, when dust storms and drought ravaged the Great Plains in the 1930s, when fires roared unchecked, and when the price of beef went up or down or soybeans become valuable for more than fertilizer.

 

We all benefit from this by our ability to change, move and respond.

 

It is exactly this freedom that this gang of elitist radicals proposes to take away.

 

10.) "Other conservationists say the plan would further damage the prospects of African species on their native turf, as well as that continent's hopes for sustainable economic development."

 

Comment: This is another lie that is 180 degrees from the truth. The only good that might come from this madness is that Africans would be forced to rethink their peonage to the UN, Western do-gooders and radical organizations.

 

If they come to realize that "sustainable economic development" is exactly what the U.S. has had for more than 225 years -- because we did exactly the opposite of this no-management/no-use/nature worship BS – then, by golly, good for the Africans! I can only wish them well and offer them help in achieving what we have -- minus this idiocy and its attendant cultural decline.

 

11.) "The extent of Mr. Turner's interest in the larger rewilding plan is not clear. Mike Phillips, who directs the Turner Endangered Species Fund, was unavailable for comment."

 

Comment: And the reason is that this is a trial balloon. If it bombs, Ted and his gang do a double Arabesque and exit Stage Right -- to return in a later version, with perhaps ‘reeducation camps’ for rural Americans that do not sell or kowtow to him, the Nature Conservancy or the government and move into cities, sell their motorized vehicles and use only public transportation -- or their feet -- to shuttle between their jobs and apartments.

 

12.) "The renewed presence of many large mammals might turn back the ecological clock in a variety of subtle ways. For example, elephants eat woody plants that have overtaken grasslands. Could they act as Roto tillers to restore the prairie?"

 

Comment: Is there anyone out there who fails to see the absurdity and propaganda of this? If so, please e-mail me at jimbeers7@earthlink.net and I will explain it to you.

 

13.) Last, but not least, are the closing lines: "Lions would be a harder sell, particularly to the elk herds that already live there. "Lions eat people," Mr. Donlan, the Cornell graduate student, says. "There has to be a pretty serious attitude shift on how you view predators."

 

Comment: A.) NOTE - There are very few elk on the Great Plains. We don't "sell" them, we shoot them and eat them. B.) If a Cornell person can speak a truism ("Lions eat people"), there must be some old holdover professor from before the "Universities as ladies-of -the-evening" epoch began. They had better find him or her and get rid of him quickly. There is no telling where this could lead. C.) Mr. Donlan is both mistaken and misleading. It is not our view of predators that must be shifted -- it is our VIEW OF MAN that must be shifted. For that shift to occur, relying on the Ted Turners and Cornells and the UN and Federal bureaucrats and radicals is akin to relying on fortune tellers for theological guidance.

 

 

Summary

 

It's all here.

 

-There is to be no State role -- the states (and our Constitution) are to be swept aside for Federal and UN bureaucracies and the radicals that underpin such programs.

 

-The Invasive Species whining of the last decade and all the Federal legislative proposals from both the Clinton and Bush bureaucrats about "Invasive Species" are shown to be the hollow lies by elites that many of us always said they were.

 

-Callous disregard for human life -- that began with reintroducing wolves and escalated to bears and mountain lions -- has always underpinned this pagan nature worship philosophy that masquerades as some sort of "biology." It is there for all to clearly see. It is, and always has been, about using government to generate power, money, and destruction of the U.S. as we have known it.

 

-Elites fronted by "ecologists" and a long litany of fellow travelers implementing a radical agenda on the citizens of this nation.

 

-Bureaucrats, Politicians, Professors, Radicals, and others will all benefit from the depeopling of rural America, the elimination of all American freedoms, and the total destruction of American society -- from guaranteed property rights to the concept at the beginning of our Constitution that government was founded by us to "insure domestic Tranquility."

 

 

What to do?

 

Recall any politician who even wavers when asked his position on this. Do not vote for anyone that is even remotely evasive about this topic. Start pushing State and Federal politicians to rein in the public bureaucrats that enable this stuff. Reform or Repeal Acts like Endangered Species, Marine Mammals, Wilderness, and Animal Welfare. I would go so far as to say boycott any business or hotel that even remotely supports this business. If you don't see the connection between all these things, email me at jimbeers7@earthlink.net and I’ll explain it to you. Get your State politicians to understand that the time to overhaul State Universities is WAY overdue. The installation of new staff and the elimination of tenure are great places to start. No matter the cost, it is worth it. Grade school and high school curriculums must be overhauled, no matter what the NEA or radicals say. Clamp down on U.S. delegations to the UN. Make sure American freedoms are their first concern and that Treaties are only an option when we are "in extremis" and no other option is available. Reduce or eliminate Federal grants -- which are actually taxpayer dollars -- to Universities and States for the entire range of environmental/animal business. Look hard at the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, EPA, National Marine Fisheries Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Park Service, regarding their size, budget, power, policies, the lands and waters they control, and what can be done to eliminate their support, both open and hidden, for proposals such as this DEPEOPLING OF AMERICA.

 

These are but a few of the things we must do. "Rewilding" is a term meant to mislead. It is a proposal that clearly displays all the lies and propaganda we have been fed over the past three decades.

 

It is a mortal threat to us all.

 

Thanks for hanging in there and reading all this. Please think hard about what you can do -- and start doing it.

 

If you found this worthwhile, please share it with others. Thanks.

 

This article and other recent articles by Jim Beers can be found at http://www.allianceforamerica.org/bb/viewforum.php?f=91 and at http://www.propertyrightsresearch.org/jbfrms.htm

 

Jim Beers is available for consulting or to speak.