Posted on 02/18/2012 8:42:25 AM PST by null and void
The Arizona Republic runs a column on page A-2 daily with environmental information. Most often they are of the form, “Environmentalists say xxx may be the cause...
Or, preliminary tests show xxx could be the result of xxx.
“mays, coulds, seems, mights” IOW guesses. Never an ounce of proof offered. Just a sentence to scare the public into believing the wacko’s line of BS.
Invariably they are later shown to be either false or never heard from again.
Wackos trying to justify their continuing grants.
I’m still not sure what the elephant seals have to do with anything. Ok, there are more of them. How does that relate to the story about otters? Seems like the sharks could be feasting on elephant seals and leave the otters alone.
Who writes this garbage, anyway?
This is all about producing the paperwork to keep them on the endangered species list and most of it is guessing.
There should be 500 more sea otters. The other 500 were probably scared off from all the environmental scientists floating around in their kayyaks taking measurements. Mr. Rogers, it’s not hard to make people believe the sun is going to disappear during an eclipse. The problem for the scammers is when the sun starts to reappear. The release of the climategate emails has caused the sun to reappear big time.
Julie Packard is exercising the communist philosophy of ‘perfect knowledge’ in the central planning and control of the ‘sanctuary’ which used to be California state waters owned by the citizens of this state.
In her ‘perfect knowledge’ if she controls one aspect of the ‘system’, e.g. fishing, then she will have a ‘perfect’ system in her own mind.
She’s an idiot to believe she understands or can control all the inputs and the outputs of her self created system.
Under her control, we have seen the death of the Italian and Portuguese human cultures in the vicinity of her system, an unhealthy for humans and animals overpopulation of sea lions in her system and now the sea otters, which the aquarium uses to propagandize their communist views to everyone, are being killed by sharks, which they had used to propagandize their communist views previously.
Poor Julie, it takes a lot of work to have ‘perfect knowledge’ and command and control central planning. She’s falling off her game!
That said, from what I have read about GWS “attacks” on sea otters; the current theory is that these incidents are likely to be investigatory bites; or, possibly, territorial behavior. This is because most of the evidence for these “attacks” on sea otters consists of the decapitated carcasses found floating w/no evidence of the shark having fed upon the otter. (Of course, who knows how many otters may have been consumed whole and left no evidence of the attack.)
Bottom line: Who knows why a GWS “attacks” a sea otter ...or a human??? Maybe GWS just “think” we're some sort of chewy “shark toy” and it's a fun game!
Finally, the obligatory: “You're more likely to be killed driving to the beach than to be bitten by a GWS.” (Yeah, but, if you go swimming or surfing near a dropoff where GWS are known to feed on pinnepeds the odds go up substantially!!!)
...and, no, I don't want to exterminate GWS; they're fascinating animals; just advocating a little common sense and greater objectivity in the science surrounding these magnificent marine predators.
So...who is “Mr. Rogers”?
In the 1970s and 80s there was a huge environmental push to bring back the sea otters. Since sea otters are greatly affected by oil spills, anti-oil environmentalists incorporated otter restoration as part of their PR effort against offshore oil drilling. Huge sums were spent to bring the cute little abalone-crunchers back to California waters.
This is anecdotal but as the numbers of sea otters increased I noticed that the number of shark attacks on humans did too. This is logical since sharks follow their sea otter prey and more sharks equal more attacks on humans.
Now the ultra-liberal Mercury News frets that nothing can be done about sharks devouring their favorite food. As Pogo famously said: "I have met the enemy and he is us."
Especially when served with a lashing of Worcestershire and a nice glass of wine.
I’ve eaten shark a couple of times (yes, with red wine) but never a sea otter. I wouldn’t think a small carnivorous mammal would be very tasty, although if one were hungry enough ...
I really wish I still had my seal skin jacket. It would drive the libs crazy. Also it was nice and warm.
Didn't the same thing happen in Florida when they decided you couldn't hunt crocodiles anymore? They ended up with a lot of them.
I suppose it is too much for the enviromentalists mind to cope with, that we humans are also a "natural predator". And, we too, contribute to the balance of nature.
Gosh, I’ll bet that was warm!
EXACTLY!
So give us more tax money to "study" the "problem".
Can you say "global warming"? I knew you could!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.