Posted on 12/30/2002 11:42:30 AM PST by Tailgunner Joe
Working in the shadow of some of Scotland's highest mountain peaks, conservationists are ripping out thousands of trees — planted mostly as a tax break for wealthy investors — to preserve the habitat of some of the world's rarest birds.
The European Union has partly funded a $4.3 million program to restore the Forsinard Nature Reserve in the Scottish Highlands to a massive bog.
"We've started on a major operation that will return the peatlands to their former condition. The bogs are of massive international importance and are among the most uniquely significant habitats in Britain," said Norrie Russell, manager of the reserve.
Forsinard, sometimes called Scotland's rainforest, is home to nesting birds such as the black-throated diver, common scoter, greenshank and hen harrier. The birds share the peatlands with millions of insect-eating sundew plants, dragonflies, water beetles and red deer. Similar conditions are rare elsewhere in the world, occurring only in isolated spots such as Tierra del Fuego and the South Island of New Zealand.
Forsinard is a hybrid Norse-Gaelic name meaning "high water," and at 98 percent water and 2 percent peat moss the area was long considered of little good but for forestation.
Conifers were planted in the late 1970s and a subsequent tax concession introduced by the government of former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s led to huge investment in forestation of the area.
The aim of Thatcher's policy was to boost the forestry industry in the Highlands and create jobs. The popularity of the plan was enhanced by the involvement of celebrities such as singers Cliff Richard and Phil Collins.
But as the wealthy harvested tax breaks, the trees were slowly strangling the natural habitat.
The trees began drying out the bog, diverting water flow. Falling pine needles increased levels of acidity in the numerous lochs, devastating the flora and fauna on which many other species depended.
Conservationists are now working to turn back the clock.
"By felling the timber and creating pools of water we can halve the accelerating damage to the bogs caused by the trees drawing water for the peatlands," Russell said.
"But it is going to take a long time. The damage that was done in the space of the past 30 years could easily take another 3,000 to fully correct."
The European Union-funded program is being led by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and also involves partial funding from the Forestry Commission, Forest Enterprise, Scottish Natural Heritage and Plantlife.
The first stage of the three-year project will clear 750 acres of plantation by April and use the discarded timber to block up the ditches that were dug to drain the peatlands 20 years ago.
Established as a reserve by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in 1995, Forsinard gets about 5,000 visitors a year. A nature trail, the Dubh Lochan Trail, has been laid out to allow visitors access without disturbing ground-nesting birds.
I don't think there can be any argueing with them having the wrong Marx and Lennon.
Who says they need to be clear cut to be properly managed and make an evil profit?
If the parks are overforested and the evidence continues to say some are, thinning would seem the right thing to do, ecologically. Think of the trees as ticks on a dog's back, there is only so much square footage to support a given population of ticks, if the ticks exceed this threshold they emaciate the dog and all involved slowly die.
Think of the trees and scrub brush as ticks and Mother Earth as the dog, as the relationship between trees and earth is as parasitic as any other.
Maybe this will help point out the need to manage forests and wildlife also, for that matter.
>Just out of morbid curiosity: what do you think of state/federal parks, should be clear cut them and make a profit...after all, what purpose do they serve, just sitting around like that, right?.
When governments are evil, like they are now, it is no longer "by the people, for the people," but "by the elite, for the elite" and you should not be calling for more government control. The elite robber barons and oligarchs steal the peoples' money and even the national parks are traded to World interests as collateral for federal debts. Land grabs to create more national parks are for the purpose of stealing more land to trade to anti-American interests and to fulfill the UN's Agenda 21 re population control. There is no longer any heritage nor inheritance for your children. You've been had in a big way. The middle class protesting en masse in South America is a harbinger of things to come in North America. Some authors indicate that the downturn in real estate in America will become a freefall and people will be walking away from their homes because they owe more than the homes are worth and there is no money to pay for them. Weep.
Globalism kills and not just by encouraging abortion. Read the links!
As it stands now, your assertion is battling with competing perceptions to the contrary ("anglophiles? but I thought western thought is under attack") and with ostensibly benign declarations ("bespoil the earth? But they're environmentalists").
To counter those deceptions, you need to pry up your adversaries' facade to reveal the inner workings. Very many will deny the see anything in your revelations. But a few will see something, and perhaps that will lead them to become undeceived, and from them will come their influence's rippling effect.
But to get it started, you need to extract some stuff from that long list (of course, with the links), adding your thinking on how it's applicable, and not just present the raw links.
And try to be concise and on point. Don't try to battle all the junk being tossed up at once. Most of it, frequently the most obvious, is just chaff to distract and spend the fire of opponents like you. So try to stick to what you know to be substantive. You only need to reveal a few flaws in the adversaries propaganda for you to make inroads and establish a beachhead. Against Leviathan, many such inroads amount to major successes. Just take your patience faith and summon the drive to do this extra bit.
Now I know there are quite a few people, even here at FR, who already know of, and concede, this evidence, and who see the truth of your last assertion, but who apparently think it is okay in the long run. They're already hooked into believing "We just have got to limit human population growth somehow." The propaganda has claimed them.
So contemplate the terrain. The depth of the double-think on this, and the unthinking (in many cases) bigotry underlying it, is a very real obstacle. It will require a major battle of words to reawaken personal morality so you can drive the home how intrinsically evil you know the thinking to be there. I believe PC thought suppression has done incredible damage here. Making it PC to equate all cultures, and verbotten to demonstrate how JudeoChristian western thought overcame its own shortcomings to the betterment and prosperity of all humanity, was a trick that screams out for despoiling.
But, as you keep pointing out, the deceptions greet the student at many levels and turns. Finding a way to combat their demoralizing effect needs the undespoiled God-based message be put in the words that are understandable by the deceived.
The deceivers twisted the original, you need to find ways to untwist them. Cutting up the deceptions is, allegorically, how Alexander came to power. Try cutting through the weak links you know and the deceptions stand a good chance of unraveling themselves.
Indeed, the lack of personal morality and love for one's neighbor is sin, and that is the root of the problem. (Note to Stavka2, hog feces in the drinking water is a judgment of G-d for sin just as those hundreds of bodies laying unburied at the crematory in Florida or wherever it was. That is a fairly dramatic attention grabber. "Attention: this is your G~d. Anybody listening? Anybody remember my instructions, my commandments to love your neighbor as yourself???")
>I believe PC thought suppression has done incredible damage here.
Agreed.
>Making it PC to equate all cultures, ***[an absurdity]*** and verbotten to demonstrate how JudeoChristian western thought overcame its own shortcomings[?]*** to the betterment and prosperity of all humanity, was a trick that screams out for despoiling.
What shortcomings?
Ps 19:7 The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple.
Yeshua and his disciples confirmed this.
Mt 5:18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
Ro 3:31 Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.
Rather than being intrinsically good, the natural man desires rebellion, sin and wickedness rather than the truth, love, honor and peace which surround people who love and obey the One true G-d of Israel and keep His commandments. Any shortcomings have always been the fault of mankind, not of G-d.
It is not only the unchurched who hate their neighbors (e.g. raise so many hogs the ground water gets polluted) but the churched apostate Christians who are no more than secular humanists and think they can do anything they like.
That is the problem, Stavka2, sin, and government won't solve the sin problem. In fact, looking to any government for a solution to a such is idolatry! For any nominally Christian nation to be brought back now would require widescale repentance and this is not happening, in the U.K. (where there are something like 900+ churches that have been converted to mosques) nor in the U.S. nor anywhere else as far as I can see.
History will now repeat. G~d will bring increasingly harsh judgments to the western nations.
The Bible says they will give heed to seducing spirits...will not endure sound doctrine...and because they love not THE TRUTH, will be given over to believe a lie. DO YOU BELIEVE THAT?
1Ti 4:1 Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, **giving heed to seducing spirits,** and doctrines of devils;.
2Ti 4:3 For the time will come when **they will not endure sound doctrine;** but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
2Th 2:10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; **because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.** 11 And for **this cause** God shall send them **strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:** 12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
We are witnessing that now. Nearly the whole nation is given over **by God** to believe one lie or another...whether government is good or Bush is good or Homeland Security is good or that Muslims are good and Jews/Christians are bad or whatever. Truth is not *mental*...it/he/Jesus is *spiritual* -- Jesus said so..."The words I speak are *spirit* and they are life." He was the "word made flesh" and dwelt among us and "his own knew him not." Now, most who say they are Christians "know him not" and are like those in the days of Noah who knew not until the flood came and took them away.
Mt 24:37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. 38 For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, 39 ***And knew not** until the flood came, and **took them all away;** so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
No where did it say that private land was confiscated for this or that someone was forced out of their houses...but the knee jerk reaction is everywhere to be seen. Land management planning is a necessity in any civilization, just as much as financial planning or any other planning.
Critics say state must do more to protect rivers
Pay attention to the massive fish kills which put quite a few of those poor into even worse straights, since they used to eat that fish and since they don't have access to medical help, the diseases have really done a wonder, MR. Overtly Righteous.
Agreement in North Carolina May Lead to Change in Hog Industry Across the Country
North Carolina hurricane flooding—the manmade component of a natural disaster
By Kate Randall
28 September 1999
Nearly two weeks after Hurricane Floyd came ashore September 16 at Cape Fear, North Carolina, this Southeastern US state is confronting an ecological and human disaster without precedent. The entire coastal plain east of the capital city of Raleigh—an area comprising 18,000 square miles and home to 2.1 million people—remains in a state of emergency, devastated by the worst flooding in the area in recorded history.
The North Carolina death toll stands at 47, although rescue workers expect to find more bodies as flooded homes and cars are searched. Approximately 2,100 people remain in 21 emergency shelters, down from a high of more than 10,000. State emergency management officials say that 3,010 homes of the estimated 30,000 homes flooded have been destroyed or seriously damaged, although this figure does not include reports from six of the worst-hit counties. Waters have begun to recede, but many neighborhoods are still covered by up to four feet of water.
Corn, cotton and peanut crops have been severely damaged. While current damage estimates stand at $1.3 billion for the state, this will undoubtedly rise as the full impact of Hurricane Floyd becomes known.
The flooding has produced an environmental disaster. An estimated 2.5 million chickens, 500,000 turkeys and 100,000 hogs have drowned, and many of these animal carcasses continue to float and rot in the flood waters. More than 200 municipal and industrial sewage treatment plants were damaged, and 340 animal operations were overrun. The resulting water contamination continues to threaten the population with gastrointestinal illness, tetanus, E. coli, cholera and typhoid. Coffins also bobbed up from flooded cemeteries. Once the flood recedes, huge swarms of mosquitoes are expected, which can carry viral meningitis.
Other contaminants being carried in the flood waters, and drifting downstream through farmlands and business districts to the Atlantic Ocean, include petroleum, propane, chromium, mercury and farm pesticides. The impact on wildlife and coastal fisheries is of particular concern.
A major contributing factor to North Carolina's environmental crisis is the largely unregulated explosion of hog farming that has taken place in the eastern part of the state in the last decade. Since 1987, the hog population has grown from 2.6 million to 10 million, a 285 percent increase. These hogs produce approximately 50,000 tons of feces and urine a day, or 19 million tons of waste a year. Almost all of this hog farming is concentrated in the eastern coastal plain, which is made up an ecologically interdependent network of wetlands, rivers and coastline.
Floyd's flood waters have served to exacerbate an already serious threat to the natural environment posed by the operation of these giant hog farms. Hogs live their lives packed into hog houses the size of football fields, each containing up to 1,000 pigs. North Carolina is the leading hog farming state, producing close to 10 million hogs in 1997. Only one in ten pigs now come from small family farms, as many of these farms have been put out of business.
While human waste is treated and disinfected in sewage plants, hog waste is collected in open-air pits, known as lagoons, where it is minimally treated and then sprayed on land. Hog waste contains large amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus, which can cause rapid algae growth and rob the water of oxygen, posing a danger to fish. Runoff from sprayfields also pollutes groundwater and drinking wells. Pollutants from leaking waste lagoons seep into waterways and the soil. Large quantities of ammonia nitrogen escape from hog farms, and fall on water and land. Disease-causing bacteria, or pathogens, are 100 to 10,000 times more prevalent in hog waste than in treated human sewage. Heavy metals, particularly copper and zinc, toxic to plants and animals, are also concentrated in sludge that accumulates in the waste lagoons.
While some regulations on hog farming have been enacted in recent years, most of the farms either came into existence before the new laws, or are exempt from them. New hog operations are still allowed to use the lagoon method of waste disposal. There are few restrictions on locating the hog farms in environmentally sensitive watersheds. Operators are not required to test groundwater or surface water. The quality of life for area residents in many rural areas has been severely impacted, as factories are allowed to spray waste within 75 feet of residential property.
With the flooding, the contamination from these lagoons has been literally lifted up and washed across the entire coastal plain area. No small portion of the threat to human life and the environment connected to the flooding can be traced to the refusal of the state to regulate the $2 billion a year hog farming business.
While North Carolina authorities have bent over backwards to accommodate these giant hog farmers, the attitude of the state, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the insurance companies has been less generous towards the flood victims. Many residents will be unable to collect insurance to repair or replace their homes, as only one in four homeowners carries flood insurance, and flood insurance is only offered by the government in areas where the local communities have spent money on flood protection. North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt has also emphasized the responsibility of the state's residents to volunteer and make personal donations in response to the crisis
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