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Before believing anything asserted as "science", people need to consider the Florida Panther. Yet there are tons of people who believe that, if it is taught at a university, it is true beyond question.
Texas Rescue Squad Comes to the Aid of the Florida Panther
BTW, did I ever tell you the story about dancing with the hairy legged ol' farm girl at Panther Hall in Fort Worth?
Uhhh. We don't have panthers here. We have Mountain Lions. And they do occasionally attack and kill folks.
Of course, that's if they were really a "different" species.
My brother-in-law in Utah was on horse back one fine autumn day, hunting elk high up in the mountains that are only a few miles from his farm. He looked across the canyon and saw a mountain lion keeping pace with him. When Larry would stop, the cat would stop, when Larry moved forward, the cat would move forward.
Now Larry is a kind and gentle person, but he also definitely not one to be triffled with or stalked by some damn overgrown cat with a bad attitude. He's also a very good shot and nearly always armed. He rode up a ways, dismounted, tied up his horse, walked forward to where he figured the cat would cross over and look for him and waited. Sure enough, the cat crossed the canyon and tracked back to where Larry was and attacked. Dumb move. Dead kitty. Came for elk, left with mountain lion. SSS.
--Boot Hill
I have a photo of a big paw print I found on a popular Big Bend trail. Clearly not a dog print and the park people had been reporting mountain lion sightings on that trail.
One person per year.Ohh.. I'm scared.
Far more people are killed each year by honeybees or getting trapped in chimneys than mountain lions.
This joker is an ignoramus and is just playing on people's irrational fears to serve his political agenda
Writing an environmental article is very tough, because you have an extremely wide target market. One must exhibit sufficient technical credibility to inspire confidence in the reader while not boring them to tears. One must be entertaining to hold the marginally involved while not appearing trite or flippant. Having a target market in mind is therefore important, as I am sure you understand.
The article is breezy and entertaining. You are clearly doing a better job of reaching an average reader than I can (or will) do (if you have cracked my book you know that for a fact). You have, however, made perhaps unnecessary choices that restrict it to those who would want to agree with you anyway, so I am not sure how politically effective preaching to the choir might be considering your apparent objectives and legitimate personal interests in writing it.
The comments on socialism, while correct, do little toward those ends without further explanation that might take you too far afield; i.e., if one is to use the epithet, one must explain how and why the policies and outcomes you describe are symptoms of socialism. I am sad to say, that most people don't regard National Parks as such. To be more sparing is to instill more power in the charge, so there I think you over-did the use, while failing to make the explanation, while perhaps alienating a fraction of those whom you wish to reach.
Finally, I think it important to point out the unintended environmental consequences to a policy of reintroducing large preditors when exotic species, particularly plants, are such a problem. You might wish to point out that simple weeding in the park, which can be an enormously important management activity, gains a whole new sense of adventure when an ever present death threat is added to the experience. Lest the average Joe forget, one must live there to know it well enough to take care of it. Who is going to take those personal risks, much less raise a family in such conditions?
OK, that's the literary and marketing angle; I want to add a legal facet discussed on page 378 of the book:
From the Preamble:
After going on at considerable length about wilderness areas and national parks, they come back with this language in Article V Section 1:
“The Contracting Governments agree to adopt, or to propose such adoption to their respective appropriate lawmaking bodies, suitable laws and regulations for the protection and preservation of flora and fauna within their national boundaries but not included in the national parks, national reserves, nature monuments, or strict wilderness reserves referred to in Article II hereof.”
I guess that means we need to mitigate New York City. ;-)
I hope you don't take my comments as anything but supportive of you being as effective as possible. As I said, yours is a much more accessible article than I could have written, but on those rare occasions when I do get REALLY sarcastic, I go for the throat (which probably drives people crazy), so I thought I would add this for your entertainment:
Copyright 2000 by Mark Edward Vande Pol, Republication by permission only
People have an odd sort of affinity for the wolf born out of a sense of human frailty, over that thinnest of veneers, restraining the animal within us. It is that slightness of difference between the fiercely wild and the faithful domestic that is so reflective of our own, perilous spiritual journey between violent hedonism and peaceful civility. The wolf is an archetype of the internal turmoil of life, vicariously lived in spontaneous freedom.
As you are probably aware, the US Fish and Wildlife Service is engaged in a program to reintroduce the Mexican Gray Wolf throughout the Southwest. As you might suspect, it has been no surprise to anyone that this has been a controversial exercise. Wolves can do a lot of damage, and it can be pretty gruesome, sometimes even dangerous. They eat a lot, and that to do that, they kill things. Wolves enjoy killing things, especially when they run away.
Ranchers, farmers, and townspeople had this programme shoved down their throats along with all sorts of civic promises that have yet to materialize. They were promised full compensation for lost livestock, and were met with a pittance after a series of ridiculous bureaucratic loops. They were promised that the wolves were shy and would avoid human settlements, which hasn’t proven true either. They were told the wolves would remain within a limited range as long as there was adequate food, and they have strayed for many miles instead. They were told that the wolf would improve the herds of elk, and instead they are decimated. The government has promised these things without accountability, and it is time that the accountability should be properly affixed. The technology already exists.
The citizens of the Southwest should demand that the government develop shock collars triggered by the Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers to keep the wolves on their range. GPS is already used for tracking their movements. If the wolves wander off government land, they would be nailed by the collars until they turn back! The US Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service employees that love these wolves so much can then spend their time running after the wolves changing batteries on shock collars or else face a lawsuit for gross negligence when a child is eventually attacked and killed in a schoolyard. Only when they think they have solved the problem, will they discover…
The Law of Unintended Consequences
Let’s leap forward in time with a flight of fancy, and see how it all worked out.
After a number of years of repeated battery changes, the wolves of the Southwest had figured out that they sort of liked the effects of being shot in the haunches with darts full of Phenobarbital. They started hanging out nearer and nearer human settlements, further from their game and risking increasing numbers of shocks; in order to be nailed in the rump by a dart gun, to be followed by a warm and numbing stupor.
PETA sued USFWS and demanded sensitivity training for all USFWS employees and a research programme to end the use of drugs. They demanded rehabilitation and drug treatment programs for the wolves. To reduce the incidence of human interaction, the reintroduction programme area would have to be expanded to include all of Texas and connect through Colorado to the realm of the Northern Gray. The labor union for the Immigration and Naturalization Service sued the USFWS because the wolves were hindering illegal immigration, displacing jobs, and not paying dues.
Because of the expanded scope of the programme required to treat addicted wolves (and fourteen years of general recession), the USFWS was still complaining to Congress of a lack of university trained certified wolf-psychologists. The level of funding to retrain the former INS agents as canine drug-counselors was insufficient to run the programme. The drug manufacturers worried about the associated liability and raised prices on tranquilizer darts dramatically. There was no domestic supplier. Without a guarantee of indemnification, and tired of late payments on the now insurmountable trade deficit, Sandoz and Novartis, the Swiss suppliers of tranquilizer darts, refused to deliver their usual shipments without cash payments from the American government, up front.
When deprived of their regular fix, the wolves became strung-out and violent. Some of them suffered seizures and convulsions from barbiturate withdrawal. In a fit of such rage, one alpha male, instead of issuing a normal correction and maintaining the usual pack-discipline, attacked an innocent bitch and instead got hooked into the collar of its dying victim. This noble animal subsequently died of starvation nearly seventy miles away from the original incident after over a month of unbelievable cruelty, unable or unwilling to feed off the carcass of its fallen mate. The National Geographic cover page brought home the graphic evidence: the futility of humans arrogantly presuming to manage the wild.
Several months later, a PETA consultant was brought in to solve the problem. Together with a new infusion of FWS employees and former INS agents (now canine drug counselors), the PETA principal convened an evening séance around the campfire. While the swirl of various sorts of smoke infiltrated their Gnostrils, and as the sound of drums throbbed in their chests, the PETA infiltrators on the FWS were suddenly infused with an inspirational, consensus vision. They Gestalted that their spiritual kinship with the wolf, under the watchful eye of Gaia would allow them to approach the wolves to change the batteries without the aid of tranquilizer darts! It was to be a spiritual test of personal self-control, to approach the wolves without fear, lest the scent of anthropocentric terror arouse the prey drive of their brothers. The humans howled with the call of communion and donned their lambskin blankets as a token of their peaceful community with their spiritual brothers. (The hides had been willingly surrendered by the local ranchers, as a penalty for having introduced non-native sheep. Curiously, they were only too happy to help. It was nice to see them so cooperative and cheerful.)
Upon their approach, the wolves startled from their sudden slumber. Amid the confusing aroma of sheeple and suffering the lack of their usual offering of tranquilizer darts, they interpreted this event as both an impending fix and an offering of dinner. They responded entirely logically toward their PETA/USFWS benefactors. It was a hideous sight, the fury of the wolves and the cries of human death echoed in the silence of night in the desert, until suddenly, all hell broke loose with the sound of shooting.
Among the consensed was a young FWS ranger, a rather pluckish girl who had undergone a sudden attack of mechanistic thinking before breaking camp. She had spiritually fallen to question her ability to approach the canids fearlessly while smelling like lunch. After a liberal dosing of musk, she had donned her Kevlar flack jacket (usually reserved for negotiations with willing sellers) and slipped her standard issue 9mm Glock under her garment along with an extra clip in her boot. Upon the attack, she closed her eyes into her tears, and started to fire.
Although the slaughter she witnessed wasn't fatal to her, the destruction of the wolves, the loss of her comrades, and her shameful fear for such spiritual weakness, not to sacrifice herself to the bosom of Gaia, drove her to suicide. She was a single mother with two children. National mourning ensued for the wolves amid celebration at her spiritual contrition and self-sacrifice for her many crimes among which was her darkest secret, now made public. She was a breeder. Pregnant with two kids - how unthinkable! She deserved to die.
The rest of the USFWS employees suddenly unionized with the INS agents, demanding safer working conditions and better batteries for shock collars. The now ravening and overpopulated wolves had attacked a Hollywood set, killing three little pigs during the on-location filming of the sequel to that Oscar winning eco-documentary, "BABE in the Woods". In a sympathy action the Grips walked off the set and demanded rabies shots. The Disney Company filed a complaint through the People’s Assembly to the UN Security Council.
Meanwhile, the former property owners in the Alamagordo internment camp who had been serving time for hate speech delivered to a FWS Battery Replacement Technologist, made bail when the recovered collar was found on the now, long dead canis. Their attorney, Alan Derschowitz discovered the key to breaking the government's case. He was able to prove that the battery terminals were indeed backwards. Thus the term 'backwards idiot', instead of a hurtful epithet toward a selfless global citizen, was intended to be a helpful suggestion regarding a poor career choice. PETA still demanded a retrial with the Death Penalty, complaining that the former property owners had gotten off on a technicality. The court conceded, giving the hapless landowners instead their choice of community service parole: security duty in Zimbabwe, or census-taking in the South Bronx.
Facing certain death upon their "release", and prior to the beginning of the sentencing phase of the new trial, INS-FWS union activists staged a breakout of the landowners. Together they high-tailed it en masse, for the nearby spas in Taos, NM to take hostages.
With the situation in New Mexico getting out of hand, the Michael Eisner Foundation had insisted that the UN hold a special collaborative summit at Taos. The spas had been recently commandeered as an attractive nuisance after the facility had been quietly bought up by a multimillionaire gay marriage counselor years before. The good doctor had diversified operations into the Universal Center for Political Consensus (UCPC). The stakeholders at the meeting were from the Department of Stake, the USFWS, the INS, the facilitators were to be former President Clinton, and a an anonymous party, a broad.
The harmonization of the convention was shattered by the sudden attack from the landowners and turned onto an ugly international incident when the, by then, starving wolves joined the fray. The Russian Ambassador met his Maker in a particularly cruel fashion when he tried to fend off a 70 kilo alpha male with a bust of Alan Gisburg. According to the coroner’s report, Mr. Clinton died of natural causes. Madeline Albright speaking from Prague, issued a statement to the effect that it was just a case of a bellicose Ambassador taunting a wild animal with the closing comment, "The wolves were there first." She demanded the Russians apologize by sending a supply of bears with which to augment the diversity of indigenous stocks and to control the marauding wolves. Meanwhile, a column of Chinese led Mexican regulars headed toward Taos.
Upon receipt of the final report, the USFWS began collaborating with Lockheed under contract to produce a tranquilizer dart that holds enough Vodka to stun bears, but the program stalled in disputes over cost overruns and a lack of raw material for field trials.
When a Chinese auditor from the IMF found the vodka discrepancy on the books, President Gore offered him a free trip to Taos to investigate. The bean counter is now at Memorial Sloan Kettering undergoing painful rabies treatments due to an encounter with a renegade band of infected USFWS employees, apparently hanging out at the now deserted spa, convinced that they were themselves brethren of the Wolf.
China declares war.