Posted on 06/30/2002 6:07:10 AM PDT by chance33_98
Homebuilder charged with Endangered Species Act violations
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) A developer who wanted to build 3,200 homes in Pittsburg has been charged with violating the Endangered Species Act.
West Coast Homebuilders Inc. of Concord was charged in U.S. District Court in Oakland Friday with two counts of violating the act after authorities said a department of Fish and Game warden found a dead California red-legged frog on the site last year.
Prosecutors say Albert Seeno Jr. owner of the company ordered his workers to fill in ponds that were home to the endangered frog.
The frog is believed to be the one Mark Twain made famous in his short story ``The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.'' It was put on the endangered species list in 1996, and has disappeared from nearly three-quarters of its natural range.
The company could be placed on five years' probation and fined if convicted of violating the act. The company is expected to plead July 19.
Seeno's attorney Bill Goodman declined to comment on the case Saturday.
You should have been more suspicious of your source, which was a weekend-envornmentalists site. The dummies didn't even know what they were photographing.
The "red-legged frog in the pic you posted is a misidentified Leopard Frog. So were quite a few of the frogs when I did a Goggle Image search on red-legged frogs.
Here are a few true red-legged frog pics...
My property (for real) is along a mountain ridge that is in the process of being designated a green corridor "link"... While I and some of the other ridge-top property owners (it's all private property) are fighting it, every time we get it taken off the Greenways Map, it reappears on the next version! Since we're at the edge of the watershed, the next door municipality (which is in another watershed) isn't doing any greenways planning. Consequently, this "link" they keep putting on the map doesn't "link" to ANYTHING!
Someone on the committee knows the agenda is state-wide and nation-wide green corridors, and apparently knows where the links are supposed to be even in the communities that haven't STARTED greenways planning.
Interestingly enough, while most of the ridges in the area are already owned by government (state forest, gamelands, state prison land), the first proposed map I saw didn't have any trails, corridors, links, spurs or anything on the land that was already publicly owned. They've been added since I told them it looked like they were only interested in privately owned land for their corridors...
But it's (sniffel, sniffel, sob) the canary in the coal mine!!! Don'tcha unnerstand anything about future generations???
You bedder take a good long look at my 1998 "Mean People Suck" bumpersticker you mean person!!! (/sarcasm)
"leadpenney, will you continue to defend the red legged frogs, when we document that they are not endangered? When in fact they are another EPA bad science nightmare created by the enviral nazis you love over your fellow citizens. Or will you say back off to the enviral nazis, and let the citizens handle their property as good stewards? Or will you as most puffed up enviralists ignore the good science and go with the bad science used for rural cleansing of Americans and removal of their property for the red legged frogs, spotted owls, short nosed sucker fish, silver salmon so thick they have to be killed with baseball bats and other lies even if the Red Legged Frogs are not endangered? This is the real discussion not your enviral trick question. How will you respond when real science shows that the lies of the red legged shortage?"
Now, would you put that in the form of an unloaded, unpuffy question?
That is so true! Whenever they try to raise money around here to buy land for "open space" to prevent it from being developed, they never raise more than a few thousand from private individuals - those who say they're desperate to save the land! When they've gotten the money, most of it has come from local, state and federal government grants - proving again how much easier it is to do things with OPM (Other People's Money)...
While leadpenny is at it, the BART construction of a rapid transit station in Milbrae Ca was stopped twice because a dead gartner snake was found on the site. All right, who put the snake there? You guys want another three week vacation?
How many animals will be saved by finishing the rapid transit system? Will it make up for the two garter snakes that died? Do we stop work when an employee dies? Can we save all the species currently remaining on the earth? Even if we kill ourselves off? These questions have answers, but the environmentalists don't like them.
Well, I contend that I am an environmentalist too, just not as dumb as the supporters of the endangered species act.
Well, when we were young, we wanted to play tennis in our own back yard, and . . .
Junior: "So did these Red-Legged Frogs really have red legs, red like the color of my Young Pioneers bandana?"
Grandpa (sighs): "No, junior, they were just frogs. Their DNA may have been slightly different than other frogs and that made them a different 'species' in the sense that they could not interbreed with other species of frogs, but their legs were not bright red, they had no special abilities, no magical powers. Just frogs."
Junior: "Like the ones I caught last week in a big bucket down by the creek."
Grandpa: "Exactly."
Junior: "But my Biodiversity-Training teacher said...."
Grandpa: "I need a drink."
Which argument? That if a species is truly on the verge of extinction, you would not want to be the one to make it extinct, however, you would want to be reimbursed for doing the right thing?
I do think there may be situations that society may need to pay people for losses incurred when society deems it important. That's what the political process is about. However, if all a person is concerned about is being reimbursed for doing a good deed, it's not much of a good deed, is it?
If your point here is that your hypothetical was ridiculous and completely impossible and therefore had zero relevance to the real world, then I'll agree.
Either you would call in the bulldozers or you wouldn't.
I would call in the bulldozers. But not in your hypothetical (which CANNOT EXIST).
Again (since it didn't seem to sink in the first time), you cannot know with absolute certainty that such-and-such group of critters is the last group of their species on earth. You simply can't.
A more realistic scenario is this: The government - or rather, ideologues who work for one department of the government - informs you that your pond contains the last surviving colony of such-and-such critter (according to their records, or their database, or the latest memo they received, or the latest "List" of "Endangered" species drafted up by some lawyers they pay...)
That would be a more realistic and informative hypothetical scenario for discussion. Question number one would be: Do you believe the government on such matters? Is the government always right?
Does the government, especially enviro-ideologues in its pay, have a great track record in stewardship of the environment?
I know the answers to these questions, and I think you do too. But if you prefer to gaze dreamily upon your Completely-Impossible Hypothetical, go right ahead....
Why must every species of critter on Earth continue to have descendants forever?
I'd really like to know.
You speak as if this is some kind of huge benevolent concession on your part. In fact compensation for property which is taken for public use is REQUIRED by the Constitution. Perhaps you've heard of it? I know that most enviro-pagans wish it didn't exist, and pretend that it doesn't, anyway....
CAJUN FROG LEGS its whats for dinner! YUMMMMMMMY
No I don't. If I had the answers, I wouldn't have asked the question. Glad to see your world is black and white though.
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