The FWS is arguably the most powerful agency in the federal government because it enforces the Endangered Species Act, which in turn is arguably omnipotent because it can stop any personal or business activity dead in its tracks – not excluding military operations – if a bug or weed is harmed. It can even trump the Constitution, especially the due process and just compensation clauses.
Complying with the ESA is a nightmare, as it covers “endangered” species and their habitats, as well as “threatened” species and habitats. It even stretches to surreal dimensions by also covering subspecies and “distinct population segments” and their habitats. It’s Big Green’s biggest club.
[…]
Where does a regulatory agency run by political appointees find scientists willing to claim their subjective opinion is science? The FWS gets most of its science from U.S. Geological Survey biologists working in a closed loop: FWS gets science from USGS, USGS gets funded by FWS – which assures predetermined outcomes and no dissent. Interesting money trail, that, so where’s Congress and the media?
The poster child for imaginary species is an innocent Rocky Mountain Meadow Jumping Mouse listed in 1998 by FWS as “threatened.” It had the undeserved prefix of “Preble’s” tacked on by subspecies mongers (naturalist Edward A. Preble found the mouse in Colorado in 1899). FWS estimates their Preble’s listing costs public and private landowners about $18 million a year.
Then came Rob Roy Ramey II, curator of vertebrate zoology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, who did a thorough genetic study and found Preble’s mouse was not a subspecies and should be delisted. Wrong answer.
Not so hard to inflate the vanishing species numbers when you count unicorns.
I really, really, really hate unethical scientists. Or as we should start calling them, so as to deligitimise their activities, scienticians for hire. Or simply the five-letter word for people who engage in carnal activities with others in exchange for money or other compensation.
Or as we should start calling them, so as to deligitimise their activities, scienticians for hire.
Delinquent Lab Scroats.
Hannity discussed a similar bit of Obama craziness on Fox tonight where the budget billions bloat since 2008 at
climate change loving NOAA is completely berzerk and the Dems and MSM were caught lying on newcasts that any
cuts would degrade the tsunami warning system in Hawaii. That red blonde, Professor Dora Dumbass
was on pissing and moaning about the conservative meanies defunding PBS and Sesame street.
You have to give the FWS points for sheer low cunning.
In the end these Morons will discredit all science with tricks for a pseudo-science aligned with Marxist environmentalists with Greenish Religious groups.
Another scam by Luddites. Lets create a new species. What ever happened to real science?
Where is the equivalent of policing in the World of science? If this was my field I would be hopping mad at the scam artists.
JMO
Alaska fights to reverse polar bear listing
Like his predecessor, Sarah Palin, the governor is suing the federal government to overturn the listing of the iconic symbol of the Arctic as a threatened species, a move made last year that he believes could threaten Alaska’s lifeblood: petroleum development.
“Currently some are attempting to improperly use the Endangered Species Act to shut down resource development,” Parnell says. “I’m not going to let this happen on my watch.”
[…]
After the listing, Palin sued, saying the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision was not based on the best scientific and commercial data available as the law requires.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33955415/ns/us_news-environment/
It may take mass human starvation or fiscal collapse to reverse the pathology (and endless agenda) of the ESA administrators (FWS). The end game on the current path is a third world economy that can only support a small fraction of the current (human) population.
The spotted Owl listing alone opened the flood gates to green-funded shysters that litigated the US Forest service from an agency that returned revenue to the federal treasury to a de facto duplicate park service that, while sitting on $400 billion in timber assets alone, now loses $6 billion annually. That’s the economic damage from just one species that most likely can’t be saved in its natural habitat.
Each and every species (legitimately) listed could and should be raised in zoos or other artificial environments for at most o.1% of what those listings now cost the US economy. And that cost should be private voluntary sources ideally sucking millions out of the greens that would otherwise go into further screwing of the economy. A few (other species) extinctions wouldn’t be the end of the world either as that’s nature’s way.
Closer to home, why do we need an ever increasing deer population?
The smallpox virus is a species that occurs in nature (or did). Scientists actively tried to wipe that one out. No ecological cataclysm followed.
Environmentalists are fond of claiming that such-and-such a number of species die off every day. No cataclysm; the world goes on.
Obviously there’s no reason to go in with guns a-blazing and start wiping things out (except for smallpox). But this fetish of protecting species at all costs has got to go.
Kill ’em all, let god sort ’em out!
I got in a long argument over this with somebody who claimed to teach the subject at the college level. It turns out that her case was made on the idea that if you change what a species eats, you have changed the species and made the old one extinct. It has to be that way. The polar bear survived the Holocene Optimum. We have reliable temperature data from ice cores from the Arctic that show that is has been warmer than today there for a couple thousand years, though they probably had a different diet. So if the polar bears start eating like grizzlies to survive in warmer times, well, that means that the ones we know today are extinct. They know that if they get to define the terms, they win the argument every time.
“Closer to home, why do we need an ever increasing deer population”
Around here it is “We have to kill the coyotes and coy-wolves because they kill the deer.”
and “We have to hunt the deer to control the population.”
I have a lot more trouble from the neighbor’s dogs then I ever get from the coy wolves, but it is always open season on them. I love hearing them howl at night. I am not against deer hunting by the way, just lame rationalizations.
The endangered species act was an eco-nazi end run around constitutional protection of state jurisdiction, property rights and the limites on federal authority. It was also the beach head for UN agenda 21 in the US.
It seems obvious the only endangered species is constitutional governance. Another reason I say the US is as far down the authoritarian rat hole as Europe.
The US ESA is pussified legislation compared to Ontario’s version – which even gives bureaucrats the power to steal private land to provide habitat for “extirpated’ species.
As in the US, the legislation was drafted by a cabal of parasitic enviro-NGOs. In Ontario they called themselves SOS (Save Ontario Species)and openly bragged that the ESA was ‘their’ act.
At the root of it all is taxpayer dollars. If you want to Google ‘Greenbelt Gravy Train’ you’ll find out how they operate.
Ontario farm journalist Ian Cumming uncovered this scam and wrote about it in Ontario Farmer. But, whether from fear of litigation, philosophical biases, or plain laziness, the mainstream media has run away and hid on this one.
To his credit, Terance Corcoran outed the chief fund-grabber, Rick Smith, in a recent column in the National Post.
Incredibly, all of Ontario’s Farm orgs. were onside with the legislation, and two years later find themselves wringing their hands and begging for exemptions because the bobolink has been added to the ever-growing schedule of endangered species, so farmland might be needed to give the wee birdy nesting sites.
It all come homwe to roost, indeed.
It is not about science it is about a political philosophy that hates humanity, that doesn’t believe humanity is part of nature.
The people who hold that philosophy do so only because they have their heads stuck up their arse ends and they are confusing the lack of light and bad smell with some external disaster.
Yeah, deer here in southern Ontario are thick as thieves. Many seasons used to be just one week but almost all are two now.
As far as species extinction goes, some things just weren’t meant to last. I mean, what good was a Dodo bird? Fat, dumbass looking thing that couldn’t fly or run fast – geez, I wonder why it didn’t last…
And dinosaurs! Glad those suckers are gone.
The infamous “Delta” Smelt comes immediately to mind.
It’s a Smelt. It’s not native. Fishermen use them for bait. Some escape.
The poster child for imaginary species is an innocent Rocky Mountain Meadow Jumping Mouse listed in 1998 by FWS as “threatened.” It had the undeserved prefix of “Preble’s” tacked on by subspecies mongers (naturalist Edward A. Preble found the mouse in Colorado in 1899)
Posted by Kate at March 18, 2011 12:21 AM
Same thing happening in Eastern and Central Ontario with wolves. DNA has similarities to the red wolf that roamed up and down the Appalachians years ago. Therefore, it ‘must’ be protected.
Passed on by a friend,,,I have no clue if its true, but,,;
The Sierra Club and the U.S. Forest Service were presenting an alternative to the Montana ranchers for controlling the coyote population…
It seems that after years of the ranchers using the tried and true method of shooting or trapping the predators, the Sierra Club had a “more humane” solution to this issue.
What they were proposing was for the animals to be captured alive.
The males would then be castrated and let loose again.
This WAS actually proposed by the Sierra Club and by the U.S. Forest Service.
All of the ranchers thought about this amazing idea for a couple of minutes. Finally an old fellow wearing a big cowboy hat in the back of the conference room stood up, tipped his hat back and said;
“Son, I don’t think you understand our problem here… these coyotes ain’t screwin’ our sheep… they’re eatin’ ’em!”
The meeting never really got back to order. . .
Substitute animal and eco activists for coyotes and Im good with either method for population control.
Although most of them are eunuchs anyway……………