Endangered Species
I was curious to know how much, if at all, the hiker community supports projects protecting endangered species.
Generally I have found the hiker community is sandwiched somewhere in the middle between the wild-eyed eco-nazis/eco-puritan crowd and the regretably environmental blase. The whole issue is fraught with the law of unintended consequences. Out here we see the re-introduction of wolves. Within Yellowstone Park, the coyote population is diminished as the wolves drive out the coyotes. Then since the coyotes are gone, the mice come. The owls and hawks thrive somewhat but the mice population grows. Out side the Park, wolves have to be destroyed, whole packs of them, because they eat sheep. On the other hand there are victories in the making, the bald eagle, the grizzly bear and the trumpeter swan, victories met with good support from the greater public.Originally Posted by mdionne
One thing we don't like is those from other parts of the country coming out here and spreading out law suits etc in the name of the Endangered Species Act. I have always advocated that a group of westerners should go east and spread EPA lawsuits in the eastern states demanding an environmental impact statement on all the salt, calcium chloride etc, that is spread all over the highways in the winter months. The EPA should act to halt this awful defiling of nature. You guys back east should be ashamed of yourselves harming so much in the name of safe driving. Last time I checked humans are on the endangered species list.
Regards,
Clark Fork in Western Montana
One thing I've learned because of the Trail is that there are a whole lot more life out in our own woods than I first expected.
If you are interested in this stuff, you might want to do a search on "All Taxa Biodiversity and The Great Smokey National Park".
I'd also highly recommend reading E.O. Wilson's books on the larger subject. He is one of the truely brilliant people out there.
Rick B
Hiking is my religion, the outdoors my sanctuary!
After Vietnam, guns(weapons) are no longer an extension of my person. I respect all life, wild or otherwise. Hiking was and is my escape and solitude from the hell of war and politics. Hiking is my religion, the outdoors is my sanctuary! You can quote me on this.
I'm for protecting all species, not just endangered ones. But yes, especially endangered or threatened species. But support localized eradication of invasives.
I can't help but think this thread is some kind of lure. Not sure why.
www.ridge2reef.org -Organic Tropical Farm, Farm Stays, Group Retreats.... Trail life in the Caribbean
That would be great if you cowboys could stop the spreading of this poison.
Too bad the EPA only exists now to collect money and do nothing.
Extinction is forever. When we have a choice responsible people will try to keep from contributing to extinction and will work to prevent it where possible. Why? The traditional answer is that some things may have important uses no one has discovered as yet. Personally, I just like the diversity of life, and the natural balance among plants and creatures. It just seems foolishly destructive to deliberately allow a fellow creature on this fragile earth to become extinct.
Perhaps, also, since humans as far as we know are the only creatures with a memory and a sense of both the past and the future, prevention of extinction may be among the peculiar reasons we were allowed to evolve, or perhaps is just a test imposed by a superior being to see if we are worth allowing to survive.
Then, of course, endangered species regulations are a useful tool for preventing damage to other wild things and places. We environmentalists all cheered, for instance, when a rare flower was found to live on the banks of a wild river in Maine that had been slated for dam construction.
Yeah, it was a pretty ugly, nondescript flower. But it prevented the flooding of the most spectacular stretch of white water remaining in the East. Luckily, though endangered wild rivers, like endangered views of wild mountain ridges, still aren't considered worthy of protection, flowers are.
Weary
Some flux is natural
Species come and species go, that is the natural order of things. When we try to change nature through artificial regulation, we risk doing more harm than good.
Anthropologists believe that since the dawn of time, humans have hastened the extinction of many species. We have already vastly effected the natural order of things. To try and keep humans, rats and cockroaches from becoming the only things left, is a worth goal. We have already done more harm than good. Now that soon we will be unleashing frankenanimals and frankenplants, enjoy the creatures we have left as soon it will be over.
which one?
where does one start?
from the frogs (that are sprouting extra limbs due to pesticide poisoning) to the mammals (whales come to mind) to us on the upper scale of the list:
(some would argue that one!) HUMANS!
i support many worthy causes that are "enviormentally safe" causes that help our animal friends & our natural surroundings.
If we were to do an HONEST self-examination of our own stewardship...we'd find we are doing a TERRIBLE JOB.
Good point Blue Jay.
It is apparent how human actions have contributed to a species endangerment. The list goes on and on with the factors that we have played against natural order. Our planet constantly changes naturally causing slight modifications within all species. By our wealth of technology we speed up the process of change, giving a species no time to adjust to new circumstances. As Blue Jay points in a round about way, the time of species genetic replication is near.
a.k.a CHOP-CHOP
Well I am no expert on all of this, but I have been studying environmental policy for the last 18 months which include a lot science type courses. I would that the wolves bringing the coyote population is good as mentioned, it raises the mice population giving room for eagles, hawks and owls to once again re-populate. I would not be surprised that in time you will also seea rise in the fox population and bobcats as well, for they feed a lot on rodents.
By the way i do agree with re-introduction of species, nature in most places is currently out of balance and since we (man) has screwed it up, we need to try and fix it. Not by genetics, but by re-introduction.
By the way Central Michigan University is trying to verify that grey wolves have made their way into the lower pinensula across the winter ice. There have been many spottings of grey wolves but hard scientific evidence. Also, there have been spottings of mountain lions in michigan over the last ten years, I have seen any but every so often there a write up in some local paper about one.
The point made all calcium chloride and sodium we dump on our roads is a true one also, the salinity of the great lakes out to the Atlantic, and I might the Mississippi is all way above what it should be. We are seeing species enter into our waters that could survive a 100 years, because there wasn't any sodium in our waters. We do need to find an alternative and soon, I will say I have read reports where they are experimenting with types of pavement inhopes of finding that will not freeze as easily and there is a move reduce the amount salt pourd onto our roads, true it is not enough fast enough though.
With our current whitehouse administration you will not see any changes for the good with the EPA, our president is anti-environment.
There is an alternative to salt for freezing roads. It's citrus based and is applied before a storm comes. It melts the snow as it hits the ground. However it's only good for a few inches. But it would greatly reduce the amount of salt used here in the north on roads. Otherwise, I do like having safe road conditions travelling to and from work. Anyway, the reason I posted this was because I wanted to get an idea of what the community thought of these projects. Not too surprisingly, very few brand name outfitters donate money to endangered species projects and donate a very large amount to parks and trails services. I just wanted to see if that same philosophy was reflected in the hiker community.
Or, if you truly were interested, create a poll.
How many more of our soldiers must die in Iraq?
Population and sprawl.
Otherwise the "Trail community" is basically good for "we're not here for that" or "that's off-topic" when serious Trail issues arise. In general the Trail community is satisfied with self-interested fluff as their average input, or keeping the AT mainly about hiking. Truth is there's very little true "Trail community"...
To keep some perspective on this issue...
Never forget that over 99% of species that have ever lived have gone extinct. By far the bulk of those occurred before humans evolved. For example, 50% of extinctions occurred at the end of the Permian, over 200 years before humans evolved.
Also, even if many extinctions that humans cause or exacerbate are due to land taken for human use, I have yet to hear of a tree-hugger that has volunteered to never sleep under a roof again the rest of his life, so as to do his part to reduce the demand for land taken to be used as dwellings. Said tree-hugger should also refuse to patronize any business location that involves a permanent building as well, I'd say, presuming sincerity for the first time on the part of an environut.
But the Trail was created by "environuts"!
I think you have that backwards. It should read " I've never seen those so opposed to conservation and preserving the AT ever stay off the Trail or refuse to venture into a woodland preserved by "environuts"...
Ah. Minnesota, your logic totally escapes me. Of course, human habitations occasionally impinge on land needed to keep an extinction from happening. But what is your basis for thinking that therefore humans opposed to causing other species to become extinct should "never sleep under a roof again the rest of his life."
Aside from logic, simple facts suggest this is nonsense. Bald eagles were down to a handful of nonbreeding pairs a few decades ago in Maine. Now my town alone has more productive nests than the entire state had in 1970.
All this was accomplished without razing a single home. Rather, humans had merely to refrain from doing those things that had caused the near extinction, and those things that might have slowed restoration. My house, by happenstance is a quarter mile from a productive eagle family. How would I have furthered this restoration of healthy eagle populations by not sleeping in my house?
Weary
You also forget to mention what caused those extinctions. Fire, floods, ice and meteorites. There has been evience of extinction through intraspecific competition and it usually occurs at a faster rate on islands, but never on the levels that humans have caused from private ownership. It has nothing to do with hugging trees, it has to do with sharing land.
Okay, it looks like I need to state my POV a bit more directly...
When a human cuts down a tree (or 20 trees) to make room for building a house on that bit of land, that tree is no longer available for squirrels to climb to escape predators (or to nest in or get nuts from), for birds to rest/nest in/eat bugs that live on them, etc. That's undeniable, the way it goes if humans are to survive, and not something I have that big a problem with. Now, I don't support zillion-square-foot houses. Nor do I support uncontrolled population growth, especially of those groups who are least likely to be responsible land stewards (e.g., nonWesterners). Too, if someone wanted to keep the number of households to a minimum given a particular population, then doing something about one of the largest causes of increasing numbers of households (and thus # of wildlife-displacing dwellings) in the U.S. would seem in order. That would mean that a knowledgeable nonhypocritical environmentalist would favor severely reducing the frequency of divorce. However, as most radical envirotypes I've known seem to be in favor of universal at-will no-fault divorce, either or both of hypocrisy or lack of relevant knowledge seems usual among treehuggers.
Another example of this lack of sincerity/informedness among envirotypes:
The current absolute single best practical partial replacement for electricity generation (currently done mostly by burning fossil fuels, especially coal) is nuclear fission plants. Any sincere and adequately informed TH who was seriously concerned about greenhouse gas production would thus be a proponent of keeping current fission plants open and rapidly building many more ASAP. Since virtually all THs are against such policies, I figure they are either ignorant or evil. Ignorance means they don't have enough science background to know this fact about electrical generation options (and thus are not yet entitled to an opinion). Evil would come from figuring that the environuts against nuclear power expansion knowingly favor societal decisions that would make it impossible for many of the people currently alive to continue living; if knowingly favoring mass murder of productive nonthreatening fellow citizens isn't evil, I don't know what could qualify.
Last thought here on extinction of species... Species can be thought of as generally following the same lifecycle as religions. They pop up, hang around a while (usually an average of about 2 m.y. for species, but obviously a much shorter mean for human religions), and whiff. Either way, unless it is YOUR species or religion that is naturally dying off, it's a natural thing, and not something to generally get that agitated about.
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