OPINION/COMMENTARY

Panthers and taxes: Tools of land-grabbers

The goals of the Wildlands Project are to convert "at least" half of the U.S. land area to wilderness, to manage "most" of the rest of the land for "conservation objectives," and to force people to live inside urban boundaries in what's euphemistically called "sustainable communities."

Although this bizarre plan has never been debated or adopted by Congress, it is being implemented in dozens of ways by governments at every level, through a variety of feel-good programs, all working toward the Wildlands Project goals.

Two of these programs are especially sinister: reintroduction of the "Florida panther" and taxing Tennessee air.

According to Jan Michael Jacobson, a Florida scientist who specializes in Everglades ecology, there is no such thing as a "Florida" panther. The cats being reintroduced into the Everglades were catnapped from Texas, where they are considered vermin and legally shot as pests. When the Fish and Wildlife Service brings them across the Florida border, they are dubbed "Florida" panthers and declared to be an endangered or threatened species entitled to legal protection.

Jacobson says these cats are known to prefer children in the 5-to-9-year-old range, but will eat pets, which are much easier to catch than wild prey. This fact must have guided the government agencies that deposited the panthers at the edge of the Everglades, between two campgrounds, one of which is designed for elementary school children...