SOME JIM BEERS COLUMNS

NATIVE ECOSYSTEMS & OTHER LIES

What is the “native ecosystem” of central Africa? Is it the forests grazed and trampled to destruction by overpopulations of elephants? Is it the bush around villages or towns that have been in place for eons? Is it the imagined plant and animal mix before Arab slave traders or conquerors from far off massacred and enslaved “native” populations? What about our UN “partners” in forcing Asians and South Americans to “preserve” “their native ecosystems?” Is Germanys’ “native ecosystem” dated before the Nazis? Before the Romans? Before the Cro-Magnons? Is England’s “native ecosystem” dated before the Battle of Hastings? Before the Roman occupation? Before the druids? Why are any of these dates or any particular mix of plants and animals worthy of note?

Plants and animals have been invading new (and often for some of them, old) habitats since time began. Plants and animals have been disappearing from habitats for almost as long. Weather, rainfall, snowfall, fire, predators, elimination of a food source, opportunity in the form of a floating log or a windstorm, and other reasons too long to mention account for these changes. In recent (geologically) times, human activities such as farming, hunting, migration, villages, ships, trade, roads, fire, domestications, and another list too long to mention introduced and diminished untold plant and animal communities. North America’s environmental changes over the past 20,000 years are spectacular and some of the most extreme known, because when the prodigious changes of the past 500 years occurred, advanced European science and record-keeping ably recorded the changes....

WHOSE HABITAT?

Ever notice how often press releases, media commentators, nature writers, and environmental programs refer to how “we” are destroying or occupying or fragmenting “their” (wolves, cougars, elephants, leopards, and a list too long to include here) habitat. The old saw usually goes “increasing human populations”, “increasing development”, “increasing roads”, “increasing recreation”, and a whole host of human-oriented “increases” are “destroying habitat”, “increasing conflicts with (put your favorite critter here)”, “destroying the ecosystem”, and another long list too big to include here. Nonsense.

Is New York City a despoiled habitat? Is Yellowstone? Is North Dakota? How about Texas or the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio? Do condos destroy habitat? Does ranching or logging? Do wolves belong in my backyard or does a golden retriever? Are Africans entitled to surroundings wherein their children are not eaten by leopards or crocodiles? How about African farmers are they entitled to grow crops free of marauding elephants like Nebraskans grow corn free of marauding buffalo? These questions represent human values and a human society that strives to manage its environment for human good....

HUNTED AND TRAPPED

I have lost count of the propaganda press releases that have crossed my desk in the past 12 months referring to the carnage wrought by hunting and trapping. “Wolves were hunted and trapped until they were extinct in the west.” “Cougars were hunted and trapped until they were extinct everywhere except the west.” “Wolverines were hunted and trapped into extinction in the west.” Lynx were hunted and trapped into near extinction throughout the northern states.” “Buffalo were hunted to extinction throughout the US.” Will saying these things 50 times or reading them 100 times make them true? The answer is NO!

If no European settler (native Americans are never credited with killing “too many” of anything) ever hunted a buffalo there wouldn’t be one more buffalo than there are today. Why? Because when increasing numbers of settlers began farms and began grazing cattle and towns cropped up everywhere, there was no room left for buffalo. They ate forage needed for cattle, they knocked down fences, they trampled crops and gardens, they endangered rural children and old folks by stampeding, they tore up roads, and were simply out of place on lands intended by us to raise families, crops, and an American society. The buffalo had to go....

THE SLIPPERY SLOPE

A nation founded on individual freedoms and guaranteed rights is not a society where powerful interests should be able to deny freedoms and eliminate traditional rights. However that is not only happening routinely today, it has steadily increased in frequency for many years. In spite of a Constitution that designates and limits the powers and responsibilities of state and Federal government, environmental and animal rights interests have been successful in transferring state authorities to the Federal government and using those contrived authorities to transform the country into a socialist dictatorship in these matters.

How did we come to accept Federal wolves for which the Federal government is not responsible when they destroy private property; unmanaged whales and seals that depress already depressed commercial fisheries; increasingly vast unmanaged Federal lands that are inaccessible, unproductive fire hazards; invented Federal authority over animal testing and dog breeding; Federal proposals to ban trapping, ban bear baiting, ban hunting with dogs, restore “Pre-Columbian ecosystems”, eradicate “Invasive Species”, finance “non-game species”, register pet owners, and on and on?....

TAKING

“Taking” is all of these things, and more. The government takes from you when they condemn your land for a road. They take from landowners when they declare “viewsheds” and “corridors” around Parks and Refuges that restrict land use. They take from all of us when National Parks close state roads. They take from you when they forcibly introduce wolves that then kill your livestock, your pets, and the big game herds that you hunt. They take your property when they declare Critical Habitat or the presence of an Endangered Species on your property and you can no longer log, mow, build a home, burn, plant, graze, run dogs, hunt, fish, boat, etc. on your property. Property owners are increasingly “agitated and distressed” by the increase in magnitude and occasions of such takings. Government bureaucrats are “captivated” and “pleased” as they increasingly take from citizens. The increasing success of “taking” private property by bureaucrats, environmental radicals, animal rights activists, and politicians is clearly “infectious” and “contagious.” Of all the examples cited, in only the first (roads) are property owners paid or compensated for the property taken by government.

The Founding Fathers knew their history. For hundreds of years Kings, barons, and Parliaments “took” property on a whim and generally for their own profit. Whether it was monasteries transferred to political allies, rural landscapes and rivers reserved for the powerful rulers pleasure, Scotch and Irish land clearances, weapons confiscated, sons taken for war or daughters taken for the powerful, or homes destroyed for the “viewsheds” of the rich; “Taking” by government was a danger to be avoided at all costs. Therefore, the 5th Amendment to the US Constitution (smack dab in the middle of what we call “The Bill of Rights”) concludes, (No person shall…)”be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” There is nothing about good causes or the environment or some group of critters being exceptions to the obligation of the government to pay “just compensation” when they take property. The perverse current definition of public use ought to also be considered in this Constitutional light....