Global Warming Zombies

Sometime when we all weren’t paying attention, a lot of the folks in this country became zombies. It’s frightening, but true. We are surrounded by people whose minds have been stolen, their powers of observation and judgment replaced. But it isn’t voodoo, folks - what we have here is 1984, just a few years late.

Uh oh - I may have to explain about that 1984 reference for those who are maybe younger than me or who maybe haven’t quite the same reading experience as I’ve had. 1984 is the title of a book written by George Orwell that takes place the year 1984, and is about a civil servant whose work consists of falsifying records and political literature. His job is one small part of the government mechanism for maintaining control of the population. 1984 is where the term “Big Brother” came from.

1984’s mind control comes about through propaganda (spin doctoring in today’s terminology - the twisting of language so that words do not describe truth but sound like the truth), regulation of society through legislation of behavior to undermine the rights of the individual. Invasive surveillance is used to insure compliance.

With just a few substitutions, that could be a description of what’s going on in the United States today.

But back to zombies. A zombie is a creature displaying all the apparent signs of consciousness, but without actual consciousness of its own. Traditionally, zombies are corpses brought back to life, but the term is also used to describe a person whose thought processes are controlled by someone else - traditionally, that would be your evil voodoo guy, or, like in 1984, Big Brother.

How do I know that so many friends and neighbors, from the grocery store clerk to our legislators and everyone in between have become zombies? It’s simple. How many of you believe in global warming - raise your hands. OK, everyone - look around. See all those raised hands? Those will be your zombies. Those will be the people that spew out the Big Brother environmental drivel in spite of what they see and feel for themselves, like how darned cold it was last month. These are people who ignore data like last month’s reports across the world of unseasonable snow and plummeting temperatures and record snowfalls. Here in the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month of October, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

Global warming? Have these people stepped outside lately? Would they consider keeping their own records and paying more attention to them than to talking heads on TV? The highest temperature recorded in Phoenix - 122° - was recorded 18 years ago, not last year. In fact, the hottest recorded temperature on earth was way back in 1922 (136° in Mali). In January 2008, the Boston Globe reported that the winter 2007 was one the coldest ever recorded in South America, with snow in Buenos Aires for the first time in 89 years and hundreds of people dying of cold in Peru. Snow in South Africa! Record breaking cold in Australia! And the Globe even said “For nearly a decade now, there has been no global warming”.

Enquiring minds want to know: How do you cure a zombie? How do you get people to think with their own minds, not parrot sound bytes? If Big Brother takes over the country and the planet, what will the people do who invested in shorts and tank tops when they really need mukluks and parkas? And if the zombies all freeze to death, what will Big Brother’s next step be to control the rest of us?

Whining - the New National Pastime

I have a confession to make. I’m not a Greenie. Nowadays that makes me the bad guy, because Green has become the new banner and badge of being part of the politically correct crowd.

I’ve been giving some thought lately to the fact that we have a society run by youngsters (this is because as I age, I find so many in office to be younger than I am), yet we have a population the median age of which is growing older and older.

Used to be that people respected age - being an “elder” meant having wisdom that younger people valued. Over the years that has changed; our older folks have not been considered founts of wisdom or valued parts of family and society for a long time. Rather, older folks are stuffed into retirement homes and assisted living facilities soon as they have no money left to support the younger generations that can’t (or won’t) get jobs to support themselves.

Aha, you say - the reason no one pays attention to elder wisdom is because older folks’ minds wander off the topic - but not so! Bear with me a bit longer.

The reason older folks are founts of wisdom, even though some of us are dumber than doorposts, is that we have experienced more. This is so simple concept as to be profound. No matter how smart you are, how educated you are, how technologically facile you are, if you’re young, you cannot have experienced as much as someone who has lived longer. It’s a matter of sheer numbers, quantity of time. You can never really know what can be known at 50, 60 or 70 or older until you’ve lived 50, 60 or 70 or more years. You can never apply the experience of time until you’ve experienced the time. And you cannot possibly begin to comprehend what we old folks know as we view life from the perspective of just having lived longer.

“Bail me out, save me!” is what I’m seeing everywhere nowadays. I see lots of this whining going on, and see few solutions offered that encompass the big picture. I see this as a result of inexperience (i.e., young folks’ reaction) because we’re all here on the same planet and ultimately there is no one to bail us out or save us other than ourselves. That’s something it just takes time to learn.

Let me pick on the Greens as an example. Go to any petition website these days and it’ll be Green. What is a petition? It’s a bunch of names of people who’d rather whine about a problem than roll up their sleeves and do something directly. That’s whining, in my opinion, I don’t care how noble the label.

Or look at proposed (and, more scary, passed) legislation that “fixes” things by imposing more rules and regulations in our lives, legislation which takes away personal responsibility and substitutes government responsibility. Being bailed out ends up with giving up our rights and making us dependant - like children.

Whining happens because the people who are doing it don’t have any real answers. They feel the pressure, the pain of the situation, but they don’t know how to effectively make it go away. Like children, they don’t know how to fix things properly because they just don’t have the tools, the experience and perspective to see the whole picture. In other words, they don’t go to their founts of wisdom for answers: to the old folks, their elders.

We older folks pretty much don’t qualify as real Greenies because we’re not young enough to have tunnel vision any more, we can’t see things as black and white so easily. Life has taught us painful lesson by painful lesson how unrealistic that is. We older folks - at least those of us who have moved beyond the flower power years - have been around long enough to know first hand that everything is connected to everything, and that disenfranchising anyone or disallowing anything isn’t going to solve any problems. Tunnel vision isn’t wrong, it’s just so very limited as to throw everything out of kilter when acted on.

The innocent ignorance of tunnel vision is not going to go away, so it’s up to us old folks to fix things - if only we ourselves would pay attention to our own elders. Answers for today’s problems won’t be Green, won’t even necessarily be in what we know ourselves here at this time today. The big answers for the questions facing humanity and for the planet are going to be found in the wisdom of the ages, of our own elders. I don’t think they will be Green.

What's the real crisis?

Today's NY Times Headlines:
As Oil Giants Lose Influence, Supply Drops
By JAD MOUAWAD
It is harder than ever for the major Western oil companies to find new prospects, even though they are awash in profits and eager to expand.

Excuse me? Awash in profits? Am I the only person who is outraged by this?

Yes, we need to come up with energy sources, and I for one want to see it come from renewable resources. That's something that should have been started in earnest 40 years ago when we had another "fuel crisis", but NOOOOO - the US government did not support alternatives to fossil fuels (petroleum) - and from what I heard, research in to fuel alternatives was pretty much squashed.

So here we are again with another crisis - actually, we have two: one energy and one economic.

The economic crisis is looking pretty artificial to me. There may be some sort of slowing of oil production, but the economic problems we are experience are actually caused by opportunistic taking of profits from raised prices based on... fear.

The US government supports this fear by supporting everyone in the oil food chain making massive profits on the the backs of us poor schmucks down here in the real world. And worse, the US government itself is making more and more tax dollars on the price gouging at the oil pump - for every jump in price at the pumps, there is an associated jump in the tax on each gallon.

No one in the chain except we peons at the bottom has any incentive whatsoever to fix anything.

This has all been nicely engineered, don't you think? First weaken the voting population by eroding individual freedom using the fear factor (been to an airport lately?). Then the sucker punch of the "fuel crisis". Throw in some toxic food scares and some global warming threats to keep us all soft. Use environmental litigation to stop any possibility of fixing any of this, even while dangling the hope of alternative (cheap) energy that will never come because there is no incentive to fix anything when everyone but the peons are making so much money. You see where this is going?

It's going to just get worse.

None of this was inevitable. All of this could have been prevented. You want some improvement? Just say NO to politics and start doing what needs to be doing yourself. Find out who's researching alternative energy and support them. Use that technology. Become a locavore (eat locally grown foods). Don't buy into mass media advertising.

And for heaven's sake, pay attention to the real crisis: the gullibility of we peons. The real crisis will end when we stop listening to what people say and start paying attention to what people do.

Fed up with Mexican wolves?

Be sure to attend the "Can't Take It Any More" meeting in Reserve NM on Wednesday July 9, 10 a.m. at the Reserve Community Center. If you can't take it any more, then get together with like-minded folks and stop taking it.

Contact Bill Aymar, Catron County Manager 575 533-6123 or ccmanager@gilanet.com

Is there a scientist in the house?

So today another news release is put out by "environmental" (litigation) groups. WildEarth Guardians - that's a new one. These litigation groups keep combining and recombining (like viruses) so they can have more corporate names to file more litigation.

But that's not the point of this post. The point is how long these people think the population is going to remain gullible. I mean, really - the news release says that a recent poll "shows overwhelming support for Mexican gray wolves among Southwest voters". Overwhelming? Really? 500 people who don't even live in or near the area in question? This is relevant... how?

The news release - and much of the propaganda by these litigation groups - strongly implies that the reason Mexican wolves aren't doing well in the project area is because of illegal killings and legal predator control. And the science behind this idea is where?

What studies have been done that show that wolves would otherwise be thriving if it wasn’t for "poaching"? Come on - everywhere else we've got predators that are breeding like crazy. Gray wolves are doing that in Yellowstone. Isn't it just possible that the real reason that Mexican wolves aren't thriving in Arizona and New Mexico is because... they aren't really native to the area, and they just aren't suited to it?

Science, please! For once can't we have facts and truth about Mexican wolves?

PS - be sure to attend the "Can't Take It Any More" meeting in Reserve NM on Wednesday July 9. If you can't take it any more, then get together with like-minded folks and stop taking it. Contact Bill Aymar, Catron County Manager 575 533-6123 or ccmanager@gilanet.com

Chilling facts on global warming

While it seems everyone knows that the planet is warming, few acknowledge what's really going on. How egocentric and narcissistic humans are, to assume that a few generations of human history tells the story of a planet. Decades and even centuries are not enough to determine anything about global climate change. Look at any records of global (planetary) history and you will see that we are in a natural temperature spike which has occurred before (without human help) and will occur again - approximately every 100-150 thousand years apart.

We are in a naturally occurring peak period of warmth on this planet at this time - but the vacation is about to end. In fact, what we humans are about to experience, and likely sooner than later, is global cooling. And believe me, global cooling is much scarier than global warming.

Over the millennia planetary temperatures are generally much colder than now. Even today, in the peak years of natural global warming, thousands of people on this planet die from the cold each year. You want a crisis? You’ll be seeing one - from cold - possibly in your lifetime. You want to do something about it? Well, humans aren’t going to change what’s to come, but we humans can prepare.

Get the facts about the big view, not the microscopic one of our own short human lifetimes. Consider what it will take for human life and achievement to continue when most of the planet is covered by ice. And you might as well enjoy this warm weather while you’ve got it.


Global chilling (facts and figures about global warming)

Your DNA - now online

Your DNA will soon be coming to the internet. Your family’s medical information, racial information, and everything else that your DNA reveals about you will now be public information, thanks to a new law that President Bush has signed. Our president has ordered that within no more than six months a "national contingency plan" will be created to take a sample of newborns' DNA, and publish the information on the web. This is supposedly in case of a "public health emergency."

Unless you’ve adopted your children, their DNA is your DNA, it’s your siblings’ DNA, your parents’ DNA. It is who you are in every physical way.

It’s true the government will likely not publish individuals’ data - but how much do you trust that that your personal DNA data won’t somehow be available to a hacker, to insurance companies, to anyone who really wants to see it? Did you give permission for this information to be taken from your child, for this information about you and your family to become public?

And if that’s not bad enough, don’t you think that every terrorist who is working day and night to create bio-weapons is thanking our president for his help in providing a national database for research via the internet?

Environmentalists or terrorists?

A bunch more “environmental” (litigation) groups are using the US court system to force the US Fish & Wildlife Service to bend to “environmentalist” agendas - and to heck with science and fact.

The Mexican wolf program is a bogus program, based on false premises. Mexican wolves come from the low desert. They never lived here in the "Mexican wolf recovery area". This area is high-altitude mixed-conifer forest, not low desert. Mogollon wolves lived here, not Mexican wolves. Go ahead - ask US FWS - they’ll tell you that the Mexican wolf recovery area is the extreme fringe of the historical Mexican wolf territory, not where they preferred to live.

So what is going on with these groups that are filing the lawsuits? The truth is that they know the above facts. The truth is that they are not really interested in saving the environment. Some of these groups are open about what they want - they want to get people out of the National Forests (don’t believe me? Check out their websites). They’ll use any means they can to achieve their goals, even if it means lying to not only the public and the US court system, but to their financial supporters - who trust them and who believe in sending money to these groups they are doing a good thing for the environment.

“Environmental” groups such as the ones suing US FWS are elitists who don't care what the cost of achieving their goals is to the public, to the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and to the individuals who live here. In forcing the relocation of a non-native species to an area that species historically did not inhabit, “environmentalists” are twisting the purpose of the ESA and using the court system inappropriately to force the government and the public to do what the groups want.

What this amounts to is the use of the judicial and legislative functions of this country to achieve their own private ends. How is this different from subversion and anti-American actions? How does this differ from what any external terrorist group wants to achieve?

I say send the Mexican wolves back to Mexico, where they came from, and expose these anti-US groups for what they are: terrorists masquerading as environmentalists.

Climate change article by David Archibald

Solar Cycle 24: Implications for the United States
Archibald, David. 2008. Solar Cycle 24: Implications for the United States. International Conference on Climate Change March, 2008.
Full text [here]
Selected excerpts:
Do we live in a special time in which the laws of physics and nature are suspended? No, we do not. Can we expect relationships between the Sun’s activity and climate, that we can see in data going back several hundred years, to continue for at least another 20 years? With absolute certainty.
In this presentation, I will demonstrate that the Sun drives climate, and use that demonstrated relationship to predict the Earth’s climate to 2030. It is a prediction that differs from most in the public domain. It is a prediction of imminent cooling.
To put the solar – climate relationship in context, we will begin by looking at the recent temperature record, and then go further back in time. Then we will examine the role of the Sun in changing climate, and following that the contribution of anthropogenic warming from carbon dioxide.
I will show that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is not even a little bit bad. It is wholly beneficial. The more carbon dioxide we can put into the atmosphere, the better the planet will be – for humans, and all other living things. …
To reconstruct climate prior to thermometer records, isotope ratios and tree ring widths are used. This graph shows the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age. The peak of the Medieval Warm Period was 2° warmer than today and the Little Ice Age 2° colder at its worst. The total range is 4° centigrade. The warming over the 20th century was 0.6 degrees by comparison. This recent warming has melted ice on some high passes in the Swiss Alps, uncovering artifacts from the Medieval Warm Period and the prior Roman Warm Period. …
It was warmer again not long after the last ice age ended. Sea level was 2 metres than it is today. Since the Holocene Optimum about eight thousand years ago, we been in long term temperature decline at about 0.25 degrees per thousand years.
When I asked at the beginning of this presentation if we lived in a special time, well that is true in relation to the last three million years. The special time we live in is called an interglacial. Normally, and that is 90% of the time, the spot I am standing on is covered by several thousand feet of ice. Relative to the last four interglacials, we may be somewhere near the end of the current interglacial. The end of the Holocene will be a brutal time for humanity. …
The Holocene, the period we are in now, is tracking along with three of the four previous interglacials. Of those three, if the Holocene ends up being like the Eemian, then we may have up to 3,000 years of Little Ice Age-like conditions before we plunge into the next glacial period. If not, then the plunge could start any time now. …The evidence from the Hanover solar cycle length to temperature relationship, and that of the other cities in this presentation, is incontrovertible. There will be a significant cooling very soon.
Our generation has known a warm, giving Sun, but the next generation will suffer a Sun that is less giving, and the Earth will be less fruitful. …
The big consequence of this is that it will shrink the growing season. The 2.2 degree decline I am predicting will take two weeks off the growing season at both ends. Next decade will not be a good time to be a Canadian wheat farmer. For farmers further south, farm production will decline but that production will be worth a considerable amount more.
“The surprising result of these long-range predictions is a rapid decline in solar activity, starting with cycle #24. If this trend continues, we may see the Sun heading towards a “Maunder”type of solar activity minimum -an extensive period of reduced levels of solar activity.” — K.H.Schattenand W.K.Tobiska, 34th Solar Physics Division Meeting, June 2003, American Astronomical Society…
Can global warming from increased atmospheric carbon dioxide save us from a collapse in mid-latitude agricultural production? Not at all. …
In a world of higher atmospheric carbon dioxide, crops will use less water per unit of carbon dioxide uptake, and thus the productivity of semi-arid lands will increase the most.
It’s not all good news. We will need this increase in agricultural productivity to offset the colder weather coming.
AGW Proponents are Exactly Wrong
1.The Earth is getting colder and this will accelerate.
2.Carbon dioxide has a minuscule warming effect.
3.Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide will increase agricultural productivity.
4.The ideal atmospheric carbon dioxide level is a minimum of 1,000 ppm
What I have shown in this presentation is that carbon dioxide is largely irrelevant to the Earth’s climate. The carbon dioxide that Mankind will put into the atmosphere over the next few hundred years will offset a couple of millenia of post-Holocene Optimum cooling before we plunge into the next ice age. There are no deleterious consequences of higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are wholly beneficial.
Implications for the United States
1.The climate-driven reduction in agricultural production should be planned for.
2.Coal-fired power generation should be increased.
3.Coal to liquid fuels capacity should be installed.
Stopping coal-fired power generation due to carbon dioxide emissions is exactly wrong in science. The more carbon dioxide you put into the atmosphere, the more you are helping all living things on the planet and of course that makes you a better person.

545 PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE FOR AMERICA’S WOES

BY CHARLEY REESE

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits? Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don’t propose a federal budget. The president does. You and I don’t have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does. You and I don’t write the tax code. Congress does. You and I don’t set fiscal policy. Congress does. You and I don’t control monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices - 545 human beings out of the 300 million - are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered but private central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman or a president to do one cotton- picking thing. I don’t care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it.

No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator’s responsibility to determine how he votes.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a SPEAKER, who stood up and criticized G.W. Bush ALONE for creating deficits.

The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it. The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes.
Who is the speaker of the House? She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow Democrats, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted — by present facts - of incompetence and irresponsibility.
I can’t think of a single domestic problem, from an unfair tax code to defense overruns, that is not traceable directly to those 545 people.

When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it’s because they want it unfair. If the budget is in the red, it’s because they want it in the red. If the Marines are in IRAQ, it’s because they want them in IRAQ.

There are no insoluble government problems. Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power.

Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exist disembodied mystical forces like “the economy,” “inflation” or “politics” that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible. They, and they alone, have the power. They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses - provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees. We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess.

Global warming: Who gains from the scare tactics?

"....we currently live in one of coldest moments in the history of the Earth. With the exception of the Permian Ice Age of 400 million years ago, and our own Ice Age currently 2 million years old, the Earth has always been warmer than now. Life evolved when it was warmer. Life florished when it was warmer. Life diminishes during Ice Ages." (quote from http://westinstenv.org/sosf/2008/01/24/mr-mensa-challenges-mike-on-global-cooling/)

Doesn't the above make you wonder about why global warming is being pushed so hard? As always, the answer to what's going on might well be found by following the money. Who gains from global warming scare tactics?

Water rights - protect them or go thirsty!

We have two attempts to get at our water here in Catron County - combined, they add up to sucking almost 18 billion gallons of water from our aquifers each year.

Protect your water rights - get your protest letter out so it is received no later than close of business, Monday Dec 17, in the Office of the State Engineer of New Mexico.

For instructions go to:

www.catroncounty.net/water

DON'T DELAY!

Email notification service

I have added an email notification service to this blog (top of upper right column) so you can receive notices by email when I post to this blog.

Re: [One Still Free] New comment on FW: Wolf-Proof Shelters Go Up for School Kids .

Jess: You are so right to point out that a good number of residents of Catron County live with the danger of habituated wolves every day of their lives. I think the pit bull analogy is right on. Many people know what it is like to be unable to sleep at night worrying about some problem over which you have little to no control - it could be pit bull packs, a health issue, your job at risk, drug dealers on your corner, serial rapists or killers. Whatever it is, you worry about it day and night and it affects the quality of your life.

It is no different here with the wolves. You lay awake at night, jumping at the least sound coming from outside, rushing out the door with a flashlight to see why the horses or other animals are restless. If your dog is late coming to breakfast, you start
figuring out how to tell the kids that it's never coming back. You have to make a decision as to whether it's safe to let your child walk to school by himself because the boss says you've got to start getting to work on time, so you can't take your child to school and keep your job, too. You go over your finances in your head endlessly, trying to figure out how many more calves you can lose before you can't stay in business any more.

And you read the fictions written by people who so want the wolf program to be the way they want it to be rather than the way it is that they dismiss all your concerns as fabrications and your stomach churns and churns.

I tell you what - if my child, my horse, my dog or my anything was harmed by a wolf, I'd sue the tar out of every single organization and individual who supports the rotten wolf program and who fights improvements that are based on reality, not fiction.

Global warming is over!

Just when you thought that we were all going to drown or fry because
of global warming... here's an interesting bit of info (facts!) about
the subject.

Global Temperatures are Uncorrelated with Carbon Dioxide Trends This
Last Decade, By Joseph D'Aleo, CCM

http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/global_temperatures_are_uncorrelated_with_carbon_dioxide_trends_this_last_d/

ICECAP (International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment
Project) is an excellent site for facts, not hype, about this
planet's climate. I recommend poking through it.

FW: Wolf-Proof Shelters Go Up for School Kids

Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity is quoted in an article in the Albququerque Journal by Rene Romo as saying that bus stop shelters built to protect Catron County children from the threat of wolves are a stunt "designed to get the sympathy of the public when the real concern is safety of their livestock."
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/state/266402nm12-02-07.htm

Has Mr. Robinson contacted the school in question to see how many of the children protected by the shelters are from livestock-owning families?  Has Mr. Romo bothered to do any research at all, or is he just writing for sensationalism, the safety of the children in question be damned?

It has always amazed me how willing people who don't live in the area in question are so fast to question the motives of those who are directly impacted by the wolf program, and to cast blame on the impacted people for the failure of the program.  Has it never occurred to anyone that if the program has not succeeded, the basic premises upon which the program is based may be faulty?  Let me remind the reader that the Mexican wolf is an experimental population, and the program is supposed to be adaptively managed - but is it?

Hardly.

Instead of a true scientific experiment in which the outcome is not pre-determined, what we have is a program whose outcome has been pre-determined and mightily defended by non-local, non-impacted groups.  Note that certain environmental groups who have most resisted adaptive management just happen to be associated with agendas which require the ousting of ranchers and others who live in and use the areas the groups have identified as "needing" to be wild, no matter that private lands and local economies are run over in the process (research "sky islands" and "rewilding" to see what groups are affiliated with the concept).  These groups use litigation, deceptive language and pseudo science to force their point of view, and somehow are accorded more credibility than the victims of this farce - the local residents - who are accused of falsehoods, as if they had some sort of weird willingness to lie about their children in order to protect livestock they have no financial interest in. 

We expect the sort of situation where programs and pogroms are forced on people to occur in countries where the citizens have no rights.  Yet here it is happening right in our own country.  Here we have eco-terrorism and unlawful taking of property and rights disguised as "environmentalism for the betterment of the planet".  What a sad situation when environmentalists would rather risk the lives of children than even admit there could be something to what we've been saying all along, down here in Mexican wolf country where you all don't live.

Wild Born Wolves Swept Under Rug by Program Managers

Catron County ranchers report livestock predations by known
(collared) wolf packs, yet they remove the wild born wolves that
don't kill cattle and aren't habituated to humans. If this isn't an
on-purpose strategy to destroy the local cattle industry, what is
it? It sure isn't a strategy to improve the Mexican wolf program here!

"Our ranchers get blamed for everything wrong with this program",
says Laura Schneberger President of the Gila Livestock Growers Association.

"The truth is if the agencies would do an adequate job this program
would be in better shape. When my members report un-collared wolves
on their places, these agencies don't investigate and refuse to
believe them. Instead of being rewarded for allowing this wild born
wolf and who knows how many other wolves onto the Adobe ranch, these
folks are being forced to live with a pack that is slaughtering their
herds and teaching wild born wolves to prey on cattle. It is an
unmitigated, disastrous and unfair situation"

Read more at

http://thewesterner.blogspot.com/2007/11/contact-laura-schneberger-575-772-5753.html

Mexican wolf video for CNN Republican debate

Check out the videos at Wolf Crossing

http://wolfcrossing.org/2007/11/25/wolfcrossingorg-youtube-republican-debate-video/

These were created for the CNN Republican debate. There's a long
version and a short one - the short is what was submitted, with the
question "Endangered Species Act: Where Do You Stand? Which Is More
Important: Human Rights or the Rights of an Endangered
Species?" The longer version has a bit more info, but you could only
submit a 30 second video.

Wolves: the natural order of things

One issue with looking at environmental issues is that people use
selective vision. For instance, humans are actually the highest
order in the food chain of all known life on earth, yet humans are
routinely not included as part of the natural environment, as if
humans were somehow unnatural, had been introduced here by aliens
from another galaxy. I personally can't go with such things as
"seeding" by aliens (to that I say, show me the science); humans are
necessarily a species which has survived and evolved on this planet
*just like every other species*.

To consider the wolf program without consideration of *all* other
species is faulty. Wolves have evolved in areas with humans in them,
humans have evolved in areas with wolves. Wolves have had, probably
as long as they have existed, one major natural enemy:
mankind. Humans have always been a factor in most wolves lives -
consider how true wild wolves (as opposed to habituated ones) are shy
of humans. This is a sign of a wolf's understanding of the risk
humans present, a healthy, natural thing for all predators and
potential prey.

In a healthy world, in the real natural order of things, wolves
respect humans best when wolves are hunted. This makes for a safer,
more healthy and more natural situation for all.

[This is in response to Mexican wolf update on Desert Rat's
blog:

http://arizonahuntingtoday.com/desertrat/2007/11/20/mexican-wolf-update-november/]

Thought control campaign - Mexican wolves

One thing that environmental groups still do (besides file lawsuits)
is create excellent propaganda. What's amazing to me is how most of
the media just accepts that baloney as truth. I guess reporters
today don't care about facts, they just repeat what they are fed by
anyone with enough money to do the feeding.

I just came across an article about the transfer of captive bred
Mexican wolves from the Cincinnati Zoo to a wolf preservation
facility in New York State by Jim Knippenberg. Here's a quote from
the article (Cincinnati Enquirer,

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071113/NEWS01/711130371/1035/LIFE):

"The Mexican gray, a subspecies of the gray wolf, is critically
endangered, reportedly down to only seven animals in the wild in the
early 1980s. The Mexican Wolf Recovery Program, an umbrella
organization that oversees conservation efforts in about 20 zoos and
preserves including Cincinnati, captured the seven, installed them in
controlled facilities and initiated breeding programs. Today, there
are 38-50 in the wild (in the high deserts of northern Mexico and
southern Arizona), 100 more in controlled facilities and several more
ready for release into the wild."

Now what's wrong with the above? First of all, the subspecies is NOT
currently critically endangered; there are hundreds in captivity and
probably close to another hundred in the wild in in the USA, plus who
know how many still in Mexico, where these wolves are from. There
were an unknown number of wild ones in Mexico and the USA in the
1980s, when seven were captured from Mexico and brought north into
the USA (two promptly died). There is no conclusive evidence that
lands north of the US/Mexico border were other than the extreme edge
of these wolves' native Mexican range. There is no more reason for
anyone to be excited about there being no Mexican wolves here in the
wild than it would be to be excited that there are no penguins here.

Next, there currently are 38-50 *collared* Mexican wolves in the wild
in central western New Mexico and eastern Arizona plus an unknown
number of uncollared wolves ( all descendents of those five surviving
wolves from 1980). This information is readily available in the form
of monthly reports online from US Fish & Wildlife (note that
uncollared wolves are only counted once a year, so very little is
known about the numbers). To my knowledge no one is counting wolves
in Mexico itself; maybe Mr. Knippenberg could provide some source for
that info.

Finally, the Mexican wolf program, which routinely handles wolves in
the program and exposes them to human sight, sound and smell (e.g.
zoo and other captive wolf facilities) is creating problem wolves,
ensuring that when they are released into the wild that these wolves
have no fear of humans (they become habituated to humans in
captivity). Hence in places like New Mexico and Arizona we see
increasing numbers of problems with wolves killing pets, stalking
humans and slaughtering livestock. What happens to these wolves with
no fear of humans? They are hazed, are shot with rubber bullets,
routinely and repeatedly trapped (with leg traps, a painful and
traumatic process) - this is the Mexican wolf program doing these
things by the way. Then the wolves are transported to captivity, fed
by humans (and given health exams, vaccinations, collars). They are
then often separated from pack members, released into new places in
the wild to have to relearn where the water is, the hunting is, and
to forge a new place in a new pack. To "help", the program often
temporarily feeds these wolves dumped into the wild meat made from
domestic animals (horses), so that the when they find a horse in a
corral, they know that they've found dinner - starting the cycle all
over again.

A wolf which is so habituated it was sleeping in people's yards and
urinating on vehicle wheels like the family dogs do, has been found
to have spent over one third of its life in captivity or other
proximity to humans - the poor thing was probably lonely for
humans. This is typical of the wolf program and what the program
creates is problem wolves, not wild wolves. Dumping captive raised
wolves into the wild isn't all that different from dumping pet dogs
alongside the road. I've never understood why PETA, of which I am
not a member has not looked carefully at this routine torture and
abuse of animals.

I'm sorry to have picked on Mr. Knippenberg, for he is just one of
many, but it is really starting to get irritating to read these
un-researched articles which purport to tell the truth but really
just perpetuate the propaganda machine of environmental
groups. People who actually care about wolves tell the truth. But
of course, there's no profit in that.