by Jim Beers
Newspapers have become mediums for disseminating environmental myths.
Let a
government employee or some "international" expert spout some
self-serving
myth to advance an unnoticed agenda and the newspapers treat it immediately
like an impending doom that only "experts" can avert. The
paper is then
quoted over dinner tables and lunch counters and clipped by teachers to pass
on to their young charges.
A recent article in the Washington Times reads, "Warming Arctic puts
polar
bears on thin ice". Per the article opener, "Polar bears are
facing slow
elimination over the next century as their vast frozen habitat melts
away".
"The 40 member panel of the polar bear specialist group of the World
Conservation Union" go on to tell us "summer ice could disappear
from the
Arctic Ocean by the end of the century" and "polar bears spend their
lives
stalking seals". They close with the obligatory urban legend that
"They
(sic, polar bears) are curious" and "Despite a mythic reputation for
ferociousness, they often act cautiously around other bears."
Like so many other modern myths, these environmental assertions shrivel when
the sunlight of facts strike them. There are both hidden facts and
hidden
agendas disguised here as "another environmental catastrophe that only
your
donation and more big government can solve." Like the Endangered
Species
Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Animal Welfare Act and the
Wilderness Act and proposed Invasive Species legislation, this is yet
another example of concocted issues and proposed solutions that do nothing
for the issue and generate a host of harms never mentioned originally.
FACT. If indeed warming trends continue for the foreseeable future, the
ability of 25,000 plus polar bears to adapt in reduced numbers is not only
possible but likely. From 500 AD to 1000 AD Vikings not only settled but
indeed grew berries and grapes and grains on the coast of Greenland.
During
this period according to Dr. Russell of Louisiana State Univ. writing in
1956, "Greenland voyages followed routes which would be impossible today,
across seas now regularly blocked by ice." These Viking Greenland
settlements had to be abandoned around 1100 AD because the climate was
getting so cold that they could no longer grow food.
What did polar bears do during this warm period? Hundreds of years of
little ice and warm weather must have been endured somehow. Were polar
bears "on the brink of extinction" for hundreds of years?
FACT. Seal numbers in the North Atlantic are higher than at any time in
recent memory. The same would be true of the seals in the Bering Sea if
very high populations of killer whales were managed to control their
depredations on both the seals and the sea otters they are now forced to
feed on. All of these mammals (polar bear, seals, sea otters, killer
whales) have been given total protection by the US Marine Mammal Protection
Act for nearly 40 years. Though the Act gives lip service to allowing
use
and management of marine mammals after they reach "optimum sustainable
populations", these mammals long ago passed both "optimum" and
"sustainable"
levels. They are not now, nor will they ever be, managed and used as
they
should be both legally and in accord with common sense. Their continuing
ravages on salmon and cod and African lobsters and abalone to mention but a
few of their impacts are facts.
If anyone was truly concerned about polar bears and their food, one look at
the precarious nature of seals due to their overpopulation and their impact
on both man's and their own food supply and the likelihood of an inevitable
population crash would lead a sincere biologist to recommend seal management
to cull the herds and maintain sustainable populations to, among other
things, assure a self-sustaining polar bear food supply.
Such management is only feasible by non-government hunters paying fees and
either using or selling the seals for various uses in open international
markets. The markets and the hunters and the management programs are exactly
what the Marine Mammal Protection Act was designed to eliminate and
succeeded in destroying.
FACT. Polar bears are very dangerous bears for humans to be around.
Their
"curiosity" may be noteworthy, but in the case of a wild bear
weighing half
a ton that is hardly an endearing trait. The fact that they may act
"cautiously" around other bears may be a cute anthropomorphism on
the
Discovery Channel special but it is meaningless when considering the current
and future interface of polar bear populations and northern settlements or
northern human activities. Bear/bear interaction is not the issue.
As with
grizzlies and wolves and cougars, there are places they should not be and
there are population levels they should not exceed.
FACT. Polar bear harvests of surplus animals have been both feasible and
desirable for decades. Anti-hunting organizations and both Federal and
"international" experts have opposed such harvests. Hunts
would have
generated income for native peoples, income for taxidermists, outfitters
and -most importantly- polar bear managers to monitor populations and trends
with real data and not just satellite monitoring.
Buried in the article is the recommendation that polar bears "should now
be
rated as vulnerable on an international 'red list' of threatened
species."
Translated this means no hunting by any entity would be allowed unless
permitted by the UN bureaucrats and the no-animal-use delegates that swarm
to the plush biennial UN CITES meetings at exotic locations where gout from
rich foods is a greater probability than anyone advocating any harvest of
any animal anywhere.
HIDDEN AGENDA. Global warming is woven throughout the article. The
fact
that this will continue and that we must all do whatever we must to stop it
and "save" polar bears is unquestioned and uncontested. Kids
will quote
this in school. Congressional staffers will mention it in meetings.
Bureaucrats and their Non-government "partners" will mention it
casually in
interviews and meetings. Nature show moderators will recount it in
dulcet
tones during shows about everything from the Arctic fox to the Antarctic
penguin.
Is global warming a fact? Is it amenable to any human action? Is
human
activity significant at all? Is it just what that mini-ice age or the
glaciers were, a natural change? Is it possible that a warm period may
be
very beneficial? How does anyone know if a temperature trend will
continue
for a decade, a century? If trends just continue why are we not still
walking around glaciers or continuing to get warm since 1100 AD? Is this
article part of the recent deluge (it is summertime, G-8 is meeting in
Scotland, Kyoto may be an election issue, a Supreme Court nomination is
pending, etc.) of global warming "warnings"?
HIDDEN AGENDA. Ever notice how bureaucrat biologists, environmental
extremists, and animal rights radicals are like Chicken Little running
around squawking about the sky falling while being helpless to stop it?
Look at the (non) success rate of the Endangered Species Act. Look at
the
environmental mayhem created by the Marine Mammal Protection Act and ask
your self what are they creating? Are they recovering spotted owls?
What
good (versus what horrendous harm) is being wrought by wolf introductions?
What wildlife management or forest management (other than buying and closing
more land) is being employed on government lands as Wilderness and Roadless
and Area and Use Closures proliferate? What solutions are possible other
than stopping human activity and eliminating more human freedoms? When
did
"command and control bureaucracy" replace "identify and
recommend government
employees"? The only answer we ever get to these problems is the
"need" to
spend more and how everything to date has been inadequate and how more
regulation and enforcement and government power over property and
individuals is necessary. Never do they actually describe problems and
what
they are going to do about them given their expertise and the resources
available.
In this vein the article concludes with "Although the group named climate
warming and the destruction of the ice habitat as the main threat to the
species, it also cited poaching in Russia and threats by contaminants as
other problems."
All this "protect everything" philosophy will eventually do away
with what
it purports to "save". Unmanaged populations of plants and
animals will
tend to experience "booms" and "busts" until one day the
"bust" goes so low
they disappear. Look at pre-Endangered Species Act and pre-UN
environments
and extinctions were not the result of "over" this and that
(hunting,
farming, human population, fishing, logging, grazing, etc.); they were the
result of "under" management (i.e. no concern because of a perceived
lack of
value).
Today with more knowledge and experience and more sophisticated tools we
scurry away from management and use like a Siberian peasant fleeing a wolf
in a snowstorm. As long as these thinly-veiled hidden agendas and half
truths are given legitimacy in newspapers, things will continue to get
worse. It's not rocket science and come to think of it, rocket science
is
explained much more honestly and understandably to the general public than
the simple need for polar bear management and use programs that assure
future polar bear populations.
Those who use and benefit from natural resources are the fiercest protectors
of those resources. Those who never use natural resources manipulate
them
for other agendas or support the total protection of such resources during
ephemeral periods of their lives when they are either affluent or
experiencing an urge to reform things that do not affect them.
Jim Beers
6 July 2005
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