Shibboleths

(Shibboleth, n. a test word or pet phrase of a party, sect, etc.)

This week's news reads like something from one of Stephen King's novels.
First, a 12', 600 lb alligator maimed and tried to eat a Florida drug-user
swimming nude in an alligator infested lake.  But for four very brave
Sheriff's Deputies the man would be dead today.  Second, a 2.5 Ton killer
whale almost drowned a handler in one of those water shows by dragging him
under water.  Third, a turkey flew into a Minnesota home on Thanksgiving
Day.  Fourth, a "series of sea lion attacks" in California ("a rogue sea
lion bit 14 swimmers this month", "10 more swimmers chased out of water",
one "bit a man" "on Manhattan Beach", sea lions "capsized a vintage 50-foot
yacht", and "a lifeguard was bitten three times while swimming") made the
news.

One would think that such news would cause us to question public opinion and
policies regarding the non-management and increasingly hallowed status of
animals being fed and constructed by animal rights and environmental lies
and propaganda.  Quite the opposite has been the case.  In fact, exactly
like Hitler blaming the Jews for everything and then setting fire to the
Reichstag to prove his cockamamie claims to skeptical Germans: we see the
clear evidence that contradicts the specious claims of environmentalism and
animal rights but then we nod like "bobble heads" as blatant ignorance and
propaganda claims flood the airwaves and newspapers and schools.

Here are but a few of the avalanche of shibboleths spewed forth about these
items in recent days.

1. Regarding sea lions, "Some scientists speculate that the animals'
aggressive behavior was prompted by eating fish contaminated by toxic algae
or by a shortage of food off the coast."

Fact:  Wild animals (squirrels, rabbits, foxes, cougars, wolves, etc.) get
more unpredictable and dangerous when they become familiar with and live
around unthreatening human habitation.  This is especially true where they
are fed or enjoy food and safety.  I learned this first from my grandmother
regarding squirrels in city parks or near her home.  If anyone believes this
"toxic algae" or "shortage of food stuff" I have a bridge in Brooklyn to
sell you.  "Shortage of food" is environmental/animal rights shorthand to
avoid the fact that there are WAY TOO MANY sea lions for the available food.
While Californians elect politicians to make more Marine Sanctuaries and to
close down more hunting and fishing, the increasing sea lion populations
decimate salmon, bite people, capsize boats, and pollute coastal waters and
harbors (think about all those seals and sea lions lounging around San
Francisco Bay and Monterey Bay, think about what they weigh, what they eat
and all that poop and urine) big-time.  The newspaper picture shows
"researchers" looking at 140+/- sea lions within 100 feet (they extend
beyond both sides of the picture) lounging on 12 6'x14' floating piers under
the caption "Sea lions strike back".  Pardon my anthropomorphism but "strike
back"?  Strike back for what?  They are treated better than cows in Hindu
India or cats at a New York City Cat Show!

2. More on Sea Lions - Sea lions "typically bite only if they feel
threatened or cornered".  "Researchers have described the most recent
attacks.as abnormal behavior".

Fact: There are more sea lions by far in and around west coast towns and
cities that at any time in the past century.  These "cute" marine mammals
have been "loved by all" ever since some were trained to balance balls on
their noses in circuses and to bark and clap their flippers when tossed a
fish.  They have been given "quasi-sacred" legal status in the US (along
with all those other "lovable" marine mammals) for 35 years since passage of
the ludicrous Marine Mammal Protection Act and the takeover of the UN and US
environmental agencies by environmental and animal rights activists.
"Studies" of these creatures (like all other wildlife) are backward glances
that postulate "laws" for the future.  Only thing is wildlife biology isn't
chemistry or physics; it is an ever-evolving scenario that varies greatly
from place to place and from circumstance to circumstance.  Using the last
35 years (as marine mammal populations exploded and all human use or
management was forbidden) to forecast the future is like predicting how
China or Iran will behave in the future based on the same sort of sophomoric
assumptions of the past 35 years.  Like the "shortage of food" nonsense is
meant to further marginalize fishing, and the "toxic algae" silliness is
meant to lard the need for more government bureaucracies to smash American
enterprise: so too is the "only when threatened" and "abnormal behavior"
academic claptrap meant to check any objections to continued non-management
of these highly destructive animals.

Further Fact - There are way TOO MANY seals and sea lions and other marine
mammals off our Pacific coast and off our Atlantic coast.  We can maintain
species and biodiversity best when we assure a BALANCE of prey and predators
concomitant with the abundance of those species that we want to eat.  Until
we accept the simple and straightforward notion that we can have and indeed
do have TOO MANY of this and that species, we and our children will remain
hostage to these environmental and animal rights social activists and their
radical agendas.  To paraphrase that American philosopher Forest Gump,
"abnormal is as abnormal does".

3. Regarding Killer Whales (and alligators and elephants and Rhode Island
vultures and New Jersey black bears too) the combination of a powerful
person proudly exhibiting ignorance and an environmental activist cleverly
serving as an echo board provides the richest barrage of banal platitudes
this writer has heard in a long time.

The O'Reilly program on Fox News on Thursday 30 November was a horror show
of propaganda clichés and environmental shibboleths worthy of an Animal
Rights Conference Banquet.  After waxing poetic about a video of the Killer
Whale dragging the "handler" around and under the pool and then mentioning
the alligator attack in Florida and then the turkey house-invasion in
Minnesota, Mr. O'Reilly wondered about some sort of revenge of the animals
or global warming effect or some unknown environmental effect of man's
presence.  He then asked his guest, an Irish animal author, what he thought.
This guy then proceeds to burble about how we are "encroaching on habitats".
How we are all "moving to the coasts". How there may just be "individual
situations" for some animals.  How there are virtually no known attacks on
men by Killer Whales. How "weather" is affecting animals and how "food is
becoming scarce".  Then O'Reilly shows some video of an elephant herd and
mentions that elephant attacks are increasing in Africa and how there is a
bear controversy about hunting bears in New Jersey (while off-handedly
mentioning that the Irish guy is opposed to hunting) and how lots of bears
may be OK "in Montana" but not in New Jersey.  Then he mentioned how some
couple moved from Rhode Island to Montana to get away from "all the vultures
in Rhode Island".  The guest then got to close this humbug segment.  His
observations should merit nomination to the Propaganda Hall of Fame.  He
went on about how "young elephants don't know how to behave because poachers
shoot all the adults".  Then he mentions that "vultures area a threatened
species". Then he alludes that "hunting" causes all other things to happen".

Fact:  I will try to keep this short though it would take pages to begin to
do this justice.

  1.. Animals have no sort of collective consciousness and do not and
cannot, either by species or locally, react to man.  They can and do adopt
varying behaviors based on changes in their numbers, changes in their
habitat, and changes in their interactions with other animals including man.
Our forefathers and foremothers understood for eons that all wild animals
can at one time or another clash with human interests and are to be regarded
cautiously.  Even domesticated animals can be unpredictable and dangerous.
That is why buffalo were eliminated from the Great Plains and wolves were
extirpated in the Lower 48.  For us to be sanctimonious to African villagers
about tolerating elephants or crocodiles near their homes and crops and
flocks is duplicitous to say the least.  For us now to tell American
ranchers that they must abandon their homes to wolves or that dog owners
must forego dog ownership because of cougars or bears or that Floridians
must endure alligators of great size everywhere in the state or that Midwest
farmers may have to move to reintroduce buffalo herds is not only
un-American, it is witless. 

  2.. Killer Whales are dangerous predators.  Those performing in tanks are
captured along the NW coast where they eat primarily salmon and are
therefore much more docile most of the time than their high seas cousins.
Those from the high seas and North Pacific eat seals and other whales and
their young (and any other worthy hunks of meat that make themselves
available) and there is a long tradition in N Pacific native culture about
men killed by Killer Whales.  Does anyone really believe that a lone native
in a kayak or on the edge of the ice (places where seals occur and lone men
are vulnerable) is REPORTED and verified as killed by a Killer Whale?
Today? Fifty years ago? One hundred years ago?  Like wolf kills of humans in
early America or Russia or Europe, such evidence is merely denounced by
animal rights activists who are then believed by the schools, newspapers,
and media mavens. Why doesn't Fox News cover the ongoing hidden efforts to
change the name of Killer Whales to Orcas?  Image is everything you know:
mustn't let the kids think these are anything but big cartoon characters.

  3.. Man has been "encroaching on habitat" for eons.  "Habitats" change and
man's needs change.  It is a credit to man (especially in the US) that we
express concern for maintaining species of plants and animals.  It is a
disgrace that we place any (much less all) plants and animals on a par with
and even above man and his needs.  It is ignorance of the first order to
believe that mandating no-use, no-management, and no-ownership of plants and
animals is either good for the plants and animals (it devalues them) or
appropriate for mankind worldwide.

  4.. Turkeys, like ruffed grouse and migrating songbirds, often (in the
fall especially) fly into and through windows.  A certain reflection at a
certain time of day with a certain sky or tree colors can make a window look
possible to fly through.  Instead of acting stupid about this, Fox News
ought to be questioning the claims that windmills for power (one of those
reasons given for not needing to drill in Alaska or off the coasts) don't
kill birds.  Those windmills are sited EXACTLY where the most wind blows.
Those are EXACTLY where birds have migrated for centuries.  If a bird can
fly into a window at certain times, why not into a giant whirling propeller?

  5.. Elephant "attacks" are up for the exact same reason that sea lion
attacks are up and cougar attacks are up and alligator attacks are up and
coyote attacks are up.  That is that there are TOO MANY of them and they are
in places THEY OUGHT NOT TO BE.  Whether it is a sea lion "bite" in
California surf or a coyote trying to kill a kid in a Cape Cod backyard or
an alligator killing women along a canal or a cougar killing joggers and
bikers along a path or a kid smashed lifeless as elephants wander through
Tanzanian crops and villages the problem and the solution are the same.
REDUCE THEIR NUMBERS AND KEEP THEM REDUCED: LIMIT THEIR DISTRIBUTION CONSISTENT WITH HUMAN NEEDS AND KEEP THEIR DISTRIBUTION WITHIN THOSE BOUNDS. 

It is really not rocket science.

  6.. Vultures are not, by any stretch of even the most rabid
environmentalist's imagination, "Threatened", either factually or legally.
In fact there are lots and lots of vultures and more now than at any time in
my lifetime (I'm 65).  Ever wonder why?  The absolute protection of Federal
law has, as with so many other species, resulted in TOO MANY.  This
protection has, as with so many other species, fostered a lack of fear of
men and the emergence of such formerly unobserved behavior as killing ewes
and lambs as the ewe gives birth in pastures in S Virginia. (These aren't
your Mom and Dad's vultures anymore.)  Then there is the other end of a
vulture food supply expansion.  As hunting and guns and trapping are more
and more proscribed, there are more furbearers and small game "Frisbees"
along the highways: a veritable vulture feast of annually reoccurring
incidence.  All in all things couldn't be better for vultures (just like the
overabundant cormorants but that is another story): "Threatened" indeed!

  7.. Last but not least there is the dark and sinister "effects of hunting"
alluded to by the "animal expert" and agreed to by the other half of this
chirping duet.  The "EFFECT OF HUNTING" (on sea lions, elephants, bears,
alligators, etc.) is to REDUCE THEIR NUMBERS; ESTABLISH THEIR DISTRIBUTION;
AND ADJUST THEIR BEHAVIOR TO AVOID, RATHER THAN THREATEN OR KILL HUMANS.

Additionally, hunting, trapping, and fishing generate income in the economy;
generate income to sustainably manage all animals for mans' benefit;
minimize the need for government control programs and therefore taxes and
regulations; provide human enjoyment and endless products of unique natures;
and last, but certainly not least give enduring VALUE to wildlife and its'
habitat that is the ultimate reason for its preservation.  In line with
this, the entire subject of population levels and distributions and controls
(how and by whom) of other species like vultures, hawks, cormorants and
other such heretofore sacrosanct species should be discussed openly and
honestly.  Killing animals and using animals should never have been made
unmentionable or something to be stopped.  It is the time tested and
appropriate solution to living with animals while providing for human
existence and human benefits and freedoms.

The next time one of these animal attacks occurs watch what is said and who
says it.  These shibboleths from the bowels of the environmental/animal
rights creed should not stand.  The level of ignorance here is appalling and
the level of opportunistic propagandizing and gullible acceptance of the
most blatant falsehoods is astounding.  It is almost like me going on TV and
claiming that the winds on Saturn are caused by nitrate eruptions and that
if you join my "Institute" we will lobby for expansion of NASA to make
flights to Saturn to get the nitrates to bring home and make detergent for
poor people to keep their clothes clean and thereby cut down on the risk of
infection for the rest of us.  (Think NASA wouldn't love the plug and even
hire some of "us"?  Think there aren't opportunistic politicians that wouldn't
"champion" our cause? What about the UN and voters concerned about
government doing things for the "poor", think we'd get their support?)
Sound absurd?  No more absurd than these shibboleths of the ignorant and
radical activists regarding animals and the environment over the past week.
Letting these assertions stand is a serious matter.  We should protest them
at every opportunity: to do otherwise only hastens the day when it is too
late to use words to fight the growing results of such words.

Jim Beers
1 December 2006

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