Swan Song Or Environmental Swindle?

Living in Northwest Washington State in the United States, I get an annual chance to observe a quintessential example of the pop environmental movement’s approach to manipulating public perceptions of an environmental issue.

The opportunity comes because three of the state’s northwestern counties as well as portions of the lower British Columbia mainland near Vancouver provide the wintering grounds for several thousand Trumpeter Swans; North America’s largest waterfowl.  Each year, in my area of Washington, the birds can be seen stalking through the fields of the area, gobbling up goodies they find in the mud.

 Swans glean a Whatcom County seed potato field 

Grounds for the opportunity to create hysteria in the public mind are provided by the fact that each year 250 or so of the birds die while visiting the southern climes north of Seattle and south of Vancouver, B.C..

Trumpeters are pretty birds and we would all miss them were they to disappear, as they nearly did in the 1940s when only 69 birds were counted south of the Canada/U.S. border.  Today, nearly 4,000 come down to visit northwest Washington alone each year and the number grows.  A website run under the auspices of Washington State University’s Island County Extension office describes the birds, their annual migration and, in angst ridden verbiage, the threat to the swans lead pellets once fired from hunter’s shotguns represents.

First, the plight of the swans in the ‘40s is noted as well as the recovery, “Hunted to near extinction, by 1940 there were only 69 swans south of the US-Canada border, with a small population discovered in Alaska.  Over the past half-century, through many conservation efforts these splendid swans are slowly recovering and re-occupying areas they have not been found in for decades.  Today, the Alaska population is approximately 13,000 swans.”

The recovery of the swans over the years, both in northwest Washington and in other areas of the nation is impressive, a recovery everyone should be proud of; but then we get to the overstatement necessary to garner continuing financial and other support for the various activist groups, bureaucracies and others making a living off the swans.

Notice how large Trumpeter Swans are compared to the Canada Geese in the background, large birds in their own right

A Swan Lead Poisoning Information Sheet is cited to demonstrate that “Since 1999, Trumpeter and Tundra Swans wintering in northwestern Washington and southwestern British Columbia have experienced high rates of mortality. Most of the mortalities have been due to the ingestion of lead shot pellets.”

The analysis contained in the document claims, in fact, that 77% of swan deaths each year are “lead related.”

So now we get to the crux of the issue.  We have a population of good looking wild animals once driven into near extinction and, according to the material put forward each year by means of websites like the Washington State University Extension Service, the Trumpeter Swan Society and others is now threatened by a man made problem, lead shot in the soil the animals pick through as they find food through the winter season: a perfect situation demanding fund raising efforts, grants, involvement by state and federal bureaucracies and an annual public information campaign regarding the implied crisis.

Here’s the problem.  Trumpeter swans can live to the ripe old age of 20 – 30 years.  Assume for purposes of calculation a 25 year lifespan on average.  That would mean that under any circumstance, if every bird lived to be 20 – 30 years old, about 4% of the animals would have to die every year of plain old age.

But, of course, in the world of wild animals, or tame ones for that matter, predation, disease and other factors lead to premature death.

Based on the studies cited it is difficult to tell how many of the birds out of which populations actually die each year as the figures put forward mix populations but, based on the Washington State website the number of birds dying each year would not seem to be outlandishly outside the number of deaths to be expected as the result of simple old age and the stresses of having to live through the sometimes harsh conditions seen in even northwest Washington winters.

So, if the annual number of swan deaths is within an expected range when old age and natural factors are considered, how can 77% of the deaths be lead pellet related, especially since hunting with lead pellet loaded shells has been banned in most of the swan’s range for more than 20 years?

An associated question revolves around the fact that between 1940 and 1990 trumpeter swans made an extraordinary comeback in the lower 48 states in terms of winter populations.  Those were years when nearly all shotgun shells used by hunters contained lead shot.  If lead shot is threatening the swan population then how did the swans make such a comeback during those years?

The answer is found in the very study used by swan advocates to demonstrate a threat.  According to the Swan Lead Poisoning Information Sheet cited to incite concern, “The Pacific Trumpeter Swan population as a whole is not at risk because of the lead shot mortalities. Although an average of 285 swans have died annually in the Sumas-Whatcom County area since 1999, both the local winter population and the larger Pacific Coast Trumpeter Swan breeding population have continued to increase.”

Depressing news for those who need a crisis to raise money, justify jobs and create concern and so, news to be mostly ignored.  After all, jobs, fund raising and grants are more important to the pop environmental industry than stupid old facts are.

Bad Study... Go Away: Suppressing Evidence In The Environmental Discussion

Whatcom County in Washington State is home to a holy body of water.

The water must be holy because nothing else can explain the almost religious fervor exhibited by the pop environmental movement as it mounts battle after battle over what the movement appears to consider the sanctity of the holy water flowing through the lake and on into Puget Sound.

Whatcom County residents discuss Lake Whatcom water quality

Controversy has surrounded use of the lake for at least the last two decades.  Anyone reading the history of discussions regarding the lake would think they’d been transported back to the days of the Crusades as the knights of the lake raise huge sums of money to outfit yet another attack on the infidels occupying the shores of the holy waterway.

The discussion regarding Lake Whatcom over the years serves to illustrate a serious problem with most discussions about environmental issues in recent times; science has become something to be manipulated for result and, if the result cannot be manipulated, science is to be suppressed.

That on-going attacks on science by the environmental movement would be the cornerstone of the future movement first came into clear focus for me when, nearly 20 years ago, I attended the Clinton Forest Summit in Portland, Oregon as an analyst for a number of forest products industry oriented trade magazines.

The experience was a stunning one in a number of ways, especially since I was considerably more naïve in those days regarding the environmental movement and some of its approaches; I still thought that science and reason mattered when it came to environmental issues and that the excesses of the pop-environmental movement mostly came from lack of information.

So I was pretty optimistic about the Summit.  It was billed as a science based, rational look at environmental issues surrounding the health and use of the forests of our nation.

The event was held in Portland’s convention center.  Reporters, including myself, were allotted space at tables surrounded by broadcast trucks sent in by the major U.S. and regional media.  Around the edges of the Convention Center floor were several hundred stations manned by activist groups providing studies, brochures, letters, press releases and other material designed to influence the reporters at the event.

Had I not known in advance the Summit was about forestry I’d have thought I was attending a druid’s convention.  At least 80% of the materials provided by “environmental activists” had to do with Earth Mother Gaia, the sacred ocean or some other religious enterprise involving how trees scream when they are cut down and so on. 

Almost nothing involving forest health, responsible harvest, fire reduction strategies or any other aspect of the actual point of the Summit was offered.

Even worse, twenty years ago the Northern Spotted Owl was all the rage, or at least everyone was all enraged, over the controversy surrounding the little bird.

The timber industry in the United States was in the process of being decimated with the need to protect the Spotted Owl being used as an excuse to suspend logging over huge expanses of timber land.

But wait!  Scientists had discovered in the years immediately preceding the conference that the Spotted Owl was not only far less endangered than had been thought, the little creature could also survive nicely in second growth timber stands; a cornerstone relied on by the pop-environmental movement to prop up their end of the discussion had been removed.

Whoops!

Guess what?  Evidence regarding the potential widespread occurrence of the bird in ranges previously thought unsuitable was very specifically banned from discussion.  Only discussion revolving around the need to preserve old growth forest to save the Spotted Owl was allowed to be presented.



The Pop-environmental View - Nothing Should Ever Change



Back to holy water.

Near the turn of the century, after years of discussion about Lake Whatcom, a highly respected engineering firm was hired by local authorities to prepare a report at assembled all of the various studies about Lake Whatcom, analyze them, then draw conclusions regarding the entirety of the data about the lake, especially in terms of the Lake’s being used for drinking water.

Well, unfortunately, the firm hired to do the analysis was infested by engineers and scientists who hadn’t been informed about the desire outcome of the study.  That meant the draft was based on science.  The final report was particularly disdainful of some of the work being done by the local university so, when a preliminary draft was circulated to a small number of local officials, the proverbial excrement hit the fan.  In very short order the report was fitted with concrete boots and “disappeared,” to use a term often attributed to gangsters eliminating a rival. 

Similar studies in recent years have suffered the same fate as the jihad against any use of land around the lake has continued. 

The experience with Lake Whatcom data is, of course, not unique.  More and more we see science being cooked to match emotional needs rather than as a learning tool. 

The essence of drawing conclusions about any issue is the attempt to use observable fact and rational thought to inform decision-making.  Often, properly done studies will point to data allowing for differences of opinion.  We learn when we, from the differing perspectives we all have, discuss, comprehend and arrive at agreement with the data in mind.

The problem comes when data is deliberately suppressed so that pre-determined decisions can be supported.  If only data supporting one point of view or another is allowed in the discussion we get only one result; the wrong one. 

The larger problem comes in that suppressing data that might be in opposition to a desired conclusion is no longer seen as particularly inappropriate by the environmental industry. 

The Triumph Of Emotion Over Science: Rachael Carson And Dixie Lee Ray

Hysteria vs Science
Despite well known evidence to the contrary, Carson's claim that bird populations were in danger of extinction due to the use of DDT led to bans on the use of the pesticide and, demonstrably, the death of millions as the result of insect caused disease  led Dixie Lee Ray to label Silent Spring, "an emotional, lyrical, and grossly unscientific book that became the Bible of the environmental movement." 

Nearly 20 years ago I had the honor of visiting Dixie Lee Ray at her Fox Island, Washington home for the purpose of interviewing her for a magazine article.  I believe I was the last to interview her before she passed on in 1994.

Dixie Lee was one of the great minds of the 20^th Century but she had a couple of great failings.  She insisted on accuracy in science and, she spoke her mind no matter the cost.  Both are deadly sins in the world of the pop-environmentalist.

The quality of Dixie Lee’s mind is unquestioned.  Her accomplishments demonstrate the capacity of the woman.  Dr. Dixie Lee Ray was a marine biologist by training, a professor at the University of Washington.  She earned her way into becoming director of Seattle's Pacific Science Center. In 1972 she was appointed to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission by President Richard Nixon.  She eventually chaired the commission then was appointed to serve her nation as Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs; in charge of pursuing the nation’s interests regarding most scientific endeavors.  In 1976 Dixie Lee became Washington’s first female governor. 

As governor Dixie Lee quickly ran afoul of the pop-environmental movement for her outspokenness regarding a whole range of environmental issues.  Her party dumped her when it came time to run for a second term for a variety of crimes and misdemeanors including honesty, scientific accuracy and a forthright outspokenness. 

Dixie wrote two books after leaving office.  Trashing The Planet and Environmental Overkill: Whatever Happened To Common Sense? ought to be textbooks in any library oriented to environmental issues.

Perhaps more than any environmentalist in recent history, the life of Dixie Lee Ray points to the excesses of the pop-environmental movement and, unfortunately, the probability that a true environmental ethic will rise anytime soon.

Dixie saw the triumphant rise of emotion based science as it overwhelmed the environmental movement.  In her conversation with me she pointed to a couple of sentences in Trashing The Planet as exemplifying what the movement had become; “It is complex in that it incorporates a strongly negative element of anti-development, anti-progress, anti-technology, anti-business, anti-established institutions, and, above all, anti-capitalism.  Its positive side, if that is what it can be called, is that it seeks development of a society totally devoid of industry and technology.”

In her introduction to Trashing, Dixie laid out her personal philosophy regarding science; “One of the most profound obligations of scientists is to provide factual information about basic science, technology, the environment, and human health in a manner that can be understood by policy makers and the public at large.”

Standing in sharp contrast to Dixie Lee Ray is Rachel Carson, the author of one of the most influential “environmental” books of all time; Silent Spring.

Silent Spring was published 50 years ago and has become one of the most cited works, in terms of the environmental movement, of all time.

As described by Dixie Lee, Carson’s work is, “…an emotional, lyrical, and grossly unscientific book that became the Bible of the environmental movement.”

Silent Spring was responsible for the banning of a pesticide, DDT, that had almost eradicated malaria in the world.  As Dixie pointed out, “DDT, the most effective insecticide ever produced, could have saved millions of lives from malaria and other insect-borne diseases had not political pressure brought by environmentalists like Rachael Carson banned its use in the U.S. and reduced its use worldwide.”

Ray details the beneficial effects DDT had on human health pointing out the chemical was used to control body lice on soldiers in World War II with the effect that for the first time in history no Allied soldiers were stricken by typhus, a disease that had killed more soldiers than bullets had in the First War. 

In Sri Lanka, she pointed out, 2.8 million cases of malaria were counted in the years before DDT.  By 1963 only 17 cases were known to exist.  By 1969, after the banning of DDT the number had once again risen to 2.5 million cases.

Two months after hearings in 1971 resulted in findings that the science did not support the banning of DDT, the U.S. Department of Ecology banned the chemical.  The head of the agency at the time, William Ruckelshaus later admitted, Dixie pointed out, that, “decisions by the government involving the use of toxic substances are political…the ultimate judgment remains political.”

In insisting that decision making regarding environmental issues be based on sound science and rational thought Dixie Lee Ray was swimming against the current in the 1990s.  Rachael Carson had demonstrated to the pop-environmental industry that emotion can trump science.

Some believe Rachel Carson was simply careless in her work regarding pesticides.  Others point to the possibility that self-aggrandizement and increased sales may have played a part in her approach to science.  What is assuredly true is that her work has been pretty much discredited to no effect. 

In the world of the pop-environmental industry in 2012, emotion has triumphed over fact in terms of science.  That's good for fund raising but bad for the environment.