Destroy The Forest Products Industry And You Help Destroy The Environment

I've been working way too many hours trying to fend off a serious threat to the environment in my own local area.  That led to my being late on this blog.

The threat is called the Lake Whatcom Reconveyance.

Without boring you about local issues, the Reconveyance has world-wide implications.

Ignoring forest health leads to this as illustrated by an 1800s burned off area



In our area, an effort by the pop-environmental movement has been pursued vigorously for several years to convert nearly 9,000 acres of land dedicated to the timber industry into a park. 

The land was dedicated to the timber industry because of a realization by Washington State legislators that an unhealthy timber industry means an unhealthy environment.

This blog has addressed the issue previously.  Consider:

1. A huge portion of the greenhouse gas emissions released to our atmosphere each year come as the result of forest fires. 
2. Studies estimate 25% or more of the mercury released to the atmosphere each year comes as the result of forest fires.http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070109172159.htm
3. Out of control forest fires boil out streams killing fish populations, burn habitat used by endangered species and otherwise cause environmental havoc.
4. And so on...

In the United States particularly, the forest products industry has been devastated by the actions of the pop-environmental movement in recent decades.  As a result, so has the environment.  That is why my own little fight against the Reconveyance in my own local area is a fight to help preserve our environment.

A healthy forest products industry is required to maintain a healthy forest.  If we kill the industry, we help kill the forests.

Too often our reactions to environmental issues are based on emotions rather than science; "Ummm, park good, cut tree bad."  

If this blog does anything at all I hope it helps readers to realize that the discussion of issues about environmental impacts generally involve more complexity than the pop-environmental movements want brought up.  All too often, the real purpose of the discussion is the raising of money rather than the solving of issues and full discussion confuses the donors. 

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.

Are All Endangered Species Worth Saving?

Is it important to preserve Endangered Species? 

The answer is not quite as simple as some try to make it.

Over the history of the earth an estimated 1 – 4 billion “species” have gone extinct.  In today’s world it is estimated a few hundred species per year go extinct.

Would cuttlefish exist if something else had not gone extinct?  Will some future species not come into existence if we "save" the cuttlefish?  Hmmmm...I wonder how much money I could raise if I began a "Save the Cuttlefish" foundation?  Could I raise more if we renamed them cuddle fish? 

The knee jerk reaction (pop-environmental) to the question, “Is it important to preserve Endangered Species,” especially on the part of the pop-environmental movement, is generally a resounding, “Yes!” 

But some thought needs to be given to that answer.

Why “Yes,” as an automatic answer?  To assert we should go out of our way to “save” a species we should have some basis for the assertion.  What benefit does the species provide?  Is it a benefit we would miss if the species disappeared?  If one species is preserved, do we doom another from rising from insignificance to a place of prominence?  If someone had “saved” the dinosaurs, for example, would there have been mammoths and, eventually, elephants?

A bigger problem we run into with the glib answer is, “What is a species?”

The problem comes when formally listing a species as endangered, or threatened happens because a government agency or one of the environmental organizations feeding off those governments wants to expand its influence over a broad range of private and public actions, land uses and other aspects of day to day life.  The species is an afterthought.  

In the Pacific Northwest, for example, Chinook Salmon are a highly valued sport and food fish.  The fish are found in a great variety of habitats both coastal and inland.  They are plentiful in general but, due to the U.S. Endangered Species Act and pressure by a broad variety of pop-environmental groups, the salmon have been divided into “Evolutionary Significant Units.”

It is interesting that despite many river systems, each with Chinook, Oregon and Washington Chinook are simply Chinook but in areas where one group or another wants to expand control the Chinook suddenly becomes a discrete species even in portions of river systems.

Division into Evolutionary Significant Units allows for micro management of a generally plentiful species because the claim can somehow be made that, for example, a particular fish normally found in a very specific area is “Endangered” or, “Threatened.”  The listing is then used as a way to gain intimate control of all activity in areas amounting to millions of acres because, after all, we must save the fish, no matter how plentiful it might be.

The listing process can become rather silly.  The guppies in my fish tank, after a few generations, would be considered to be a “species” all on their own by some.

In the case of the Chinook Salmon (see below from the NOAA web-site) 17 discrete “species” are set aside.  Caught in the ocean there appears to be no real way to tell them apart.  Two “species” are endangered, seven are “threatened” and the rest are candidates or, of no concern.
 

Even DNA testing appears not to be a certain indicator demonstrating one “species” of Chinook is different from another and the issue is confused because, despite the stories about salmon always returning to their stream of origin, some “stray” or return to spawn in rivers other than the river they were hatched in.  That means “new” DNA is always being introduced into populations all the time.

Straying is an important survival mechanism.  For example, much of everything needed to support fish in the Columbia River in Eastern Washington, State was washed out to sea in the great Missoula Floods of ten – fifteen thousand years ago.  Everything was scoured down to bedrock.  If new populations of fish had not moved in since, there would be no runs in much of the Columbia River.

On the Washington Coast a similar disaster is recorded as having taken place on the Skagit River in the 1850s when Mt. Baker erupted and sent poisons cascading into the river.  Today, the Skagit is famous for its runs of some kinds of fish.

However much the various fish “species” may lack any special uniqueness, they are very handy for asserting control over large areas of land hence the constant hunt for “new” endangered species, especially those with potentially large habitats that can be snatched up and “preserved.”

Species come and go.  Extinction is a part of life and should be recognized as such.  If we, as a society, choose to “save” an endangered species we should do so for the sake of the species we target, not for reasons having more to do with expanding control over landscapes, expanding bureaucracies, creating the need for yet another “save the red whales of Mars” activist group or, for some other reason only remotely related to the species.