Wildlife and People

The Grizzly Bear Junk Science Judicial Nonsense Gene Pool Blues

Anybody can be a scientist these days. You don’t need any formal training in science, scientific knowledge, or expertise. Just slap a badge that says “scientist” on your forehead and presto, there you are!

It especially helps if you are a Federal judge. Then whatever you say, no matter how stupid and unscientific, becomes the Law of the Land and Accepted Scientific Truth.

Take U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy, for instance. Last June Judge Molloy invented a brand new theory about population biology [here], one that reeks of dumb and is laughable in real scientific circles, but is now considered to be “factual” and “scientific” even though it is as far from science as the Planet Gumbo.

Judge Molloy said that:

“genetic exchange between wolves in the Greater Yellowstone, northwestern Montana, and central Idaho core recovery areas [is] necessary to maintain a viable northern Rocky Mountain wolf population in the face of environmental variability and stochastic events.”

The Judge cited an obscure paragraph in a forgotten Appendix to a 1994 Environmental Impact Statement [here] as his source of this scientific “truth.” The problem is, the judge is dead wrong. The statement above is not true or even rational.

Genetic exchange between wolves across tens of thousands of square miles in NOT necessary to maintain wolf populations. There is no proof of that, while there is ample evidence that wolf populations can be maintained indefinitely on tiny islands of a few square miles.

The tag-on line about “environmental variability and stochastic events” sounds scientific but actually means nothing. It is an expression of profound ignorance.

But because a Federal Judge said it, the statement is now accepted scientific Truth despite its obvious idiocy, abundant counter examples, and the findings of actual professional wildlife population biologists (the kind with training, diplomas, experience, etc.).

So now eco-wacko extremists are demanding that grizzly bears must be allowed to roam for thousands of miles and interbreed with distant grizzly bears or else they will go extinct. From the Jackson Hole Star Tribune, Nov. 17, 2008 [here]:

Scientists propose grizzly genetic research

JACKSON — Researchers are proposing genetic testing to determine whether grizzly bears in the Yellowstone region interbreed with grizzlies from elsewhere.

Scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey proposed the study Wednesday in a meeting of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee in West Yellowstone, Mont.

Federal judges in Montana and Idaho are presiding over three separate lawsuits challenging a decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in April to remove grizzlies from the endangered species list.

One argument against delisting is the population’s lack of genetic diversity. Some say that could threaten the long-term health of bears in the ecosystem.

Scientists say grizzlies from Canada or northwest Montana must breed with bears in the Yellowstone ecosystem at least once every generation to maintain the genetic diversity of the Yellowstone population.

“We have no documentation of that happening,” said Chuck Schwartz, leader of the Geological Survey’s grizzly bear study team.

There is genetic evidence of a hybrid bear in the northern ecosystem, but Schwartz said that bear probably is the offspring of a problem bear that was relocated to Canada years ago.

Researchers plan to collect genetic samples from all bears captured or killed in the Yellowstone ecosystem. Geneticists will then compare the DNA of the Yellowstone grizzlies with grizzlies in northern Montana and Canada to see if interbreeding has occurred.

If no sign of genes from elsewhere appears in Yellowstone grizzlies by 2020, researchers suggest capturing one or two bears from elsewhere and releasing them in the Yellowstone region every 10 years.

Although there is no evidence of interbreeding right now, the Yellowstone population has been expanding into southern Montana. However, researchers say grizzlies are much more likely to be killed by vehicles and hunters when they get closer to human development.

Franz Camenzind, executive director of the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, called the genetic health of Yellowstone grizzlies a “huge concern” because of the population’s isolation and modest numbers. The population is estimated at 600.

“It’s long overdue that they start a rigorous genetic diversity study,” he said.

There is so much doubletalk nonsense in that article that it is difficult to know where to start shredding it.

First, grizzly bears populations are at all time highs in recorded history, and probably at their highest during the entire Holocene. For the last 10,000 years (or more) human beings have been the keystone predators and have hunted and killed grizzly bears with much skill and effectiveness. The Yellowstone grizzly bear population in particular has experienced an irruption over the last few decades and is bursting out on all sides.

There are more grizzlies now than ever recorded in Yellowstone. The gene pool is not restricted. These are not inbred, captive bears. They are out there doing it and making bear cubs with abandon, breeding like rabbits or squirrels.

Well, not quite like rodents. Grizzly bears have a relatively low reproductive rate. But it is enough so that the population has been expanding since at least 1975. Important points: grizzly bears are not going extinct. Their population is expanding. Those are the facts.

The corollary obvious fact of the matter is that “the genetic health of Yellowstone grizzlies” is NOT a “huge concern”; the burgeoning overpopulation of bears IS!!!!

The folks involved are numbskulls, I am sorry to say. The US Geological Survey has the very worst, least trained, least experienced, most fraudulent fake scientists in the world. They are a joke of an outfit. That statement might make some people angry. Tough. The USGS is NOT competent at wildlife biology. Franz Camenzind is also NOT A SCIENTIST, and in fact is a political agitator. The whole crew is gaming off Judge Molloy’s barkingly bad “scientific” finding, which was pure tripe.

But that’s how Medieval superstition junk science gets a leg up. Make a bizarre and outlandish claim, one that is obviously false on its face, and then politicize the hell out of it. This is known as the Al Gore Method of Pseudo-Science.

Make a propaganda movie and show it to children. Guilt trip everybody. “Oh, oh, oh the wolves, bears, whatever, aren’t getting enough strange sex. They are inbreeding idiot wolves, bears, whatever, so the cubs are defective like that banjo retard in Deliverance.”

We, the Human Race, have cause Mother Nature’s wildlife to get mondo stupido via genetic defectiveness. Polar bears have forgotten how to swim. Wolves are so stupid they have resorted to eating sheep. Grizzly bears are too dumb to get out of bed. Ospreys, spotted owls, condors, the entire bird kingdom have forgotten how to build nests. The whole of Mother Nature has gone dumbass.

No, children, that’s not how the world works.

It is painful to watch the dumbing-down of the Human Race. Day by day the masses grow ever more dense and gullible. We are entering another Dark Age where human intellect is reduced to mud hut cluelessness. The disease of fatheadedness is epidemic.

Must be something in the water, because it’s not in the genes.