Wildlife and People

Debt for Nature — Financing American Endangered Species on Foreign Soil

by Karen Budd-Falen, Karen Budd-Falen Law Offices LLC, Cheyenne WY [here]

See also: Western Legacy Alliance [here]

Let me see if I have gotten this straight:

1. President Obama has stated that America is going to be more restrained in foreign internal affairs.

2. Yet the U.S. federal government has listed 568 foreign species on the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”). These are species who never set one paw or foot or leg on American soil, ever.

3. And once listed, the ESA authorizes the U.S. Treasury to spend American taxpayer money acquiring foreign land, water and other property interests to “protect” these species.

4. As one way for America to spend money on foreign property, Congress and the federal bureaucracy have also authorized several “Debt for Nature swaps” which allow the U.S. Treasury to forgive (“trade”) foreign debt or loans made by the American taxpayers to foreign countries with the hope that the foreign country will stop property use and development to protect species on the American endangered species list.

5. Some of these Debt for Nature swaps include non-governmental organizations like The Nature Conservancy or World Wildlife Fund buying the foreign debt to the U.S. for “pennies on the dollar.”

There are several types of Debt for Nature programs which are being used to exert the opinions of a small group of radical environmentalists that “nature is more important than people.” Debt for Nature was modeled after a program started in the early 1990s called Enterprise for the Americas Initiative (“EIA”). Under that program, the U.S. restructured, and in one case sold, debt owed to the American taxpayers by Latin American countries equivalent to a face value of nearly $1 billion. Basically the U.S. Treasury forgave or restructured monetary debt owed to American taxpayers for the Latin American country’s adoption of certain social and property use goals related to environmental, natural resources, health protection, and child development projects.

An official governmental “Debt for Nature” bill was passed by Congress in 1998 called the Tropical Forest Conservation Act (“TFCA”). Since passage of the TFCA, although the reports are somewhat conflicting, at least $128.4 million has been used to fund 15 separate transactions which allegedly “conserve” tropical forests within 13 debtor foreign countries.

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Foreign and Domestic Train Wreck in the Making - More of the ESA

by Karen Budd-Falen, Karen Budd-Falen Law Offices LLC, Cheyenne WY [here]

See also: Western Legacy Alliance [here]

As the New Year opens, the use and abuse of the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”) continues to provide a significant hardship to private property, private rights, and land use both within this country and even in countries of which most people have probably never heard. Despite President Obama’s proclamation that “America will play a more restrained role on the international stage,” the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (“FWS”) does not seem to be restraining from listing species as threatened or endangered, despite the fact that many species on the American list have NEVER traveled to American soil. In fact, by January 3, 2011, the FWS had listed 568 foreign species on the American threatened or endangered species list. These species are from places like China, Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Palau, and of course Canada and Mexico. The latest additions were seven birds from Brazil on December 28, 2010.

There are a lot of alleged reasons given that the U.S. should be spending American tax dollars to research, study and list foreign species under the ESA. One of the biggest reasons, so they say, is so that America can stop foreign import of endangered and threatened species. I thought that was fair until I did some simple research online and found out that you can buy some of these listed threatened and endangered species on E-bay. Does any one want to buy a Goliath Frog, from West Africa? It was going for $150.00 on E-bay on January 20, 2011, despite the fact it was listed on the American ESA list in 1994.

The more shocking research however is that once a foreign species is listed on the U.S. threatened or endangered species list, the ESA gives the American government the authority to buy “land or water or interests therein” in foreign countries. In other words, the ESA gives the U.S. government authority, with the consent of the foreign government, to use foreign currency to buy foreign land in the name of the United States. With the current budget and deficit drowning American workers, why is the U.S. government even thinking of buying foreign land and water? And once we do buy it, who manages it and what does that cost the American taxpayer?

If America is playing a more restrained role internationally, the FWS does not seem to agree. In relation to the December 28, 2010 foreign species ESA listing, the FWS press release states:

All seven species face immediate and significant threats primarily from the threatened destruction and modification of their habitats from conversion of agricultural fields (e.g., soybeans, sugarcane, and corn), plantations (e.g., eucalyptus, pine, coffee, cocoa, rubber, and bananas), livestock pastures, centers of human habitation, and industrial developments (e.g., charcoal production, steel plants, and hydropower reservoirs).

Although there is limited information on the specific nature of potential impacts from climate change to the species included in this final rule, we [FWS] are concerned about projected climate change, particularly the effect of rising temperatures in combination with the potential loss of genetic diversity, and population isolation; and cumulative effects including El Niño events. Furthermore, we have determined that the inadequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms is a contributory risk factor that endangers each of these species’ continued existence.

So America is dictating what property in foreign countries can be used for and American businesses have to wait for the completion of ESA section 7 consultation based on “climate change” for birds in Brazil?

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Who Are the Real Predators?

Note: The following is excerpted from “It’s Time for Elected Officials to Take the Blinders Off and Admit Their State F&G’s Real Agenda”, the lead article in The Outdoorsman, Bulletin Number 41, Sept-Dec 2010. The entire issue is [here]. Back issues are available at Idaho For Wildlife [here].

By George Dovel

States’ F&G Lobbyist, IAFWA, Abandons Hunters

State F&G Directors in both Wyoming and Idaho insisted “the public” wanted them to provide opportunities to enjoy watching species that were not harvested by hunters and fishermen – but that was not the truth. The truth is, in 1990 the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (IAFWA) in Washington, D.C. hired bird watcher Naomi Edelson to run nongame programs in the 50 States and changed its #1 priority from providing wild game and fish for hunters and fishermen to harvest, to promoting non-consumptive wildlife recreation.

Twenty or even 10 years ago, anyone who dared to tell the truth about this was branded a “conspiracy theorist” or an “alarmist” by our state wildlife managers. Nearly two years ago, after I had carefully documented the step-by-step process in several Outdoorsman issues, Idaho F&G Commissioner Tony McDermott admitted they did what AFWA (formerly IAFWA) told them to but said even if my claims were true I couldn’t do anything about it.

My Challenge to Elected Officials

If you are one of several hundred elected officials in several states who receive this publication, you have internet access. I challenge you to take five minutes and “get it straight from the horse’s mouth” [here]:

The paper titled, “Finding Our Wings: The Payoff of a Decade of Determination” was written by Edelson and presented to a national convention of bird watchers in 2003. It is also Forest Service General Technical Report PSW-GTR-191 dated 2005, and spells out how the IAFWA priority was changed and how millions of dollars have been diverted by Congress from perpetuating game and fish harvests to promoting the nongame agenda beginning in 2001 with what is called “State Wildlife Grants”. …

The next step in the state F&G Agencies’ alien agenda, dictated by the IAFWA and the powerful Nature Conservancy (TNC), was to use sportsmen’s license money to help “Teaming With Wildlife” lobby for passage of CARA (the Conservation and Reinvestment Act). Passage of this Act would have provided a billion dollars from offshore oil drilling fees to support the non-consumptive agenda, and would have given wildlife managers authority to implement the radical UN Convention on Biodiversity (”Wildlands”) that was never ratified by Congress.

It would also have bypassed the legislative and judicial branches of both our state and federal governments and allowed both state and federal wildlife bureaucrats to condemn and acquire $450 million worth of private property each every year. With its massive federal “pork” money for every state, the 2000 version of CARA easily passed the House and was approved by the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources 13-7.

But thanks to private property rights advocates and Western senators who continued to oppose CARA, it was never sent to the floor for a vote by the full Senate. President Clinton strongly supported the UN Wildlands Agenda, so the Teaming With Wildlife (TWW) activists were desperate to get something passed implementing that agenda while Clinton was still in office.

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Vegetarians: The Scourge of the Earth

By Charles E. Kay Ph.D., Utah State Univ.

From Mule Deer Foundation Magazine No.30:42-47, April 2009 [here]. Posted by permission.

In debates over the future of hunting in the United States and around the world, animal-rights groups claim that they have the moral high-ground because they are vegetarians. Hunters are portrayed as a lower lifeform because they kill and eat animals, while vegetarians are depicted as harmless because all they eat are plants. Unfortunately, the general public and the national media have accepted these assertions without careful study or reasoned thought. They have done so, in part, because most people have a poor understanding of basic ecology or human evolution. Hunters it turns out are the epitome of civilization, while vegetarians are the scourge of the Earth. Virtually all the world’s environmental problems, from the loss of biodiversity to carbon dioxide emissions, can be traced to vegetarians, not hunters.

The concept of the trophic pyramid is fundamental to ecology. The simplest trophic pyramid contains three levels. On the bottom are the plants; above the plants are herbivores, which feed on the plants; and above the herbivores are carnivores which prey on the herbivores. Did you even wonder why plants are more abundant than herbivores? And herbivores more abundant than carnivores? It is because there is a 90% to 99% loss of stored energy between each trophic level.

Plants turn sunlight into stored energy that can be used by herbivores. Herbivores then convert those plant tissues into more herbivores but in so doing there is a major loss in stored energy because the herbivores have to expend energy on body maintenance and respiration, in addition to reproduction. The consumed energy is given-off as heat or waste products. The same, in turn, happens when carnivores eat herbivores. Ninety percent or more of that energy goes to carnivore body maintenance and respiration, not population growth. Thus, in this simplest of trophic pyramids, if you have 100 units of plant biomass, that vegetation can support only 10 units, at best, of herbivore biomass, and that animal biomass, in turn, can support only one unit, or less, of carnivore biomass. This is why carnivores are always so rare. Moreover, this is a fundamental law of thermal dynamics and of all living systems. Some trophic pyramids have more than three levels and the more trophic layers there are, the less abundant are the top or apex predators, such as human hunters.

So in systems where humans are pure hunters, human population densities are generally very low, with correspondingly few environmental impacts. But if humans move down a trophic level, as only humans can, and become gatherer-hunters, were gatherers collect mainly vegetal foods, the human population increases ten-fold or more. Humans also use fire to enhance both plant and animal productivity, which allows for even greater human population growth. Switching to agriculture further increases plant productivity per unit area leading to a massive increase in human numbers. The reason there are seven or eight billion people on Earth is because they are primarily vegetarians. There are few environmental problems around the globe that cannot be laid at the feet of vegetarians.
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First Livestock Wolf Kill in Oregon in 2010

Four wolves killed a calf (pictured below) north of Enterprise yesterday in Wallowa Co., Oregon. This is the first confirmed livestock killed by wolves in Oregon Wallowa County in 2010. [Not the first kill, not the first in Oregon.]

The federal government illegally dumped Canadian wolves in central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park in 1995. They (the wolves and the dumpers) have now spread into Oregon.

State biologists maintain that wolves have ecological “value.” By that they mean wolves extirpate game animals such as deer and elk, “surplus” kill livestock, spread diseases such as rabies, distemper, and hydatid tapeworms, stalk children, and generally rid the ecosystem of other mammals.

Here is an excellent journalistic synopsis of the incident:

ODFW confirms first wolf kill in Wallowa County

By Kathleen Ellyn, Wallowa County Chieftain, 5/7/2010 [here]

Wallowa County rancher Bob Lathrop has become the first to suffer a confirmed wolf kill of livestock in Wallowa County. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) has confirmed that the calf killed May 5 on the Lewis Road/Dorrance Grade 17 miles northeast of Enterprise was killed by wolves.

The calf was in a pasture of young cows and calves recently moved from a home pasture to grazing near Zumwalt Prairie. ODFW employee Jason Moncrief, who was hired to haze elk back from Zumwalt Prairie into the forest, saw four wolves in the cow/calf pasture the morning of Wednesday, May 5, and later in the day saw carrion birds fly from the same pasture.

He investigated, discovered the partially eaten remains of the approximately two-month-old calf scattered across the field, and reported the find.

Oregon Department of Fish and Game (ODFW) District Biologist Vic Coggins and rancher Tom Birkmeier happened to be in the area and responded immediately. U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services wolf hunter Marlyn Riggs and Rod Childers, wolf committee chairman for the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association (OCA) arrived shortly thereafter. Coggins and Riggs confirmed the kill. ODFW Wolf Program Coordinator Russ Morgan was out of town but returned immediately, arriving on Thursday to second the confirmation. The wolves are believed to be part of the 10-wolf Imnaha pack.

“It was sheer luck we got that confirmation,” said Childers. “If Jason hadn’t been passing by, seen those wolves and then checked it out, and if Tom and Vic hadn’t been in the area right then, this would be another unconfirmed kill.”

Wallowa County ranchers have been complaining for months that young calves are being entirely eaten, and that since they can only report mother cows with no calves, the predation of dozens of calves has not been confirmed by ODFW.

Childers said that the Association had requested that the wolves be permanently removed from the area or killed. However, a press release from ODFW said that the agency planned to use non-lethal measures to avoid future incidents as the first response to wolf depredation.

“It’s ludicrous,” said Childers. “ODFW says that all of the non-lethal actions we’ve been taking in this county are ‘preventative.’ I asked what the difference was between non-lethal and preventative and there is no difference. If there was more that we could do we would do it, but basically we have to wait until there are more dead livestock confirmed as wolf kills before ODFW can possibly take an action. If these four wolves get back into the pack before there is another depredation, we can’t identify the specific wolves and the whole process starts over again. This could go on all summer.”

Lathrop told ranchers he would be sleeping with his cattle for the next few days, but has three pastures of cattle. “What’s he going to do,” Childers asked, “flip a coin as to which pasture he should be sleeping in?”

Several other cattle carcasses have been photographed and reported as suspected wolf kills in Wallowa County, but were too well-eaten to show the distinctive bite marks of wolves and gain confirmation by ODFW biologists. Ranchers are also reporting changes in behavior by cattle consistent with harassment by wolves. One serious consequence of wolf harassment reported by ranchers in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana is that stock dogs can no longer work cattle because fear of dogs causes cattle to bunch up protectively instead of herd, Childers said. Childers said the OCA is asking ranchers to document any and all interactions with wolves, behavior of cattle, and preventative actions taken. “We need to get this Wolf Plan and the state Endangered Species Laws changed,” said Childers.

There are two known wolf packs wolves in Oregon, both in Wallowa County. ODFW confirms a pack of 10 in the Imnaha area and another pack estimated to be of four in the Wenaha area. Other single wolves are believed to be dispersed throughout the state. Approximately 30 head of livestock have been confirmed killed by the wolves in the last 12 months; 29 in five attacks in Baker County and one in Wallowa County.

Polar bear’s status focus of Nunavut hearing

Article and comments from CBC News, April 13, 2010 [here]

The question of how to classify Canada’s polar bears under species-at-risk legislation is the subject of a three-day public hearing that began Tuesday in Iqaluit.

Polar bears in Canada were listed as a “species of special concern” — one step below “threatened” and two below “endangered” — under the federal Species at Risk Act in 2002.

The Nunavut Wildlife Management Board is hosting the three-day hearing to consider a 2008 recommendation from the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) to keep the “special concern” classification.

The board will submit its own recommendation to the federal government, which will make the final decision about whether to change the polar bear status.

There were an estimated 15,500 polar bears in Canada in 2008, according to COSEWIC, a 60-member scientific committee that advises the federal government on species that should be protected. …

The committee spent two years assessing data about the entire Canadian polar bear population — which is divided into 13 isolated subpopulations — chairman Jeff Hutchings said Tuesday.

Hutchings said although COSEWIC found there are generally more polar bears today than 50 years ago, their future survival could be threatened.

“The key question is what’s going to happen in the future given that sea ice is likely going to decline and that polar bears do depend upon sea ice,” he said.

“That’s the key uncertainty; it’s looking into the future. That’s the basis for the special concern listing.”

While the committee is worried about the effects of climate change in the Arctic, it also has concerns about the hunting of polar bear subpopulations in the Baffin Bay and Kane Basin areas, some parts of which are governed by Greenland.

Inuit in those areas have long disputed scientists’ claims that overhunting has led to fewer bears and could threaten the survival of those subpopulations.

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Are Mainstream Environmentalists Racist?

Racism is the belief that people of different races have different qualities and abilities, and that some races are inherently superior or inferior. It is generally accompanied by animosity toward other races fueled by prejudice.

But what shall we call the type of “scientific” racism that a) denies the historical existence of non-white peoples, and/or b) denies the humanity of other races. Super racism?

One common belief (discrimination, prejudice, bigotry, intolerance, xenophobia, bias) held by super racists is that throughout history brown-skinned people have been little more than nomadic savages, packs of wildmen with no more impact on the environment than butterflies that flit from bush to bush.

That’s a common belief of “ecologists” at any rate, especially BINGO ecologists.

For those of you new to the terminology, BINGO’s are big, international, non-governmental organizations, such as the Humane Society (HS), the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and the Nature Conservancy (TNC), among others.

BINGO ecologists hold to the notion that despite 150,000 years of human occupation of Africa, that continent today is mostly wilderness: pristine, untrammeled, wild, untouched by the hand of man. Whomever lived there, they were inept and stupid. They could not alter their environment due to their extreme primitiveness — so backward as to be sub or even sub-sub human. Homo erectus had fire, and used it, but Homo sapiens forgot how — at least, the Homo sapiens in Africa (and the Americas) somehow lost the ability to make and use fire.

It must have been their skin color that made brown humans so stupid, right?

Further, BINGO’s routinely interfere with governments in Africa to promote the ethnic cleansing of brown-skinned people in order to dehumanize large “parks” in Africa [here] to “save the animals”.

Those darn brownies finally picked up on white ways and are endangering the elephants, rhinos, and elephinos that were doing fine, unaffected by the brownies for 150,000 years, until superior white people taught the primitives how to kill and eat wild game.

Sound familiar? There’s no need to go as far away as Africa to see the actions and effects of super racism — we have plenty of it here.

Super racism leads to poverty, deprivation, and death of the indigenous residents. Super racist “science” is turned into super racist actions that inflict genocide. And it is paid for by white people in the First World.

Have you ever donated money to the WWF, TNC, IFAW, etc.? Are you aware that that your government does so, to the tune of hundreds of $millions per year? Do you know how that money is spent?

Maybe you were simply unaware (a kind word for “ignorant”) of the malevolent activities of BINGO’s and their “scientists”. Or maybe you are a super racist, too. It’s been a popular bent for hundreds of years, and there seems to be no let up.

All the above is an introduction, an invitation if you will, to examine the latest addition to the W.I.S.E. Colloquium: Wildlife Sciences [here]:

Charles E. Kay. 2009. Two Views of the Serengeti: One True, One Myth. Conservation and Society 7(2): 145-147, 2009

Dr. Kay’s essay is a book review of two books, one a compendium of super racist “science” and the other a condemnation of such.

Read and learn.

Alaskans Feed Themselves from Nature’s Abundance

By Craig L. Fleenor, posted with permission from THE OUTDOORSMAN, Feb-Mar 2009

Craig Fleenor is Director of the Subsistence Division of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Once again Alaska predator management is in the national spotlight. With all of the hype, a very important perspective is often overlooked during this heated debate – that of the subsistence family.

As a young Gwich’in man I grew up in Fort Yukon, depending on wild resources for survival. This life was not a choice but an inter-generational way of life practiced by my family for thousands of years. Like many Alaskans, I was taught that we must manage wolves and bears to protect the local food supply, for safety and to meet other subsistence needs.

Most Alaskans know politics and clever ad campaigns are not what is important. For the subsistence family, acquiring enough food from the land is paramount.

Take the Fort Yukon fisherman who faithfully checks his fish-wheel twice daily, the Anaktuvuk caribou hunter who hopes the herd comes close to the village this year and the Haines moose hunter who spends 12 days hunting. Call it food security, subsistence or even barbarism, but to thousands of Alaskans who live subsistence, it’s about survival.

It’s the fundamental human right of access to high quality, renewable, locally grown, sustainable, affordable food. These needs can only be met if that food is managed for abundance.

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Head for the Hills! Wildlife Biologists Gone Mad!

Here is an amusing example of junk politicized science that you paid for. Your money was shoved down a rat hole in the name of Algore’s hoax. Fortunately, the junk was debunked for free, although you will not be getting your money back.

Head for the Hills! Creatures Flee Global Warming

By LiveScience Staff

Global warming is forcing 30 species of reptiles and amphibians to move uphill as habitats shift upward, but they may soon run out of room to run.

The shift could cause at least two toad species and one species of gecko in Madagascar to go extinct by the end of this century, a biologist says.

Uphill movement is a predicted response to increased temperatures, researcher Christopher Raxworthy of the American Museum of Natural History says. Earlier studies in Costa Rica have provided evidence of how tropical animals respond to climate change. …

“Obviously, more warming will put more species at risk,” Raxworthy told LiveScience.

The results are detailed in a recent online issue of the journal Global Change Biology.

“Two things together — highly localized distribution close to the very highest summits, and the magnitude of these upslope shifts in response to ongoing warming — make a poisonous cocktail for extinction,” Raxworthy said. … [more]

But is any of this true in the scientific sense, as in a factually correct hypothesis supported by real data?

From Joseph D’Aleo, CCM of ICECAP [here]

Icecap reality check: here is the NASA annual temperature plot since the 1880s for Antananarivo, a large city in Madagascar with a population of 452,000. See if you spot any signs of global warming. I always thought for there to be warming, temperatures actually had to rise. The creatures can’t read IPCC reports or model forecasts. Maybe they are moving because of the loss of habitat to population growth or trying to escape those crazy scientists with cameras and probes.

Kenya’s Conservation Crisis: Set To Continue?

by Mike Norton-Griffiths

published in AFRICAN INDABA — Dedicated to the People and Wildlife of Africa.

Latest Edition (and full text) [here]

1977 was an important year for conservation in Kenya for it was then that sport hunting and all other consumptive utilization of wildlife were banned. It was also the year when the Kenya Rangeland Ecological Monitoring Unit (KREMU) began to monitor the numbers and distribution of livestock and wildlife throughout the 500,000 km2 of Kenya’s arid and semi-arid rangelands. So, perhaps uniquely, a major change in conservation policy coincided with a new capacity to monitor its effect and impact.

The monitoring results have been deeply disturbing, and by the mid ’90s a number of warnings were being issued about a major decline in wildlife right across Kenya’s rangelands, even in the most heavily used tourist areas. More recent analyses show that the rates of wildlife loss continue unchecked. Since 1977, Kenya has lost 60%- 70% of all its large wildlife.

The economic driving force behind these losses are the differential returns from agricultural, livestock and wildlife production. For most landowners, returns from agriculture are vastly greater than are those from livestock, while wildlife returns are so meager as to be uncompetitive with either. Furthermore, returns from wildlife, however small, are found only on 5% (23,000 km2) of the 500,000 km2 of rangelands where wildlife are found. No returns are made from wildlife anywhere else on Kenya’s rangelands so to the great majority of landowners wildlife is simply a cost that the Government expects them to bear.

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