End Trapping of Animals

IN MONTANA AND WORLDWIDE!

I took this photo from Footloosemontana.org’s web-site. This is a benign one. They had photos at the Farmer’s market that showed dogs and coyotes and wolves horribly mutilated and in pain and fear. I couldn’t bear to see it. I cried. I was furious! I wanted to kill every trapper! Be aware that our moron governor is NOT sympathetic, so you’ll have to appeal to his baser values, like losing votes, being impeached, losing face, or contending with some lawsuits! Go get him!

I thought trapping in Montana was already illegal on public land. Now, our stupid govenor wants to increase trapping and hunting of wolves in Montana. This affects YOU. It affects everybody. If they kill the wild, there’ll be no wild place for you to visit. The traps get people’s dogs, too, and kill many other animals besides the targeted animal. Besides, there is nothing wrong with wolves. It is people that are the problem. People graze their cattle on public land — that is my land as well as yours, but if you are taking from it, you are not only taking a wild animal’s life, but you are taking from me (this could be a premise for a lawsuit). People don’t keep their animal feeds locked up, so bears are attracted and get in trouble. People don’t keep their animals penned up, so coyotes come and get killed. It is ALL people’s fault because people refuse to live responsibly and with moral integrity that values nature as a wonder and the source of balance on the planet. Now, these evil, morally deficient people want to torture and kill more innocent animals. I grew up in Montana. I grew up in the woods. I’ve spent months at a time out in the woods. No gun-loving redneck can tell me that I don’t know what I’m talking about. I know more about the woods and nature than they do! I know rednecks,too. One redneck said “how do you know they feel pain?” Any creature with a brain feels pain, fear, affection, happiness and other emotions. It is the nerves and the brain that tell us and all animals how to live, what is painful, what is not. Any animal with a brain, feels pain — that’s the way biology works! Well, maybe rednecks don’t feel pain. Maybe they should be the ones in the traps!

There’s an organization I saw at the Farmer’s Market that is trying to stop this. Here’s their web-site. I’m not affiliated with them. My feelings and opinions are my own (and rather strong as you can tell!)

https://www.footloosemontana.org

Please spread this blog — copy it, re-write it…however…just do it! End trapping! It’s immoral, horrible, painful, brutal…

None of these ads are mine! They are WordPresses, who said they would NOT have ads when I started! Shame!

“Hawk of Mercy”

Here’s a book you should read. Do you feel like getting up off your lazy ass and doing something for the environment? You could find inspiration and helpful ideas in this biography — “Rosalie Edge, Hawk of Mercy – The Activist Who Saved Nature From The Conservationists” by Dyana Z. Furmansky, University of Georgia Press, 2009. It may be available at your library.

The history of the United States and the U.S. conservation movement, including the National Audubon Society (called the National Association of Audubon Societies then), has always been behind the killing end of a gun. “Sportsmen” got involved in conservation so they could control it and have endless animals and birds to shoot, although their actions (i.e. not limiting the amount of killing they did) and their expectations of the morally compromised, bought-out Government agencies (such as demanding that the Government must “give” them all “surplus” animals to kill) do not match up. I wonder if they thought the Government would manufacture “surplus” animals in a factory!

All the “conservationists” whose contradictions and lack of moral integrity you will read about in this book were men. It took one courageous woman to really change the environmental movement and set it in motion. The irony in this book is rich and on nearly every page! Ms. Furmansky writes a well documented book and leaves no stone unturned. For example, people praise Pinchot for starting the forest reserves, but he was only interested in logging and tree farming — use of trees, not preserving ecosystems. He didn’t care about the forest residents or the balance of nature or the wildness and beauty within it. The Government Biological Survey was only interested in decimating predators on public lands, as well as private lands, and National Parks! Predators are not only necessary for the balance of nature, but are exciting to have there, alive, as I walk through the woods or camp in it. I’ve been to Switzerland in the 1970’s and it was beautiful, but tame and soulless. Afraid as I was then of Grizzly bears and mountain lions, I knew that I needed them and wanted them in my wild natural areas (I never had a fear of wolves. There were none when I grew up and I always felt the “Little Red Riding Hood” story to be a lie. Now, as an adult, I’ve been lucky enough to see and be near wild wolves in the wild!). It’s up to humans to make the compromises to allow these creatures. We’re supposed to be intelligent!

Unfortunately, we can’t get too smug, since many of the same faults and same compromises on the environment are STILL happening, by the same type of person. It’s up to you, young people, now, to get moving again. Quit being so materialistic and cynical. Be cynical about the Government and conservation groups, but NOT cynical about making change and protecting the environment! I’m old and tired and have lived my whole life in a way to reduce my negative environmental impact (and will continue to do so), but it’s past time for young people to take up the baton and carry on, fighting against human greed, corruption, destruction, over-population, etc. Don’t give up trying. Give up pesticides, herbicides, idling your car, etc. Start a campaign, for instance, to get your town to give up pesticides. Or, demand the U.S. Forest Service to give up their ridiculous, destructive thin and burn programs, and really manage the forests by cutting out only dead bug-killed trees that were caused, not by not allowing forest fires, but by clear-cutting in the first place and then not thinning the new growth, letting it get thick and crowded. Pine bark beetle was around when I was a child! But multi-age trees discourage the decimation of an entire population.

Or, you could start a campaign to end useless, polluting idling of vehicles while checking phones. Use your facebook page for something other than posting another photo of you buying shoes at the mall. Use it for changing consciousness and habits. Share discoveries of how to live to help the environment. Or, start a campaign for any good thing that helps the environment that you can think of, let your government know that you feel they are being too complacent… and read this book!

Car idlers

There’s been an epidemic of people sitting in their cars idling the engine and spewing fumes into the air ever since the cell phone, but it’s become worse during the corona virus shutdown, since people couldn’t eat inside places. It’s mostly unnecessary between April first and October first, up north, and I would like to see idling made illegal in Missoula during those times in order to keep the air clean and contribute less to air pollution and the depletion of the ozone layer. Most people who shop at the Good Food store think they are living correctly, but about 1/4 to 1/2, or more at times, of the cars here idle needlessly, too! You can’t say people are unaware of it; they are just selfish hypocrites. Perhaps elsewhere, such as at Albertson’s, they are just unconcerned. If it isn’t made a law, people will never change — that’s the way of the human being.

And, people think “it’s only me and it’s only for a minute”. It isn’t just you and it’s not for just a minute, but for 1-4 minutes every time you come and go from someplace. But, let’s just imagine that it is only a minute, only 2 times a day, only one quarter the drivers in a town of 100,000. So, about 50,000 drivers in the town makes 12,500 polluters, times 2 (times a day, although we know that they do it more), equals 25,000 minutes, equals over 416 HOURS a DAY! Over 416 hours of UNNECESSARY pollution! Already, this place is too much like California, endless cars and pollution.

Forest Service Burning

When the U.S. Forest Service thins and ground burns, they are destroying the top-soil, burning off the humus and acidic pine needles which the forest plants – conifers, huckleberry, kinnikinnick, sedges, etc. – need to keep the soil as acid as they like it and to provide the necessary nutrients. These upper layers are made up of decaying matter that provide the food and help keep the soil moist for young plants. Salamanders, frogs, lizards, soil microbes and beneficial insects live in the duff and humus layers. When the F.S. burns the soil, it is reduced to bare, grey, nutrient-less soil full of alkaline minerals due to the ash that only weeds or tough, unedible plants like Ceanothus or cheatgrass can grow in. Meanwhile, the bare soil blows away or is washed away in rains until these low food quality weeds can grow in. The slow growing native food plants for wildlife don’t have a chance. Even so-called desired grasses may not grow into the area fast enough to crowd out weeds, as most of those grasses are, also, not native to the forests.

The Forest Service says burning is good to reduce weeds and insects like ticks, but I think it just perpetuates the vicious cycle. Weeds and ticks always come back first and are worse than they were before. They are back the next year. It takes about 3-5 years before the full array of birds have come back. They find the forest unsuitable for nesting the year after a burn and may just keep away until it’s profitable for them. Meanwhile, the ticks flourish. They are always worse in the dry, disturbed, brushy areas; less so in the shady forest. Many year-round species of birds nest early and their young are killed during burns. The adults, too, may die of smoke inhalation. But, the Forest Service doesn’t care. It’ll come back, they say!

The forest soil is thin. Under 2-3″ of pine duff is a thin, approximately 1-2″ layer of top soil and humus. Under that are light, sterile soils made up of clays or ground up rocks, usually white, beige, or light grey in color.

The Ceanothus bushes that grew up in the burned spots in some places in 9mile are now 10-12 feet across! They are about 100-120 square feet, as big as the average person’s kitchen! (or rich person’s bathroom 😏) and there are several of these per quarter acre! Huckleberry and kinnikinnick provide food for wildlife, but Ceanothus doesn’t. It takes 3-5 years for the kinnikinnick and huckleberry to come back in after a burn, but it can’t if the ground is taken over by Ceanothus. Starving elk would eat lichen off a tree in winter, but the Forest Service burning destroys that, too, burning the trunks and lower branches, or killing trees entirely.

The F.S. burns also destroy the mycelium that lives in the soil and provides nutrients for all the forest plants. All around, the “thin and burn” program is stupid and destructive and wasteful.

150+ year old tree in Dixie National Forest

This Ponderosa pine tree is in the Pine Valley, Utah area in Dixie National forest. It was just cut this year for no apparent reason, maybe a month or so ago, early September 2019. As you can see, it has not been used or cut up. The needles still were light green and yellow, indicating that it was just drying out, not dead when they cut it. If it had been dead or dying when they cut it, the needles would have been rust color. The section between the two you can see is lying just off the trail. The base is 4 feet diameter, but about waist height it is about 3 feet in diameter. Counting the rings (counting the first 50 years, then estimating the rest by counting the rings in one inch and multiplying by the number of inches left) it is estimated to be about 150 – 170 years old. For the first 50 years of it’s life, it had plenty of moisture and the rings were easy to count. Then it had 100+ years of dry spell with the rings so tightly together that it was heard to count and the tree may be even older. Mormons came to the area in 1855 and settled the valley, setting up lots of sawmills and wood products businesses. The valley must have been filled with tall, old Ponderosa pines. Most of it was cut and cleared for grazing fields, looking as it is today. Most of the big trees must have been cut, too. There are still lots of big pines there, a few maybe 200 – 300 years old; most of the big ones about the age of this. But, most of the pines are only 60 – 80 years old.

It seems obvious to me that after white people set up their usual nature alternating lives that the area became a lot drier for 100 – 120 years until the present (and continuing). Though the trees have been growing back, the area’s grazing practices and the housing developments keep the place dry and the water used up. This tree was probably very small, only a few years to fifteen years old when the area got settled. After 15 – 40 years of clearing and logging is about when the permanent dry spell settled in.

On Rachel Carson

In 1962, Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, was published. My parents talked about it, everybody talked about it. I was just a kid, but was very concerned and worried. I probably nagged my parents to quit using pesticides around the house and yard. That would have been good for me, too, since I was allergic to these chemicals, though no one knew it at the time. For some odd reason, my headaches and rashes when exposed to them were never connected. A few years later, I read Rachel Carson’s book myself. I think she is one of the people who put me on a life long path of environmentalism.

In 2012, William Souder published a biography of Rachel Carson. I only just read it this summer. It is available as an e-book. It is amazing to me that this book and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring are still relevant. That doesn’t say much for the progress of the human race! Pesticides and herbicides are still very much in use and still detrimental to wildlife and ecology and still cancerous.

Souder says, “we are part of nature, and that what is poisonous to one organism is likely to be poisonous to another. The idea of balancing human interests against those of the natural world was scientifically nonsensical.” Aldo Leopold, author of Sand County Almanac, said that human beings still had a long way to go because they tend to see the natural environment as a “commodity”. But, in truth, “when we see the land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect “, Leopold wrote. Leopold’s land ethic was seen as prophetic: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”

But, it was in all this same period that chemicals developed for WWII were being used to control pests in crops, pests that caused disease, and in experimental uses. Soulder states, “In 1959 — as now– the regulation of pesticides and other potentially dangerous chemical products defied common sense in an important way: safety testing is performed not by the regulatory authority, but by the chemical manufacturers.” The government specifies the tests and then reviews the results, but “the party with a vested financial interest in the data is the same entity that supplies the data — a fact that would likely unnerve the public if many people understood that this is how things are done.”

In our country, the chemical companies have a financial interest in keeping pesticides and herbicides in use. They’ve used many unethical public relations campaigns to do so. People tend to naively believe these lies.

Olaus Murie, a prominent wildlife biologist and author, reviewed Carson’s chapter on herbicides to help her understand their use and impact in the West, where sagebrush was being converted to grasslands for cattle grazing by means of aerial spraying. The collateral damage, which could not be avoided, was the destruction of a naturally balanced ecosystem and the decline of species such as the sage grouse, pronghorn, and mule deer.

Carson researched her book meticulously. She went many places where experimental use of pesticides were being played out. Ultimately, this may have cost her her life, as she died young of cancer just a few years after her book was published. It is worth it to read both her book, Silent Spring, and Souder’s biography of her to get the whole picture.

Carson said that “it was now time for the inheritors of the earth and its many difficulties to finally prove human mastery not of nature, but of itself.”

“These sprays, dusts, and aerosols are now applied almost universally to farms, gardens, forests, and homes — nonselective chemicals that have the power to kill every insect, the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’, to still the song of birds and the leaping of fish in the streams, to coat the leaves with a deadly film, to linger on in the soil — all this though the intended target may be only a few weeds or insects. Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They should not be called ‘insecticides’ but ‘biocides’.” — Rachel Carson.

For Carson, the main problem with pesticides was the heedlessness with which they were applied — and the literal overkill that came with their use. Many times, in her book, Carson said that careful, limited use of chemical poisons was sometimes justifiable in certain circumstances, such as its use in helping to eradicate malaria. But, chemical companies took a bull dozer attitude to try to discredit her. They wanted unregulated use and unlimited profits. They ignored the fact that pesticides contaminate soil and water and accumulate in the tissues of animals and humans who were only exposed to small amounts of the chemicals directly. Their residues find their way into cows’ milk and human mother’s milk. They sometimes cause explosive growth in insect populations that have become resistant.

Carson’s exploration of the link between pesticides and human cancer, which some warned her was going too far, was speculative at the time and based partially on anecdotal observations of doctors of Mayo Clinic. But, that link seems more certain now. It may never be “proved” with certainty because of chemical companies control over governments and medical society. So, “the government is not going to do it for you. Somebody else is not going to do it for you. Basically you’re going to have to do it for yourself. And that means to protect yourself and that means to see to it that your government protects you when you can’t protect yourself. ” — then Secretary of Agriculure, Orville Freeman.

People erroneously think there is no problem because we banned DDT, but DDT is still used in many countries, and pesticide and herbicide use is still prevalent. And people are still dying of cancer!

Aldo Leopold’s forestry and land use ethics

Aldo Leopold worked for the Forest Service for years in its early years and did all the multiple-abuse things promoted at that time, but he came to believe that all of them were wrong, from grazing on public lands, predator killing, to clear-cutting and burning. This blog is set up as quotes from articles he wrote and comments of mine in brackects. Any typos are mine, as I took notes, but no longer have the original source.

“Piute Forestry” Southwestern Magazine 2:3 (Mar 1920) 12-13
“1. Light burning destroys most of the seedling trees necessary to replace the old stand. 2. Light burning gradually reduces the vitality and productiveness of the forage [actually, it produces unpalatable forage like ceanothus and dogbane]. 3. It destroys the humus in the soil necessary for rapid tree regrowth. 4. By inflicting scars, it abnormally increases rot and creates resin which lowers lumber grades and intensifies future fires. 5. It increases the destructive effects of wood-boring insects.” [I’ve seen all these 5 effects just in the 9 mile area, MT]
“The destructive effects of Piute Forestry can really be seen in California and many areas of the Southwest… a large percentage of the chaparral or brush areas were originally covered in valuable forests, but reverted to brush after repeated light burning…”
“It is absurd to [say] that the Indians fired the forests with any idea of forest conservation in mind. … the Indian fired the forests with the deliberate intent of confusing and concentrating game so as to make hunting easier. ”

Grass, brush, timber, and fire in southern Arizona. Journal of Forestry 22:6(Oct 1924), 1-10
“Five facts…in the foothill region…
1. Widespread abnormal erosion. This is universal along watercourses with sheet erosion in certain formations, especially granite.
2. Universal fire scars on ALL [my emphasis] the trees old enough to bear them.
3. Old juniper stumps, often leveled to the ground, evidently by fire.
4. Much juniper reproduction merging to pine reproduction in the upper limits of the type.
5. Great thrift and size in the junipers or other woodland species [i.e. trees] which have survived fire.”
[ME – fires and erosion occurred at the same time, 40 years previous. Fires cause erosion by killing ground cover. Cattle cause erosion, too. Erosion causes more erosion, turns into gullies.]
“The particular manzanita characteristic of the region (Archtostaphylos pungens) propagated by brush fires…were first established by a fire in what was then grass and brush. Cattle next removed the grass. Pine and juniper then reproduced due to absence of grass and fire, and are now overtopping the manzanita. Take piñon: it is naturally a climax woodland type, but mature Pinons are hardly to be found in the region; just a specimen here and there…the species which has evidently been decimated through centuries of fires.” [Mormons also cut out the piñon for wood and to starve out the Indian].
[Yellow pine was reproducing downhill into the woodland type. Juniper was reproducing downhill into the semi-desert type. This downhill movement is so “conspicuous and so universal as to establish beyond a doubt that the virgin conditions previous to settlement” were forested, not brush or grass. Grazing, logging and fires have caused that downward movement since the 1970’s onward, producing more desert, more chaparral, and smaller forest “sky islands”].
“Heavy stands of grass might have been exterminated by moderate grazing. Why has not the encroachment of brush checked the erosion which was induced by the removal of the grass?” [Shrubs have spotty roots rather than mats like most grass.]
“Grass is a much more effective conserver of watersheds than foresters were willing to admit, and that grazing is the prime factor in destroying watershed values. Earth- scars [roads, logging that scrapes the soil, diggings by cattle…] are a big” cause of erosion.” [Now, drier climate has increased fire danger. Some areas will take 60 years to regenerate, others never, except in 300-500 years sans humans. Also, certain forests in MT and ID and UT, the soil and grass are thin and fires do not cause regrowth of grass, but brush like ceanothus, a non-browsing shrub. Also, young trees are killed as well as older trees. The forests do not regenerate quickly. Logging the bigger trees makes this worse. Grass does not come back to replace shrubs. Young trees do, then grass may come around the edges of the trees. Only in grass-only areas does grass come back after a fire, but repeated fires seem to deplete even that.]
“Wholesale exclusion of grazing … should only be used as a last resort” [that time has come! No more grazing on public lands!!!] We are dealing with a cycle involving centuries. We can not obstruct or reverse the cycle, but we can bend it; in what degree remains to be shown” [the human race no longer has centuries, with present populations, growth, pollution and use of earthly resources. No use is the Best use for public, wild lands!]
” …Two regions are not comparable. ” [This would seem obvious, but F.S. has blanket policies that cover the whole west, as diverse as it is.]

Land Pathology, April 15, 1935 lecture at University of Wisconsin.
“The accelerating velocity of destructive interactions [human, machines, “progress”…] is unmistakable and probably unprecedented. Recuperative mechanisms either do not exist, or have not had time to get under way… The machines release natural forces, such as fire, erosion, floods, and disease, and give them unnatural play, devoid of checks and balances. Machines also nullify the checks and balances on domestic animals [as well as on humans].”
“Destructive [human] interactions [with nature] probably contributed to the decay of some early societies even before the machine age…semi-arid climates.. were especially susceptible to upsets of equilibrium” [Greece, Italy, Spain were all forested once. There were forests in Mesopotamia and even parts of the Sahara! Forests provided fuel and building materials and humans used them all up!]
“The revival of land esthetics in rural culture and the
….refinement of remedial practices is equally important.”

Coon Valley: An adventure in cooperative conservation, American Forests 41:5 (May 1935), 205-208
“More cows, more silos…more machines, …more pasture to graze them — this is the epic cycle which tells the history of [American farming]… gone is the humus of the old prairie…Great gashing gullies are torn out of the hillside. Each gully dumps it’s load of hillside rocks upon the fields of the creek bottom, and it’s muddy waters into the already swollen streams.”[Floods were not prevalent until settlers came, cut trees, grazed hillsides, over grazed land, made “earth scars”, etc.]
“The plan proposes to remove all cows and crops from steep slopes, and use these slopes for timber and wildlife only” [but logging steep slopes is bad, too, especially clear- cuts , and burning steep slopes is really bad].

Means and Ends in Wildlife management (1936), unpublished.
“Scientific wildlife management has recognized the invisible interdependencies in the biotic community.”
“Agriculture has assumed that… an artificial plant community can be substituted for a natural one. There are omens that this assumption may be false. Pests and troubles in need of control seem to be piling up even faster than new science.” [and pesticides from the 1940’s on almost wiped out the bald eagle and osprey.]
“Wildlife management has already admitted its inability to replace natural equilibria with artificial ones.”

Conservationist in Mexico. American Forests 43:3 (Mar 1937), 118-129, 146
“In Chihuahua… Deer irruptions are unknown. Mountain lions and wolves are still common…whether the presence of a normal complement of predators is not accountable for the absence of irruption? If so, would not our mountains be better off and might we not have more normalcy in our deer herds, if we let the wolves and lions come back..?”
“I sometimes wonder whether semi-arid mountains can be grazed at all without ultimate deterioration. I know of no arid region which has survived grazing for long periods of time, although I have seen individual ranches which seemed to hold out for shorter periods.”
[Unfortunately, Mexico is now beset by drug lords, drug crops and heavy logging, plus grazing by the ejidos, all since Leopold’s time, so it’s facing the same problems.]

Ecology and Politics (1941), unpublished,
“It is probably true that food can, by…stores of fertilizer, be increased indefinitely” [It cannot, as food values lessen as soil qualities lessen. Non-organic food today is almost nutritionless, except for calories.]
“Ethics are an adaption without parallel in animal history… But, each reversion becomes more destructive than the last, for organized predation, backed by tools, is far more fearsome than unorganized individual… [human predation]… Even in peacetime, the energies of mankind are directed not toward creating a better life, but toward dividing [italics are Leoplod’s] the materials supposedly necessary for it.”
“We may begin by admitting that the technological formula in its early stages, actually succeeded in raising carrying capacity… But this is no evidence that it will continue to do so indefinitely… All ecology is replete with laws which begin to operate at a threshold and cease operating at a ceiling.” [Science and technology will not save us as it just furthers humans’ basic flaws]
“Tools have raised carrying capacity, and ethics have at times suspended predation, but perhaps this is possible only within certain limits of population density… instead of calling a moratorium on science, as some have proposed, why not call a moratorium on human increase? Why not seek for quality in place of ciphers [numbers] in human populations?” [why not indeed!?]
“Self- limitation of population, like ethics, depends upon unanimity for success. Hitler and Mussolini are advocating competitive multiplication, obviously with a view to bigger predations.” […the death camps and killing of Jews, etc. To populate with more Germans and kill off others was Hitler’s goal. I fear more and worse Hitlers because people won’t or can’t limit themselves. As resources diminish people will compete ruthlessly] “Democracy, like ethics, may depend on mutuality of acceptance, i.e. on absence of attack. Certainly it is militarily inefficient, and when liberals fear that total defense of democracy may destroy democracy, they are voicing this apprehension [but, to let Hitler and fascism in the door is worse!]”
“Returning to the assumptions of technological culture, we assume, I think naively, that increasing ‘take’ (i.e. more extraction, …consumption of resources) always raises standards of living. Sometimes it merely raises population levels… Feeding starving deer is a close analogy. ..the price of ameliorating their lot is more deer, more need of feeding, more damage to the range, and eventual malnutrition and deterioration of the herd. [predators balance the situation, but in humans we must use human intelligence to over- ride human biology and control our population with birth control or we will get predators like Hitler of an even more hideous nature!]
“There can be no doubt that a society rooted in the soil is more stable than one rooted in pavements [one can, at least, grow food]. The disruptive movements which now threaten the continuity of human culture are born not on the land, but in the factories and offices…, and in the capitols.”

Land-Use and Democracy. Audubon Magazine 44:5(Sept- Oct 1942), 259-265
“I have no illusion that all of the products of land- abuse are easy to identify, or as easy to do without, as a wild bird-skin on a hat. I do assert that many products of land-abuse can be identified…
[Me — eat local and organic, small farm products. Buy only sustainable forestry products. Reduce, reuse, recycle, repair. Drive less, don’t idle vehicles. Do without. Don’t use pesticides or herbicides. Don’t burn. Don’t cut live trees. Plant trees. Don’t pollute. Don’t use drugs — it’s destroying the Mexican environment and Mexican society! Use birth control! Buy organic milk from small farmers dedicated to habitat. Don’t buy newspapers or magazines — read it online. Buy organic wheat and products. Don’t hunt. Support the return of natural predators (wolves, etc), support wilderness and wildlife sanctuaries, support habitat renewal, USE BIRTH CONTROL!…]
“We need more sanctuaries, but some of them will boomerang until they serve a better public.”[We must become the better public!!!!!! One thing Leopold has talked about before is that people tend to let the government take charge and make things “better”, but the government only does what the supposed majority wants, or the ” majority ” that had the most money and influence and “friends” in government. The people must change their behavior, not wait for rules that limit them, which they then protest. It is the responsibility of people to be responsible!!!! To be better stewards of the land, better members of their community and country, taking care of it, not exploiting it for their own profit! They have created a bad society that cannot and will not be sustainable!]

The Wayfinders

I read this book awhile back. The author then regretted the subtitle after it was published because it makes it seem as if “Ancient Wisdom” is not relevant to today. On the contrary, as his book states, it is more relevant than ever. Perhaps the title could have been “Why Native wisdom matters in the modern world”.

One chapter deals with the supposed “ancient” practice of slash and burn farming by Indigenous peoples of tropical forest, such as in Africa or the Amazon. This has become the practice in modern times, but it seems to have been born out of imperialist influences. I quote from the book: ” … it would have been totally impractical and utterly maladaptive to devote so much effort for so little return. Rather than slash, burn, plant, harvest, and move on, people would have had every incentive to stay put. Indeed, as geographer William Denevan has written, ‘the picture of swidden, or slash and burn, as an ancient practice by which Indians kept themselves in a timeless balance with Nature is a total myth.‘ [Emphasis mine] Slash-and-burn agriculture in the Amazon may be a comparatively recent development… ”

I’ll leave the rest of the argument for you to read about on your own. This book was available to me on e-book through my library.

In the U.S., in the Northwest, everyone in the logging camps acknowledged a “stunning” admission that the forests had been drastically overcut every year since modern forestry was implemented in the 1940s. They knew, the logging companies knew, and the U.S. Forest Service knew! We, the people, have been screwed over for a long time in regards to our natural resources. Ancient, old growth forests in the “multiple-use” forestry method, which I quaintly call “multiple abuse forestry”, were clear-cut. They were described as ” decadent” and “over-mature”, an attitude which persists today! But, by any ecological definition, they were at their richest and most biologically diverse stage. There was a planned “falldown” effect in which the decline of old growth forests and the decline in timber production was promoted as if it was a natural phenomenon. You’ve been bamboozled, people, and you’re still being lied to. Quite frankly, the U.S. Forest Service knows NOTHING about forestry, nor forest eco-systems, nor wildlife habitat. The Native Americans did not “log”, of course.

First Nations do not stand in the way of a country’s destiny, as Wade Davis says, but contribute to it, if given a chance. They have rarely, if ever, been given that chance. I quote: ” These cultures do not represent failed attempts at modernity, marginal peoples who somehow missed the technological train of history. On the contrary, these peoples, with their dreams and prayers, their myths and memories, teach us that there are indeed other ways of being, alternative visions of life, birth, death, and creation. ”

History shows us that when people and cultures are squeezed, extreme idealogies emerge. “Cruel and complex as the Chinese domination of Tibet has been, it is fundamentally a story of power and presumption, the economic and military capability of one people to impose its will on another, and the assertion of [its] superiority…” Sound familiar? It’s us in the U.S. against the Native Americans. It was the Spanish against the native indigenous people of meso and south America. It was the whites in Africa…on and on. This dynamic, Wade Davis says, is what drives the “cult of progress that is the modern paradigm.” The motives may in some instances be benign, but the consequences are devastating “for the peoples and cultures whose lives the international community has elected to change and improve”, as well as causing the devastating affects to the environment!

The impacts of climate change are now beginning to be felt. Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide are at their highest in 650,000 years, Davis says. Oceans are becoming warmer and more acidic, and the population of zooplankton, the basis of the marine food chain, has dropped 73% since 1960. Half the coral reefs of the world either have died or are on the verge of collapse. Polar ice caps are melting. Glacier National Park is losing its glaciers. There are many less than when I was a girl, 50 years ago! This is a good place to promote the wisdom and knowledge and memory of old people. Amnesia is not a good idea when you are destroying your planet, young people! Also, it’s up to you to carry the ball now. My old generation has passed it on to you and I’m appalled by the laziness, selfishness, materialism, and lack of concern in the younger generation! Mommy and Daddy aren’t going to do it for you this time! Neither is the government, which has just become a perpetual lying machine, Democrats and Republicans, both. Technology isn’t going to solve it either. As Ted Turner, the ecologist, bison rancher and former media mogul said, “we won’t be able to buy ourselves out of this one “. The glaciers that feed the Ganges are receding at a rate of 40 meters per year. In our lifetime, the Ganges, a major source of water as well as a religious inspiration, could become a seasonal river, running only in flood season. The economic, political, and psycholgical impacts on India if this happens would be devastating, and would impact even our prissy, smug, “it won’t happen here” United States of America.

But, it is happening here. The largest known insect infestation in the history of North America has destroyed millions of acres of forest in the western U.S., more than 130,000 square kilometers of lodgepole pine in British Columbia, and threatens to spread to the boreal forests of the subarctic. One of the consequences of this is total forest destruction by massive forest fires. Some of this change has also been caused by the clear-cut method of forestry, which allows crowded, single aged mono-species to grow back, if any trees grow back at all. Then, the US Forest Service does not thin, but allows it to be “natural”. When they thin, they cut mature, multi-species, multi-aged forests which don’t need it, destroying the food system for wildlife and destroying all the young trees — the future forests!

Throughout the world, mountain or isolated people who have had no part in creating this ecological disaster are seeing the affects of climate change on their lives. “…they are taking personal responsibility for the problem, often with a seriousness of intent that puts many of us to shame. Eighty percent of the fresh water that feeds the western coast of South America is derived from Andean glaciers. These are receding at such an obvious rate that the pilgrims to the Qoyllur Rit’i, believing the mountain gods to be angry, are no longer carrying ice from the Sinakara back to their communities, forgoing the very gesture of reciprocity that completes the sacred circle of the pilgrimage and allows for everyone to benefit from the divine.” If only the materialistic people of the modern countries would make equivalent sacrifices! One can’t even get people to stop idling their vehicle while checking their phones every time they go in and out of some place and some parking lot!

In the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Columbia, the “mamos observe each season the recession of the snow and icefields that for them are the literal heart of the world. They notice the disappearance of birds, amphibians, and butterflies, and the changing ecological character of the páramos, which are drying out. They have increased both their ritual and political activities, and have formally called upon the Younger Brother [us!] to stop destroying the world.”

But, it isn’t just indigenous peoples whose life is affected. My heart and spirituality also reside in nature. I’ve noticed many changes and it’s heart-breaking. I see my friends being killed. I see them suffering to survive. Many special places in which I found respite from humanity have been destroyed for someone else’s profit or through careless arrogance.

How can we consider ourselves a “civilization” if we destroy our own world?

“If you want to know what happens when the constraints of culture and civilization are lost, merely look around the world and consider the history of the last century.” And, it isn’t good — two world wars, other wars, terrorism, poverty, starvation…

This was a blog that I wanted to post last spring but covid-19 closed places where I could get electricity and wi-fi. But, here it is and what can we do about this problem? LOTS! Or less, actually — less materialism, less consumerism, less populating, less polluting, less greed, less selfishness. And more — campaigns to get people to quit idling their vehicles, more activities that don’t cost money or use resources, campaigns to get places to not use disposable items, to learn how to wash dishes, for instance, and not spread disease, more creativity in solving these vast problems instead of just letting things slide, more people involved.

Hunting and Gun shooting

It’s that time of year again, when humans can prove their species superiority behind the barrel of a lethal weapon, a gun, and heedlessly take the life of an innocent, wild, minding-their-own-business creature, and, possibly, not even eat it (the meat sitting in a freezer somewhere until it is too old and freezer burned to eat), and some animal head Taxidermied and mounted on some wall. It doesn’t take any superiority to get behind a gun and kill something. The idea that one is “getting back to one’s roots” is fallacious, also. It’s more probable that shooting guns and hunting regresses a person from his/her humanity and removes them from nature instead of connecting them with nature.

Some people feel that it is necessary to kill their meat if they are going to eat meat, instead of just buying prepackaged meat from a grocery store. But, why wild animals, whose numbers are declining due to human overpopulation and habitat loss? They don’t need humans to keep their populations in check. Nature has that all worked out. And it’s too easy to kill some creature from afar, some creature you don’t even know. If killing one’s food is deemed necessary, it would be far better to buy a live cow from a farmer, shoot it, skin and butcher it; or buy a few chickens, wring their necks, pluck and gut them, etc. It costs to have a hunting license; it costs to have a wild animal butchered, as many people do — they aren’t even doing it themselves! Even better, one should raise an animal and kill it for food — see how it feels to kill some creature you know, get “in tune” with your “natural” self that way! I’m not a vegetarian, though I wish I could be (but I can’t digest beans), and I don’t believe it is necessary to kill one’s meat if one is aware where the life came from and have an attitude of thankfulness.

People act as it nature is there solely for them to use and abuse. That isn’t true — nature exists in and of itself. It’s humans that aren’t necessary at all for life on earth to continue. We are the aberrant species.

It’s just plain pretentious to think that one should go hunting and kill wild animals when humans have taken over so much of the planet and raise cows, bison, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, and more, for food. Leave the wild animals alone!

Some go out hunting because they “get in time with nature”!! What a rotten, destructive way to get in tune! Some say gun shooting “relaxes” them — that is just plain psychotic!!! Yikes! Others have some ridiculous fantasy of dressing up in leather clothes and shooting ancient guns like some Daniel Boone character (who was a developer, not a “mountain man”! He went west, shot and killed all the ” game”, cut trees, burned stumps, built cabins, invited his friends and family to join him, then when it got too crowded, he went a little further west and did the same thing, over and over again, essentially “paving” the way for settlers). But the modern “Daniel Boone” has a pickup truck (and probably a “town” car), a modern house with flush toilets, hot and cold running water, electricity, heater, etc. — so, it’s just another harmful (to wildlife) and pretentious fantasy. What’s so noble about someone blasting the life out of some wild and innocent creature? Nothing!

Others can’t go into the woods without a gun to shoot off to “warn” animals away — or warn other gun shooters, which is an obvious vicious (pun intended) cycle! They also claim to be “getting in touch with nature”!! These kind of paranoid visits to the woods do not bring understanding or awareness of nature. Once again, the human is imposing themself and their way of thinking, and their arrogance, on a whole ecosystem of interconnected wild lives, from birds to bees to insects to deer, bear and mountain lions, none of which need that conceited, fearful human with a gun coming into their home territory. In the 1970s, there was an old lady, Grandma Gatewood, in her 60s, who walked the Appalachian trail by herself several times! She carried neither backpack nor gun and did not worry about wild animals hurting her. She had a word for all those over- teched, armed “back woods” people — “panty-waists”!! (Insert emoticon with a sarcastic smile, except there isn’t any like that).

And all the while I’m writing this while out in the woods, some panty-waist has been walking about shooting of a gun, constantly, below me. I can mark their progress by the shots, but I would rather just not even know of their existence. Amen!