Wolves making bedfellows strange...

If there is one North American animal that symbolizes irrational fear, it is the gray wolf. Despite the number of encounters being less than a handful, at any minute, we are told, these denizens of Satan sit waiting on the yard edge, fangs dripping and waiting to steal our children and devour our shih tzu's. Amy Klobuchar has for some reason made ending federal protection a goal; this perhaps best shows the utter uselessness in her five years of service. Congressman Cravaack,  of New Hampshire also sent out a press release shouting we were all now safe from the endless onslaught of bloodthirsty canines. In both cases, they mentioned livestock, "pets" and residents. I want to know why residents are now safer, despite there not being a single historical record of an attack in Minnesota? Ever. According to the Klobuchar press release, "In 2010, the Department of Agriculture removed 192 problem wolves that were responsible for the deaths of nearly 100 cows and sheep and 15 dogs". I want to know how 192 wolves were found to be responsible for the death of a lousy 115 animals; I also wish to know how many more animals were killed by cars, transported diseases and simple human stupidity. For Cravaack, as an ignorant out of state republican ( I know it's redundant), it is to be expected. But for Klobuchar, I can only assume it is pandering to the idiot redneck backwoods hick crowd, or some lunatic leftover Ely relative who coached her into this. We are all safe now...from nothing.

Polymet and Glencore

This recent news should frighten everyone. Glencore's record is more or less criminal; it has left polluted sites throughout the world and either encouraged or used human rights violations to ensure extra profit. I will do an annoying link dump to show sources: warning; the reading becomes depressing very quickly. The best symbol for this is having Tony Hayward as your Environmental and Safety chief.

And since jump break doesn't work with this darn editor right now...:

http://bit.ly/tJrlTo
http://bit.ly/soK6Os
http://bit.ly/rtkoD3
http://bit.ly/r4U2kd

Cui bono?

The Illusion of Flags:

DULCE ET DECORUM EST(1)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares(2) we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest(3) began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots(4) 
Of tired, outstripped(5) Five-Nines(6) that dropped behind.
Gas!(7) Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets(8) just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime(9) . . .
Dim, through the misty panes(10) and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering,(11) choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud(12) 
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest(13) 
To children ardent(14) for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.(15)

Wilfred Owen
8 October 1917 - March, 1918

The Range DFL, the Environment: Are they stupid or drunk?

More likely just stupid.
Their record from this year:
Lowering the sulfate standard
Exempting the IRRRB from environmental review
Doing this while Polymet has a deal with Glencore
Pushing for mining on state and private lands

This is not the DFL anymore and hasn't been for a long time. It's a group that rolls over and exposes its belly to anyone wanting to destroy the place.

And some wonder

Why citizens are cynical about politicians. The Range DFL'ers  on the IRRRB are willing to deal with these people?

Quarterwits on parade

Watching the World Die

In the words of Aldo Leopold:
"One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise." Aldo Leopold



As an ecologist, everyday I feel about nature as I do about someone terminally ill; I see parts of them disappearing little by little, piece by piece. I grieve everyday I open my eyes. But with nature, other insults are added. Eons of evolution and community networks are destroyed for a banal stripmall, or the profits of foreign investors extracting ore and leaving a wasteland. The final insult is when the people who actually live here want this to happen, so they can get a bigscreen tv and an oversized truck. Some may wonder what is the best evidence for Evolution; it is fairly simple and clear. It is impossible for us to  be creatures of any god; no supreme being of any grand intelligence would create a species obsessed with monster trucks or small transparent pieces of  highly compressed carbon, or one that would destroy where it lives so it can have an atv. Only evolution could produce such an idiotic talking monkey.

Defining Sustainability....

I found this 2010 study from UMD "Quality of Life and and Population Movement on the Iron Range". An interesting result is the popularity of "Sustainability" and it is curious how the writers define future "sustainable" activities : "development dollars could be spent on mountain biking trails, tourism development near the casino at Giants Ridge, pit-diving, and ATV trails that celebrate the outdoors, serve local residents, and bring in tourism dollars (PP 36)". None of these has anything to do with sustainability and rely completely on the outside population to spend money. One might think that developing local resources, such as redeveloping the former agricultural base (less importation of food), might have entered consciousness.Two immediate benefits are decreased long term fuel use (reducing importation) and recirculating money locally, rather than exporting it to far off corporations. Instead, however, we have ATV trails defined as "sustainable"; anyone making this statement should be handed the "most dumba$* idea of the decade" award. Unfortunately, this is what often passes for the mainstream economic development thinking on the Range, and it is outside the lead agencies you find actual creativity.

The Pagami Creek Fire and Land Policy:

Due to their responsibility for the Pagami creek fire, the Forest Service is an easy scapegoat right now. However, they are trapped between public expectations, ignorant politicians who tell the public sometimes outright lies and a long held, now thankfully disappearing belief that all natural processes like fire are bad.

For nearly a century after logging created the severe fires of 1910, the policy was to put all fires out. Until science showed that ecosystems are long since adapted to fire, all fire was considered evil. Finally, it is now recognized that fire is a natural ecosystem process. In recent decades, this has become an on the ground practice. The management for the Pagami creek fire is just one example. The fire, if nature had its way, would most likely have burned a similar area until the weather changed.

The idea that it is a “catastrophe” or a “tragedy” is purely a human judgment. That judgment, of course, is only because of human occupation and property.

The true tragedies lie deeper within; both in people’s assumptions about nature and our political system’s continued subsidies and allowance for human dispersal no matter what the cost. A useful corollary for fire is this: Building any structure in this landscape and not expecting fire is the same as building on a sandbar island in the Mississippi river and complaining about spring flooding while repeatedly expecting others to pay the rebuilding costs. The expectation for fire protection is similar; the Ham Lake fire cost about 11 million dollars and benefitted cabin and resort owners on the Gunflint trail. If one added the fire protection before, during and after, the bill is enormous and others (we) are paying for it. The same is true for this fire; again, the public is paying for the property protection of a few, subsidized by roads and fire protection, who choose to build structures in a fire prone landscape far from any infrastructure.

The Forest Service, like all government, is caught between reality, the delusional expectations of people and the interests of the elite who are mostly concerned with extracting as much cash money as they can from everyone, whether politicians or citizens. The Fire-Industrial complex, the system of contractors and agency employees who rely on large scale fire suppression for their existence and income simply adds inertia.

Whenever a fire occurs, there are always claims that somehow more and different management such as logging are the solution. This is not the case, however; the true costs of preventing fire on the landscape would rival a Defense Department cost plus contract and alter the ecosystem forever. Local zoning officials are as much to blame; by failing to recognize the reality of fire and not incorporating that reality into codes has as much to with any “tragedy” as someone deliberately lighting a match. The Pagami creek fire is merely the result of decades of these policy failures.

Until we recognize that nature has its own whims regardless of our desires, we will continue to pay the enormous cost that is unlimited human settlement. I don’t have the space here to list the biological costs, however, and that is where the true tragedy is.

For acts bordering on sociopathy, we have this: Farmer snapped over Pelicans. According to his lawyer, he simply "snapped". Having worked in the field, I have dealt with the stupid and arrogant decisions people make regarding wildlife. While everyone focuses on the act itself, let's look at the decisions he made leading to this. He chooses to rent and farm land immediately adjacent to a lake and does this for several years despite the birds nesting there. It is only seven acres of rented land yet he still insists and rather than giving up, he continues. Finally, instead of saying it is only seven acres, he chooses, after being warned, to destroy them, assuming officials aren't returning. And to top it off, he has received almost 600,000 in farm subsidies. This shows precisely just how messed up farm policy is; subsidies for destroying things.