THE MISSING WORDS

By Jim Beers
Today's newspaper has a half-page environmental fairy tale that is a real tearjerker. Below the picture captioned "A large bull moose peers over the swamp grass, etc., etc." is an article titled, "Warmer weather imperils moose".
We are informed that of the 250,000 moose in the 7 states mentioned, all are doing well except for Minnesota moose that have declined from 12,000 to 7600 since "the 1980's". A parade of "scientists" and "experts" note the following:
- The 110,00 moose in Ontario are causing "concerns similar to those of their U.S. counterparts."
- A moose expert says the Minnesota moose "population is declining". Duh?
- "Researchers said they weren't sure why", but "more study is needed".
- An "Advisory Committee called on the state to do more to preserve and develop moose habitat".
- The same committee "warned last month that climate change threatens moose in Minnesota" despite an observation by its Chairman (a "moose researcher from Michigan Technical University") that "colder weather during the past two years has been good for northern Minnesota moose but the population hasn't measurably improved".
- The august Chairman is billed as someone familiar with the "uneasy relationship between moose and wolves in Michigan's Isle Royal National Park" where the moose population is as low as it has ever been in 50 years and "the shrinking food source provided by the moose threatens the Isle Royal Wolves.
- Finally, a pilot who has been taking tourists out to spot moose for 26 years has dropped his offer of a free flight "if they failed to spot a moose" because "it became too risky."
Biology, Politics, Government Funding, and Big Government are all intertwined in this crude propaganda piece:
Biology - How can moose in the other 6 states have increasing, stable, or populations held in check by hunting, yet Minnesota's decline is threatened by "climate change"? Answer: "Climate change" is a bogus excuse. Moose need browse that is encouraged by forest plant succession. The fact that a large portion of Northern Minnesota moose range is a National Park where forest plants cannot be disturbed by anything other than fire certainly has a lot to do with maturing forests that have less browse species like aspens, birch, Balsam, and willows. Add to that a National Forest that is less and less prone to "disturb" forest succession by logging and maintaining roads and you have a deficit of food, particularly winter food for moose.
Then you have predation. The fact that there are no wolf packs in Maine (60,000 moose) or New Hampshire (4,600 moose "held at that level by hunting") or Vermont (4,000 moose "kept stable through hunting") is significant. Although there are newly introduced wolf packs currently coexisting with 15,000 moose in Idaho ("stable and expanding their range") and 7,700 moose in Wyoming: those wolves are currently decimating the elk and deer populations as they also kill sheep and cattle to increase their numbers. The wolves are killing moose mostly in the winter and as they give birth but not yet in the intensity the wolves have shown elk, deer and livestock that are generally easier to kill. The 150,000 moose in Alaska have their healthy numbers thanks largely to politicians with guts like Governor Palin that ordered aerial gunning to thin wolf numbers to prevent a decrease in moose numbers. Governor Palin was right and frankly is a better biologist than these Minnesota moose "experts" whining in their beer. Oh, one more thing. This decline "since the 1980's": wasn't that shortly after the wolves were given complete federal protection? Wasn't this when trapping and shooting of wolves was prohibited. Wasn't this when the federal government "took over wolves" and states like Minnesota became grant supplicants and "gofers" (no, not gophers as in the U of M) for federal regulators and grant-dispensers? Nah, there couldn't be any relationship there, just coincidence.
Politics - What Minnesota politician would dare to ask why wolf control is not necessary to slow or stop a decline in Moose? What Minnesota politician would dare to call this "climate change" excuse a red herring? What Minnesota politician would stand up to the National Park Service or the US Forest Service and get them to start managing and allowing "public use" of the MINNESOTA renewable natural resources like timber and wildlife that are increasingly declining and going unmanaged as forest fire threats and forest fire fighting become ever greater problems for Minnesotans? US Senator Klobuchar? US Senator Franken? A Governor preparing to run for President? A state legislature and DNR that have grown the most complex hunting and fishing regulations I have encountered in a lifetime of studying hunting and fishing regulations? None of the above would say a thing just like no one will admit to the need to reduce predation by other overpopulated predators like seals and whales that are suppressing already stressed commercial marine fisheries. While the politicians all shake their heads and surely are "willing to do something" for the moose, anything beyond attending meetings and shoveling tax money to state agencies and a bevy of "experts" and "scientists" is (as another great leader recently observed about when life begins) "above" their pay grade.
Government Funding - Is there anyone that doesn't get the connection between "scientists" that call "for more study" for some emotional critter (on which they are "expert") and who will get government funding for said critter. Consider all those butterfly experts and bat scientists and sucker researchers that informed us of the endangered plight of some critter. Who got the subsequent "grants"? Who got the tenure and the assistants and a long string of studies and testimony requests all paid for by you and me? These guys says moose are declining due to climate change although cool years show no positive response. Even though they admit that its' "not clear what they're dying from", they ignore the one big moose killer (wolves) as though it does not exist. Wolf control gives absolute results in a short time; climate change and "pathogens" are never measurable, never-ending sinkhole for government funding and unaccountable career enhancement.
Big Government - As the President departs for Copenhagen to "get the Olympics for Chicago" we are wondering what he and his minions will say about "climate change" and "cap and trade" in December in Copenhagen if he doesn't "get the Olympics". If he sticks to his script "global warming", excuse me "climate change", will be front and center. The proposed "cap and trade" nonsense proposed at home will destroy businesses further and raise taxes precipitously and an international agreement will put the US under yet another Constitution-destroying international Treaty: but not to worry since there will be money flowing from it for things like "the declining moose of Minnesota". So this propaganda piece is yet another building block in the suffocating big government that no one wants but that will provide each of us (we think) with that certain something none of us can do for ourselves.
Oh, the "Missing Words":
HOW MANY moose (or wolves) are "ENOUGH"? Why isn't the fact that there are 150,000 moose thriving in Alaska "enough"? Where is it written that moose or wolves or bears must be EVERYWHERE"?
FOREST MANAGEMENT of Northern Minnesota National Parks and National Forests is absolutely vital to stabilizing and /or increasing moose food supply, particularly in the winter.
PREDATOR CONTROL works in Alaska to stabilize moose. Why is it not even mentioned in Minnesota?
There was NEVER A PERIOD IN HUMAN HISTORY WHEN ANY ANIMAL POPULATION WAS STABLE. WHY MUST MOOSE POPULATIONS BE STABLE NOW?
If Minnesota moose are being decreased by "climate change" WHY ARE THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND THE STATE OF COLORADO STILL TRYING TO ESTABLISH LYNX IN COLORADO? Colorado has always (in known history) been the absolute southern extent of Canada lynx habitat as Minnesota is today for moose. Lynx have come and gone from Colorado for eons. If the world is "warming" how can we continue to introduce a northern species like lynx into habitat we are told is becoming tropical and therefore more appropriate to jaguars and iguanas? Maybe that is why the lynx are found starving to death in Nebraska and New Mexico. The reason "climate change" is not mentioned in the lynx "Recovery" scam is because the lynx introduction is for the purposes of pleasing the rich elites and for stopping ski resorts and roads etc., etc. If "climate change" (i.e. "warming") had anything to do with the critters as occasionally charged regarding critters like lynx and wolverines at the southern extremes of their habitat and federally endangered like wolves and grizzly bears (therefore never in sufficient numbers and subject to being placed anywhere under complete and eternal federal protection) would no more be able to live in the lower 48 than polar bears or ptarmigan but hey, mox nix.
In a nation that is permitting the shredding of the best Constitutional government ever conceived by man, what's wrong with believing in fairy tales as your house burns down around you?

Jim Beers 9/30/09