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Conservation & Common Sense Mutually Exclusive
by Jeff Fullerton
[email protected]

Attribute to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise

Birmingham—This morning, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) issued a Notice of Violations to the City of Birmingham for killing 11,760 watercress darters, an endangered species protected by the Endangered Species Act, and also for injuries to some 8,900 additional darters. The Service is seeking a civil penalty totaling $2,975,000. This is one of the largest fish kills in the history of the Endangered Species Act.
http://www.fws.gov/southeast/news/2010/r10-045.html

The story is a little old; but don't ya love it?

Familiar themes. Big government vs little government.
"Civil servants " screw up big time! The city taxpayers are get soaked. Puns intended.

What a waste of time and effort. I'm a little short on time for giving biology lessons but that fish would be easy to increase and establish new populations by stocking in public lakes as a forage species. But that would be too easy. Endangered species are like patients on life support in the ICU. Expensive to maintain and longer you can keep them that way the more useful they are to the conservation industry for making political hay and regulating land use and other agenda driven activities. The environmental movement follows after the Civil Rights movement in becoming a grievance industry.

Ironic that the fish was living in a habitat created by human activity. Which says volumes about how to make more. Take a bulldozer and build ponds in 100 spring fed hollows and seed them with a few dozen watercress darters.

But that would be too simple. And that's why it's hands off for anyone who is not a member of the ecology priesthood. Government is on the business to manage crisis and problems that are complex and require scientific expertise to do it right. God forbid some hobbyist accomplish in a 300 gallon tub what the Fish and Wildlife Service could do on a million dollar budget!

Conservation and Common Sense seem mutually exclusive any more.
And how do you reason with power?

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