The red-cockaded woodpecker is an endangered species in Arkansas.
Credit: U.S. Department of Agriculture Flickr
More than a dozen state attorneys general are asking Pres. Donald Trump to throw out recent federal rules regulating the environment for endangered or threatened plants and animals. The states claim the rules, which enlarge the definition of species habitat, give the federal government excessive power over state and private lands.
The rules govern implementation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and were made a year ago by Pres. Barack Obama’s administration. In January the state officials sent a letter to the Trump transition team asking for repeal, arguing the rules will cost states and private land owners billions of dollars by blocking or delaying the use or development of their properties. “It’s such a massive land grab by the federal government,” Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge says. But at least one study shows implementation of the ESA has affected very few development projects during the current decade.
Rutledge, along with Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
So few Americans are aware of the complexity of nature, the connections that support all of life on our planet. The bounty of medicines that allopathic drugs are based on and the herbal remedies we would lose if birds weren’t there to fertilize plants and control the balance of insects known to launch epidemics. As a whole, this nation still views nature as something up for grabs. A power over rather than power with. Which doesn’t see or experience with any great depth what nature offers beyond the thrills of rock climbing, rafting, jumping into hot springs, like the young man who died in Yellowstone and land to develop instead of space that cleans and helps regulate global temperatures. For centuries, the bird population has seemingly been endless. There were always more to hunt. Now, thousands are disappearing off the face of the planet. One has only to experience going outside in the morning and seeing lawns and streets littered with hundreds of tiny bodies.
I retain hope with the recent gradual self empowerment of the indigenous peoples that more will begin to view nature, differently. What is needed is more articles, short films, educational books, community education and action to shift the nation into greater awareness and a power with partnership with nature. Slicing and dicing these areas puts us all at risk on multiple fronts.
The Natural Resources Defense Council has lawyers suing the federal and state governments to help stop the killing of our precious co-inhabitants of the earth and are very successful in a lot of cases. They are going after Monsanto and other monopolies that have no respect for wildlife, with their killing pesticides like Roundup and other toxic killers of bees and birds and butterflies. I admire the NRDC for their tireless efforts to save these poor critters.
P.S. China has stopped the legal ivory trade in their country by the end of this year, to try and save the elephants from extinction.