Crowdog
05-26-2005, 06:46 AM
Endangered species, endangered sense
26 May'05
Published: Wednesday, May 25, 2005 9:18 PM EDT
The Bush administration's policy toward science has taken an awful beating lately. The Environmental Protection Agency isn't green enough. Stem cell policy is too restrictive. President Bush won't endorse the global warming treaty. The latest salvo complains that the Bush administration isn't using the most up-to-date genetic science when enforcing the Endangered Species Act.
What the environmentalists now beating the Bushes to save endangered species won't tell you is that the Endangered Species Act itself makes genetic science irrelevant. The Endangered Species Act defines a species for the purposes of the act as a "species," a "subspecies" or a "distinct population segment." If only a "distinct population segment" of a species is in danger of extinction, then the "species" can be listed as endangered.
In practice, the results are silly. Sometimes the only difference between an endangered animal and an unendangered animal is the shade of the spots (maroon is endangered, candy apple red is not). In California, an owl on one side of a highway is endangered while an identical bird on the other side is not. In Michigan, the difference between a "threatened" flatbelly snake and a snake without federal protection is a county line or the measure of latitude.
Of course, minor color variations, roads and political geography have little to do with whether a species is endangered or not. If such ludicrous standards were applied to humans, blacks in South Dakota would be endangered. Taking note of the fact that few humans live in northern parts of Alaska or the Arizona desert, Fish and Wildlife Service scientists could apply for endangered species status for humans.
That's what the ESA tends to leave out. Deserts and tundras are not good places for people to live. Life is hard. There are few resources and many dangers.
The same is true for animals. In some places, it is not so good for certain kinds of animals to live, so mostly they don't. How out of whack are things now? Well, deer, of all things, are protected species. The Columbia white-tailed deer, which lives in the Pacific Northwest, is genetically a white-tailed deer that lives in the mountains - where deer don't do so well. Many of them are simply a cross-breed of white-tails and black-tails.
In Florida, deer don't do so well in swamps, they grow up stunted and there aren't very many of them. Scientists have found the "pigmy" deer genetically identical to the regular deer that Americans slaughter by the millions every year. Pigmy deer are pigmy and sparse because the food they find in swamps isn't so good for them.
Nevertheless, your tax dollars pay to protect the "endangered" deer, while all over U.S. local and state governments pay to kill 'em or, in more dainty places, buy birth control for potential mommy deers. The law requires a recovery plan for swamp deer which is sorta like having a recovery plan for Eskimos that looks forward to the day the arctic is populated as densely as Sandusky, Ohio.
Bush administration critics such as Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which engineered the latest flap, ought to be pushing for genetics to be a part of public policy, but that should include revamping the Endangered Species Act written when today's genetic technology was science fiction.
http://www.dcexaminer.com/articles/2005/05/25/opinion/editorial/64edit26genetics.txt
26 May'05
Published: Wednesday, May 25, 2005 9:18 PM EDT
The Bush administration's policy toward science has taken an awful beating lately. The Environmental Protection Agency isn't green enough. Stem cell policy is too restrictive. President Bush won't endorse the global warming treaty. The latest salvo complains that the Bush administration isn't using the most up-to-date genetic science when enforcing the Endangered Species Act.
What the environmentalists now beating the Bushes to save endangered species won't tell you is that the Endangered Species Act itself makes genetic science irrelevant. The Endangered Species Act defines a species for the purposes of the act as a "species," a "subspecies" or a "distinct population segment." If only a "distinct population segment" of a species is in danger of extinction, then the "species" can be listed as endangered.
In practice, the results are silly. Sometimes the only difference between an endangered animal and an unendangered animal is the shade of the spots (maroon is endangered, candy apple red is not). In California, an owl on one side of a highway is endangered while an identical bird on the other side is not. In Michigan, the difference between a "threatened" flatbelly snake and a snake without federal protection is a county line or the measure of latitude.
Of course, minor color variations, roads and political geography have little to do with whether a species is endangered or not. If such ludicrous standards were applied to humans, blacks in South Dakota would be endangered. Taking note of the fact that few humans live in northern parts of Alaska or the Arizona desert, Fish and Wildlife Service scientists could apply for endangered species status for humans.
That's what the ESA tends to leave out. Deserts and tundras are not good places for people to live. Life is hard. There are few resources and many dangers.
The same is true for animals. In some places, it is not so good for certain kinds of animals to live, so mostly they don't. How out of whack are things now? Well, deer, of all things, are protected species. The Columbia white-tailed deer, which lives in the Pacific Northwest, is genetically a white-tailed deer that lives in the mountains - where deer don't do so well. Many of them are simply a cross-breed of white-tails and black-tails.
In Florida, deer don't do so well in swamps, they grow up stunted and there aren't very many of them. Scientists have found the "pigmy" deer genetically identical to the regular deer that Americans slaughter by the millions every year. Pigmy deer are pigmy and sparse because the food they find in swamps isn't so good for them.
Nevertheless, your tax dollars pay to protect the "endangered" deer, while all over U.S. local and state governments pay to kill 'em or, in more dainty places, buy birth control for potential mommy deers. The law requires a recovery plan for swamp deer which is sorta like having a recovery plan for Eskimos that looks forward to the day the arctic is populated as densely as Sandusky, Ohio.
Bush administration critics such as Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which engineered the latest flap, ought to be pushing for genetics to be a part of public policy, but that should include revamping the Endangered Species Act written when today's genetic technology was science fiction.
http://www.dcexaminer.com/articles/2005/05/25/opinion/editorial/64edit26genetics.txt