The Malheur occupancy wasn't the result of a few crazy anti-government malcontents. No, it was part of an organized plan to take public lands out of the public trust and give them to corporate interests. Public trust be damned.
The troubling thing is that similar delusions infect pockets of unrest throughout the West, lending a kind of twisted legitimacy to efforts at both the state and national level to transfer western public lands to states and counties. To be sure, not all the proponents of this liquidation of America’s national patrimony subscribe to wing-nut doctrines; sometimes they just use them.
Greed can suffice to motivate those who lust for the real estate bonanzas and resource giveaways that would result if states gained title to, say, the 264 million acres presently controlled by the Bureau of Land Management(BLM). General combativeness and hostility toward government also play their roles, and the usual right-wing mega-donors, including the Koch brothers, pump money into a bewildering array of agitator groups to help keep the fires of resentment burning.
Southern California's Salton Sea is an incredible accident. California's largest lake (by surface area) has no permanent water source. It came into being when canals diverting Colorado River water to the Imperial Valley failed resulting in two years of river water flooding a ancient salt plain. Now, 111 years later, the Salton Sea is a tiger that California politicians are holding by the tail. Let go and face an environmental disaster. Save the lake and spend hundreds of millions to preserve the results of an a century old accident.
Yet the Salton Sea is more than just a massive dust
suppressor and an agricultural drainage reservoir for the county that produces
two-thirds of the vegetables consumed in the United States during the winter.
Over the years, the Sea has become a valuable wildlife refuge, and a prime
resting place for migratory birds as more than 90 percent of California
wetlands were drained for human development. “You got a situation now where the
Salton Sea is about the last large-scale stopover point of the Pacific flyway,”
said Wilcox, referring to the major flyway for migratory birds that extends
from Alaska to Patagonia. “And if you lose that stopover point, I don’t know
what happens to the birds.”
Recovering the wolf is as much about the animal’s image as
it is about its numbers. This isn’t straightforward when the animal is depicted
as a devious killer capable of wearing the clothes of an elderly woman after
devouring her or as the tormentor of a rather exhausted Liam Neeson in the
wilds of Alaska.
“Wolves are always a polarizing topic,” said Doug Smith,
project leader for the wolf restoration project at Yellowstone national park.
“It’s like the abortion issue of wildlife. Some people just hate them. The
frontier for wolves has always been the hearts and minds of humans.
Solar farms can aid biodiversity. Not many coal fired power plants can say
that.
…a new study from the UK's Solar Trade Association (yes, we should take it with a pinch of salt!), reported on over at Cleantechnica, adds weight to the argument that solar farms can be a net positive for the environment—even before you factor in the benefits of emissions savings.
Looking at 11 solar farms across the UK, and comparing those farms to adjacent plots of land on the same farms that were under similar management practices prior to solar installation, researchers found a significant increase in bird diversity, broadleaf plant diversity, wildflowers and many other species. This benefit held up both for solar farms that were specifically managed with biodiversity benefits in mind (for example, seeding the surrounding area with wildflowers)—but there was also an increase in biodiversity on solar farms that were periodically grazed.
Have a great day. Go out an Just Save One.
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