Wildlife & Development

[RC]

Let me clear a couple of things up since I let you all run with the thread while I visited the Salvador Dali museum in St Pete FL...

1. The woman was definately not molesting the gator. She was a 54 yr old landscaper trimming shrubs.

2. FL has the fastest growing population of any state. Gators are NOT endangered but are protected because FL is desperately trying to reconcile growth and development with nature - reclaiming wetlands, saving the FL panther, an extremely rare butterfly only found in the keys, etc...

There IS a gator season for hunting, you have to have a specially issued permit, they are very limited, you may only hunt in specific areas.

3. Ding Darling (edited) is the park and Wildlife Sanctuary on Sanibel. The rest of the island is developed. The incident was not in or near the park. I also mentioned bears in Yellowstone because once they get used to the tourists, they become a nuisance and don't always stay in the park.
**Interesting aside, as polar bears migrate along Hudson Bay, the small families get a personal wildlife patrol escort which maneuvers them away from any developments to prevent human contact as much as possible. Gators are like polar bears with less personality - they eat, they digest their food, they eat again...

"Thinning": There is an elk refuge near Jackson Hole, WY. where, during difficult winters, wildlife service brings food, the elk congregate, eat and survive the winter. When they become "over populated", hunters are welcomed to the refuge where they sit behind hey bails and pick off whatever they like as the elk come to feed.... does that seem sick to anyone but me? I should say thats how it used to be, I don't know if its still done.

You might have noticed that I offered few opinions.

I feel sorry for the woman and I'm not partial to gators but they are part of nature.

<small>[ 07-26-2004, 09:18 PM: Message edited by: RC ]</small>

[The Great Carouser]

Originally posted by RC:

Gators are protected in FL although you see them everywhere. If they crawl up onto your lawn, you are not allowed to do anything. Even if you call animal control, they will not remove the gator unless it is considered a nuisance. i.e., its eaten your pet, lunged at your lawn mower etc...

Lived in S. FL for more years than I care to admit and Animal Control always responded to and removed as well as relocated gators when they got these calls if only to protect the animals.

IMO, when you think about it that is the logical way to do it, not responding just exacerbates the situation and if that was what happened in this poor woman's case I hope her next of kin sues the dumb SOB (agency?) who didn't respond.

Changing that intelligent and efficient policy [if it has been changed] is exactly what I'd expect from a bureaucracy run by a member of America's 'Royal (Bush) family'.

[RC]

GC-

Animal Control will respond, i.e., they will come to your residence and ask you questions like, do you have pets/children, has the gator been fed, how close to your house has it gotten?

You have to know what to say: the gator enjoys sunbathing on my porch and ran toward me as I unloaded the groceries. I have never touched, molested, nor fed the gator but I think the neighbor does it all the time.

Of course, these people are just like the rest of us and it depends who you get and what mood they're in.

I worked for an upscale community known for its spectacular golf. Rather than call animal control, they quietly removed gators to a nearby river - strictly forbidden and quite dangerous.

They also pretended not to know about the gopher tortoises, burrowing owls, and endangered woodpeckers living on the next site to be developed.

[Shapley]

GC,

On the one hand, the Bushes are accused of not being environmentally friendly, and now you accuse them of pioneering a change that would allow gators to roam our neighborhoods unmolested. I would think that Jeb Bush would be more likely to enact a "shoot on sight" policy than the other extreme, if the changes were instituted by him. However, most policies set by game and wildlife commissions are established by federal mandates or judicial decrees mandated in response to lawsuits. I doubt Jeb Bush had much to do with it.

V/R
Shapley

[RC]

Shapley-
tee hee, I knew that wouldn't slide without comment. :p

Its interesting that politics has come into the conversation however.

I note that GWB recently opened 58 million acres of NATIONAL parks/protected land to whomever wants it by making it the responsibility of the governor of the applicable state (hmmm, Jeb?) to specifically disallow mining, offroad vehicles etc...
Not sure where that is now, don't think its been actually implemented yet.
And it slipped through with hardly a blink.

[Shapley]

RC,

I think that, like the arsenic-in-the-drinking-water standards, is simply undoing some of Clinton's last minute environmental actions. The land was opened during Clinton's term, and then suddenly had to be off-limits just before he left office.

V/R
Shapley

[RC]

Not to start an entirely new debate, but like everything else political, there is more to it than just Clinton and Bush decisions.

The fact that Clinton was covering his tracks as he backed out of the White House is practically inarguable.

But the "untrammeled" aspect of Nationally preserved lands dates back to the 1964 Wilderness Act which reads in part:

DEFINITION OF WILDERNESS

(c) A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain. An area of wilderness is further defined to mean in this Act an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions and which (1) generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man's work substantially unnoticeable; (2) has outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation; (3) has at least five thousand acres of land or is of sufficient size as to make practicable its preservation and use in an unimpaired condition; and (4) may also contain ecological, geological, or other features of scientific, educational, scenic, or historical value.

This is not a topic of expertise for me but I do know that the authority of these lands USED to be exclusively federal and stemmed from the first federally designated national park in the 1860's or 70's (?) (Yellowstone).

If Clinton was the responsible party for opening these lands, thats just one more strike against him in my book.

[Shapley]

RC,

I don't mean to imply that Clinton opened the lands, only that they were opened both before and during his term. Prior to leaving office (immediately prior to it!) he enacted a number of environmental directives, such as lowering the allowable level of arsenic in drinking water to nearly unattainable (at least from an economic standpoint) level. I believe the closing of federal lands was one of those last-ditch initiatives, but I could be mistaken.

Clinton's reason for these initiatives have been the subject of debate: some say he wanted to beat Al Gore to the draw, so that he, not Gore, would be the "environment president"; some say he wanted to enact stringent rules Bush would be forced to undo, making Bush appear to be environmentally unfriendly; some say he honestly wanted these enacted, but didn't want to fight for them, or to be saddled with the economic burden on his watch, or whatever his reason may have been. It's doubtful we'll ever know, since he isn't likely to tell, and if he does tell, he isn't likely to tell truthfully.

In any case, Bush has been undoing some of these last-ditch initiatives, quietly. Some of them, like the arsenic measure, have been used to blast him in the press as wanting to "poison people by putting more arsenic in their water", even though the standards he is reverting to were just fine when Clinton was president.

V/R
Shapley

[barfle]

Originally posted by Shapley:
In any case, Bush has been undoing some of these last-ditch initiatives, quietly. Some of them, like the arsenic measure, have been used to blast him in the press as wanting to "poison people by putting more arsenic in their water", even though the standards he is reverting to were just fine when Clinton was president.

I will never understand why people feel the need to make up straw-man issues when there are so many genuine issues to discuss.

[Shapley]

Barfle,

The problem is that reporters, like most of us, don't know didley about the reality of environmental issues, so they rely on a pre-selected group of "experts" on the issue. These "experts" (nearly 100% on the left) spoon feed them a bunch of anti-Republican gibberish, which they publish.

The arsenic issue was tailor-made for journalism as it is practiced today.

V/R
Shapley

[barfle]

Shapley, I don't just mean this issue. I've seen all sorts of attacks on his military service, his college grades (don't look at my first two years, please!), on his daughters' behavior, on the "skull and bones," his drinking, and every other wild-assed idea except whether or not the response to 9/11 was valid and beneficial to the US, whether or not the budget deficit is a harbinger of fiscal woes, or if you're better off than you were four years ago.

These issues are things that affect Americans and how we live, and can have serious repurcussions if they are wrong. I'm no fan of George W. Bush. I've said it several times here on the BBB (in spite of the opinions of some of my friends whom I've met here), and if need be, I'll say it some more. But I just don't get it when people jump on clearly weak bandwagons, when there are valid points to be made on much larger issues.

[RC]

I will never understand why people feel the need to make up straw-man issues when there are so many genuine issues to discuss.

Now wait just a minute (

[treebeau]

Mute point. One that needs no discussion?

Hey RC, who are YOU to try to keep a thread ON topic?

As for the gator, last time I saw a mouth like that it had a hook in it. Ba-dum-dump.

Tim "Rodney" B.

[barfle]

Yoah suthun? Well, honey chile, I nevah! Them 'gatahs ah some bad things! Y'all shood keep yoah distance, else'n y'all git t' be lunch!

Thread hijacking is par for this course.

[barfle]

Originally posted by treebeau:
Mute point. One that needs no discussion?

Or a very quiet one.

Of course, I'm the one with the job where the word "moot" gets used fairly often.

Y'all watch out foah them 'gatahs, y' heah?

[RC]

Tim-
Me???? a hijacker?

barfle-
and no I'm not suthun by birth but sometimes I lapse after being exposed for half my life.

hijack of hijack: tee hee...exposed...

[Shapley]

Actually, looking at the thread, it looks like a logical flow of thought.

Gator bites woman, woman dies, sorry. Pretty short thread without some level of hijacking. It happened it Florida, so it's only expected that someone will blame Jeb Bush. The woman was probably a Democrat.

V/R
Shapley

[RC]

Alright, enough with the vocabulary lesson. I feel like Dan.

[piqaboo]

Theyat'd be a "hah-jackah", suhs.

[RC]

Tim,
By the by, I wasn't actually accusing anyone of hijacking. You were mistaken and should give it another once over.
What I said was that a percieved non-issue was actually relevant to the original topic.