By Jim Beers:

While these state biologists are working hard to come across as good guys as they try to assuage the anger of rural Montanans, note what they say and not how they sound. Note especially that last sentence.

If they see their job as “charting a course where the prey, and the preyed-upon can coexist” they are no friends of rural Montanans. This Disneyesque fairyland where the “preyed and preyed-upon coexist” is EXACTLY the perverted philosophy that got us all into this growing pickle,

OH LOOK! Out there on that island in Lake Superior (where there is NO HUNTING, no towns, no farms, no rural residences, no ranches, no timber management, no economy, no livestock, no hunting dogs, no working dogs, no walking off the designated trails, etc., etc.) accessed only by ferry, owned and kept sealed off by the National Park Service and known as Isle Royal National Park: the wolves and moose coexist! OOOOHHHH!

Montanans concerned about what the state and federal government in league with radical environmental/animal rights cabals have done and are doing to Montana, take note. Those that do not recognize that you are the real “preyed-upon” are not your friends, whether it is through ignorance or secret evil motives makes no difference.

The “hard part” they envision is no harder than falling off a log. They think all they must do is maintain wolves/bears/lions while keeping a few elk/deer/moose in “coexistence”. Hello, is anyone home?

- They don’t see any responsibility to all those Montanans outside Montana cities that must live with wolves/bears/lions. They will just have to live with however many and wherever these large predators occur.

- They see no responsibility to maintain huntable numbers and distributions of elk/deer/moose. Whatever numbers and wherever they occur will be “natural” and therefore pleasing to Gaia and the national urban elites that they see funding their futures with OUR tax dollars.

- They see no responsibility to maintain the financial health of the livestock industry.

- They acknowledge no responsibility to protect rural dogs from pets and hunting dogs to watchdogs and working dogs.

- They acknowledge no threat from wolf diseases and infections that threaten humans, dogs, livestock, and desirable (i.e. sought for hunting) wildlife.

- They see no responsibility to the safety and well-being of kids catching rural school buses or old ladies walking to rural mailboxes or kids camping or fishing or fathers working far-off jobs while mother tends to the kids on an isolated rural home site.

No, all these Bozos think they “have” to do is “chart a course” to “prey and preyed-upon” “coexistence”. Do you really want Montana (outside a few Montana cities of course) to be another Isle Royal National Park?

Men, the road ahead is going to be tough. All of us have to fight our way back out of this tar-baby morass that government bureaucrats, radical elites, and our own past indifference has gotten us into. It is not going to be easy.

None of us need these namby-pamby bureaucrats either as advisors or certainly not as leaders. Letting the likes of these current state FWP, DNR, etc. bureaucrats remain in place is like emptying out Guantanamo Bay prisoners to scatter throughout US Forces fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. It not only won’t work. It is suicide!

Jim Beers
25 May 2012

Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC. He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC. He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority. He resides in Eagan, Minnesota with his wife of many decades.

Jim Beers is available to speak or for consulting. You can receive future articles by sending a request with your e-mail address to: jimbeers7@comcast.net

From Fox News:

“Kahan said that he thought another finding of the study was more important: That people’s cultural views – how much they value things like individualism and equality — affect their views on global warming much more than actual knowledge about science. Regardless of how much they know about science, individualists were relatively unconcerned about global warming, whereas those who value equality were very concerned.”

“House lawmakers will consider an international proposal next week to give the United Nations more control over the Internet.

The proposal is backed by China, Russia, Brazil, India and other UN members, and would give the UN’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU) more control over the governance of the Internet.”<<<Read the Rest>>>

People with personal agendas assume the majority of people are ignorant and swallow their foolish nonsense without uttering a word or even questioning ridiculous reasoning and flawed logic.

Found in the Sacramento Bee, via PR Newswire, an article claims that the increase in ticks and tick-borne disease is on the rise in the United States due to forest fragmentation. The article describes fragmentation as: “large woodlands are split into smaller, more isolated sections for such uses as building roads, shopping centers or housing developments.”

Blaming forest fragmentation for increased ticks and disease might be an easier pill to swallow if the reasoning used to convince people that building anything is bad, made any real sense. Let’s first consider that this article, while it doesn’t come right out and say it precisely, implies that because of this so-called forest fragmentation and increased roads, chopped up forests, shopping centers and housing developments, there aren’t enough forests left for ticks to live in, therefore they are forced to live in our backyards.

Not that one chart of information is the answer to all tick problems, before a person makes such claims, perhaps they should consider the chart below. (Also found here.)

As compared to 1880, all 16 counties in the state of Maine have more forested areas in 1995. Many of those counties have remarkable increases. Consider Cumberland County, where Maine’s largest city, Portland, can be found. In 1880, 50% of the county was forested. Today that number is over 70%. Statewide, Maine was 62% forested in 1880 and in 1995 that number has grown to just shy of 90%. While this only speaks for Maine, which is heavily infested with ticks this season, one has to question a person’s conclusions about forest fragmentation and tick and tick-related disease growth.

But this isn’t all. The article states that with more people building and moving into the suburbs: “human and pet interaction with ticks and tick hosts naturally escalated.” No argument here. Here’s a quote from Michael W. Dryden, DVM, MS, PhD, a distinguished professor of parasitology at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Kansas State University:

There are clearly more ticks in more places than ever before, and a big part of that equation is forest fragmentation.

The fine doctor’s claim is that there are more ticks because there’s less forests, and forests are where ticks need to live and therefore with less forests, due to fragmentation, there are more ticks. Am I getting this right?

The article further states that: “The conditions created by forest fragmentation are conducive to the proliferation of ticks.” According to the article, ticks are forced to feed more on the blood of their hosts, i.e. deer and white-footed mice, “since many other species that ticks feed off of cannot survive in fragmented environments. So, both the disease-carrying animals and infectious ticks are left to multiply.”

This might help explain a claim that there are more disease-infected ticks but it certainly runs counter to the claim that there are more ticks because there’s less forest or that it’s broken up. Isn’t it contradictory to claim that fewer species can survive in fragmented forests while at the same time claiming that ticks and deer and mice are growing prolifically in fragmented forests?

Clearly forest fragmentation is not a “big part of the equation” in the growing number of ticks in this country. I would concur that perhaps the increase in diseased ticks comes from a claim that other species that ticks feed on don’t do well in fragmented forests. I don’t have any data to support or refute that claim.

That still leaves us with some answered questions, however. Why are there more deer living in people’s backyards in these so-called fragmented forests? There are a few factors to consider. People build beautiful homes and create a great walk-up restaurant of fine shrubbery and grasses for deer to feed on. Deer also are moving out of the forests to escape overblown populations of predators, i.e. wolves, coyotes, bears, lions, bobcat, etc. Deer aren’t stupid. They will go where the food is fine and the risk of being eaten alive by large predators is greatly reduced. That’s a fact.

With clearly more forests available today than 100 years ago, and the efforts by environmentalists and animal rights groups to protect predators, deer are drawn and forced into closer proximity with people. Naturally deer are a host of the ticks. They engorge themselves on the blood of deer and drop off and sometimes landing on people and biting them.

To claim that forest fragmentation causes more ticks is bogus and smells terribly of agenda-driven rhetoric. I call bull! If the concern is over people and pets, let’s get it right. Help people understand how to make their backyards non attractive to deer or other tick host species. In addition, educate people to the truths about how predators effect deer and other prey species and allow for the sensible control of those predators to create healthier forests and wildlife. Certainly disease-carrying ticks being transported around by deer does not for a healthy forest make.

Tom Remington