Save the Habitat, Kill the TurtlesRecently by Vin Suprynowicz: Dems To Tax Health Benefits … Unless You Join a Union
When – in the name of heaven, I demand to know when – are those responsible for enforcing the Endangered Species Act going to do something about remediating the habitat devastation and starting to recover the minuscule remaining population, before it has dwindled past the point of no return, of that brave and noble beast, the poodle? What? Are you serious, Vin? There are, like, 68 million domestic pet dogs in this country, and the poodle is the seventh most numerous breed. So there have to be literally millions of poodles out there. As a matter of fact, purebred poodles are among the 4 to 6 million dogs euthanized in America each year because homes can’t be found for them. America’s dog and cat problem is not species extinction; it’s overpopulation. Well, to anyone tempted to respond in that manner, let me clarify for you what the Endangered Species Act is really all about. You see, the number of poodles living in domestic captivity DOESN’T COUNT. Once we have succeeded in getting the noble poodle listed as threatened or endangered – as it most certainly is, in the traditional range of its wild habitat – all that will matter is the number of wild, untouched acres set aside. Once you’ve developed a house and a yard and put two happy poodles in it, for purposes of the federal ESA, you might as well have just shot the pups, because you have DESTROYED WILD POODLE HABITAT, and we are going to count your poodles as dead. In fact, we may have to take steps to stop you from allowing them to breed, up to and including “euthanizing” your captive slave dogs, since “Unlimited breeding of an endangered species in captivity is something the community has to look into.” You think I’m making this up? Here in Las Vegas, Clark County’s Desert Conservation Program – a staffed-up and well-paid division of the county Department of Air Quality and Environmental Management, better known around here as “The Dusthole Gals” – is currently going hat in hand to the appropriate chain of federal agencies, asking “permission” to amend the so-called Desert Tortoise Habitat Plan, with the purpose of “allowing” the county to develop an additional 215,000 acres of adjoining stinking desert in the decades to come. The theory, you see, is that any human activity which “moves dirt” destroys tortoise habitat, and cannot be allowed unless developers obtain federal permits for the “incidental take” of tortoises (regardless of whether a single tortoise is seen or killed), including a fee or fine of $550 per acre, which is used to build “tortoise fences” to keep the turtles from crossing the road to get to water, and so forth. Wow. Under that theory, there must be practically no tortoises left in the Las Vegas Valley, which has now been heavily developed for decades. Right? Actually, officials have rounded up more than 10,000 of the little buggers, right here in the Vegas Valley, turning them over to the Fish & Wildlife’s Desert Tortoise Conservation Center, where they and their progeny are farmed out as pets, or for experiments, or what have you. Those that aren’t euthanized for having runny noses, you understand. Marci Henson of the county’s Desert Conservation Program estimates about 2 percent of the poor little “threatened” reptiles get “euthanized.” (“Run, little tortoises, run!” as former County Commissioner Don Schlesinger once put it.) Has anyone ever gotten their $550 fee back, I asked Marci and company when they stopped by our offices Wednesday to explain the new lawsuit bait they’re dangling in front of the Nature Conservancy. Oh yes, given the economic downturn, a lot of developers are getting refunds now, if they come in and show their project is canceled and they “haven’t moved any dirt,” Ms. Henson and her associate, John Tennert, explained. No, I mean has anyone ever gotten back their $550-per-acre “tortoise remediation” fee because they can show there are now more tortoises on their land than before they developed it? That drew a blank look from Marci and her cohorts. “Oh, no,” she said, evidently horrified at the thought. Sometimes, on a Saturday morning, I drive around this town, visiting garage sales. I’ve seen quite a few kids playing with their desert tortoises in their driveways. Cliven Bundy, the last cattle rancher in Clark County, tells me when the Kern River pipeline people came through and did a federally mandated tortoise population density study as part of their required Environmental Impact Statement, they found several times more tortoises per acre on the lands where the Bundys have water tanks for their cattle than they found in the hot, dry desert – and literally 10 times the tortoise population density – the highest densities recorded – right here in the Las Vegas valley. This isn’t even counterintuitive. Early explorers found precious few tortoises in the dry Mojave desert, where the toothless reptiles struggle to find enough water and edible tender shoots. The Spaniards found only shells and thought them extinct. These animals developed in an ecosystem which had large toothy vegetarians – deer, elk, whatever – a role now filled only by cattle. In the 1920s and 1930s, tortoise populations swelled to artificially high numbers as ranchers ran cattle on these lands, meantime killing off the tortoises’ main predators, the coyote and the raven. As “environmentalists” have succeeded in running the ranchers off the land, the cattle have vanished, no one is any longer shooting coyotes and ravens, and thus tortoise populations have slumped back to historically normal levels. Why is Cliven Bundy the last active cattle rancher in Clark County? The Bureau of Land Management started altering the grazing permits, refusing to allow cattlemen to run enough cattle on the land in the spring – the only time it rains and cattle can be fattened in this climate – to make a go of their operations, all supposedly to stop the cows from “stepping on baby tortoises.” Those found “in violation” of their new, Never-in-the-Spring permits were then threatened with fines, jail time, and having their cattle seized. Then Marci and her gang stepped in. Why are there are no cattle ranchers on her “Community Advisory Committee,” I asked Marci Henson. The answer, of course, is that there’s only one rancher left. Why is that? “We acquired grazing allotments from willing sellers as part of our mitigation efforts,” she explained. “Willing sellers.” That’s a good one. Before or after the BLM showed up with rifles, threatening to shoot or jail any resisters as they rounded up and rustled the ranchers’ cattle for “permit violations”? How many tortoises are out there, I asked. Fish & Wildlife is still working to establish a “baseline population number,” Ms. Henson replied. Twenty years after the tortoise received an “emergency listing” as a threatened species in 1989, they’re still trying to establish a “baseline”? So when will they be able to tell us whether we have enough new tortoises, bred in their joyous cattle-free paradise, to de-list the species and allow humans in these parts to get back to developing our land as we see fit? 80 years from now? Eight hundred? Twenty years and no one has done a simple control experiment, releasing 300 tortoises on Cliven Bundy’s grazed land with its salt licks and water tanks and cattle, and another 300 tortoises on an adjoining dry, desolate and cattle-free valley, and then coming back three years later to see which valley has more tortoises and which seem healthier? All this bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo is based on the presumption that any “human interference” with the dry and stinking desert ruins it as tortoises habitat, when the truth – that tortoises actually do much better with people around, just like rats and cockroaches and pigeons and hummingbirds – is staring us right in the face. Cue “Thus Spake Zarathustra.” Remove the blindfold, please. No, Mr. Tortoise, you haven’t died and gone to heaven. We call this … a golf course. If they really wanted more tortoises, any old desert rat can tell them the solution is to shoot ravens and coyotes. Mind you, I’m not recommending that. We’ve got plenty of tortoises right now. These people don’t care about tortoises – they’re euthanizing them, for heaven’s sake. The tortoise – or whatever moss or bug or flycatcher eventually takes it place – is merely a stand-in, a monkey’s paw, to give federal bureaucrats and their lunatic green lawyer pals complete control over the development of private land in the West. Just how fecund ARE those 10,000 captive tortoises, I asked Marci Henson. “Oh, we think a lot of those ten thousand were pet tortoises, we believe as few as 2 percent may have actually been wild.” How can they tell – the turtles came in wearing little knitted sweaters and booties? They keep trying sit up and shake hands? Besides, Ms. Henson said, quite seriously, “Unlimited breeding of an endangered species in captivity is something the community has to look into.” “To stop it?” I asked. “Yes,” said Marci Henson. August 1, 2009 Vin Suprynowicz [send him mail] is assistant editorial page editor of the daily Las Vegas Review-Journal and author of The Black Arrow. Visit his blog. Copyright © 2009 Vin Suprynowicz
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