Hmmm.  Do you think FWS and the White House (which is where this is really being held-up right now) might be able to delay this decision, again, until, oh, next Jan 20th?  (Or Nov 4, at least?)

The polar bear is the ultimate omnivore.

His rapaciousness is responsible for many, many seal killings each year.   Left to its own devices, the polar bear would harm almost any environment and other species.

I am glad the polar bear is contained...and even gladder if the numbers of this horrible beast get reduced.

Why the Feds feel that they need still more time, is plainly suspicious.

As wonderful as polar bears themselves are, it should be understood that they are just one member of several complex Arctic or sub-Arctic ecosystems.  When we work to save polar bears, we are in fact working to save a great number of other animals, mammals, birds and fish.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

The major flaw in the argument that wild creatures are destructive monsters that will eventually wipe out one or more prey species is that wild animals don't ever kill more prey than they can consume. There are a few exceptions with animals that bury or store food for a short while, but the fact remains that they are intending to consume that organism in the near future. In short, wild creatures are NOT like humans in that we kill other creatures "for fun."

I also find jabailo mostly interesting (if paranoid), but I'm afraid I run into his point of view slightly more often than I can stand among my students and I've been growing less and less patient with it.

As an example of a similar argument, some of my students think that if we stop eating meat, cows will overrun our planet. Ahh well... we educate where and when we can, I guess.

If you continue to do what you've always done you'll continue to get what you've always got. - Yogi Berra

One wonders if the students who think that sort of thought then come to my class and say that when asked the question, How many gods exist?, it is possible to answer all options simultaneously, without inconsistency: (a.) zero; (b.) one; (c.) more than one.  "It's up to what you think!"

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Animal Lover,
do you know the elegant little book by Rick Bass, "The Nine Mile Wolves," about the reintroduction of wolves around 1990 in the northwestern corner of Montana?  I highly recommend it.

Polar bears are rather different from grizzlies in some important respects.  But you are right, AL, that they both deserve to be protected.

The issue of "The Law" would seem to have to do with minimizing the legal responsibilities of petroleum companies, hoping to drill in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas; and perhaps other businesses too, such as shipping companies hoping to exploit the newly opened Northwest Passage.

Ideally, other animals beside the polar bear, such as several seal species now being studied, should be listed as endangered.  All Arctic and sub-Arctic animals are in trouble; and the quicker and more forcefully that is recognized, the sooner some good conservation work in the whole region can be implemented.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Those beaver dams also keep the water table up which also results in grass watered by seeps and springs where the water table surfaces.

The moving cattle in other areas don't have time to stay in any one area to graze the grass so low they pull the roots so the grass recovers faster. With the root mass less disturbed the grass thrives providing more overall grazing.

I doubt if the biomass of cattle in the US is anything close to what the bison, elk, antelope and prairie dogs massed before the re-introduction of horses. The removal of wolves and bears from the equation disrupted the overall balance and destroyed the grasslands.

Heck even in Texas before they fenced the land and killed the wolves cattle were something you collected rather than herding or breeding. They bred just fine on their own from cattle released by the Spanish. With the wolves there.

The wolves share is a lot smaller than what we have to pay to fence streams and move cattle around without them. I bet wolves are cheaper than cowboys too.

Put the Carbon Back

First, bison did not generally exist from the Rocky Mountains west, and the herds that did were small.  Western grasses did NOT evolve with grazing animals and cannot take the pressure of them, mainly due to their root systems.  Elk and deer, which did evolve in the West, are browsers, not grazers, and don't put anywhere near as much pressure on grasses.

Second, cattle are not only non-native, they are huge, heavy, unnatural animals bred by humans.  Any animal with those characteristics will wreak havoc on any ecosystem, as cattle have done in the West.

For more detail and to see all of the numerous and massive harms cattle have done to the West, read "Sacred Cows at the Public Trough" by Denzel and Nancy Ferguson and/or "Welfare Ranching" by George Wuerthner.

It seems odd that such a large ecological niche would be left vacant.

Put the Carbon Back

Native grasses in the West have horizontal root systems.  Cattle and domesticated sheep, another non-native unnatural animal, pull out those roots when they graze.  Grasses in the east have vertical root systems, which allows them to be grazed by these animals and still grow back.

The western grasslands have been turned into deserts by cattle and sheep grazing (sheep are more individually harmful to western grasses, but there are far more cattle).  It's not just the cattle per se, it's also removal of the top predators, fencing, replacement of native grasses with non-native ones, etc.  But even if the top predators were left intact, the cattle weren't fenced, and no non-native grasses had been introduced, the cattle would still have caused massive ecological damage because they're not native and greatly upset the natural balance of western ecosystems.

In the frequently zoomorphic art of Early Puebloans, including wall painting and petroglyphs, and the rich pottery tradition of the Mimbres in the Gila valley, images of bighorn sheep are frequent, and also pronghorn.

In California, the Pleistocene fauna of the La Brea Tar Pits includes a horse, a tapir, a camel, a llama, a pronghorn, and a peccary, as well as the more sensational mammoth and mastodon.  The behavior of the horse, it is suggested, was similar to that of African zebras:

http://www.tarpits.org/education/guide/flora/index.html

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.