Ridecamp: Re: [RC] [RC] Exempts private property, military lands and all plant lifefrom ESA (fw

> Sonoma county sports numerous examples of creekbeds sterilized by farmers
> wanting a few more square yards of crops or churned to mud by cattle. I
> noticed even more of the same in Alberta when we were there this summer.
> All, I'm sure, by agrarians who would be the first to claim to love the
land
> and be stewards of it. Pardon my cynicism; it's based in experience.

I hope you didn't say that with your mouth full.  Pardon my cynicism, but it
has been my long-standing experience that those with a political agenda like
to throw around buzzwords like "sterilized" when in fact there is no such
problem.  Maintenance work in a streambed does not "sterilize" the
stream--it may alter the flora and fauna for a short section, for a short
period of time, but no more than that.  The closest thing I've ever seen to
"sterilization" of a stream occurred due to mine tailings on the creek where
I grew up, where the chemicals used to extract ore were leeched directly
into the stream.  This happened in the 20's.  When I was a child (late 50's,
early 60's), the lower part of the stream had recovered entirely, the plant
life was back everywhere but directly on the tailings piles, and the only
noticeable effect was that there were not yet any fish back in that fork of
the stream.  (The lower stream had plenty.)  By the late 70's, the fish were
back in the upper fork as well.  By the 90's, one could still make out the
tailings piles, but there was no other evidence of a problem.  Modern
agriculture doesn't even begin to do such damage--and yet despite the
severity of that insult, Mother Nature healed herself completely.  BTW,
there is less evidence now of that problem than there is of the sterilizing
fires in northern Idaho that occurred circa 1910, when too much ladder fuel
had accumulated.  The political climate of the past couple of decades
allowed the same situation to develop here in central Idaho, thanks to folks
like you who think that everyone is out to rape the land.  The net result is
soil sterilization that may well still be evident in 100 years.  While
mismanagement is indeed undesirable, I would submit that misguided
non-intervention is just as damaging, if not moreso.  Doctors no longer
practice medicine with 1920's standards; likewise farmers no longer farm
with 1920's methods.  I'm leery of anyone who points fingers at an entire
industry the way you have here, with the insinuation that they are "earth
killers"--I believe that was the insulting phrase you used in one of your
earlier posts.  And again, I hope you haven't eaten today--if you have, you
owe a debt of gratitude to the American farmer, who feeds more people than
any counterpart of his at any time in history, and does so with less
invasive methods and more efficiency than even a decade ago.

Heidi


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