This just in...

...from the Dept. of Hallelujah-Related News: Obama Suspends Bush Rule on Endangered Species.

A Sanity-Friendly Presidency

Already I am delighted. Not in there two days, and Obama's already frozen publication of all the Bush administration's 11th hour attacks on our ecosystem, meaning that these rules can now be reviewed in light of a few new factors, such as science, evidence, democracy, and something other than perverse hostility toward the environment upon which our lives depend.

The move was announced today by the Center for Biological Diversity, with details provided here and here.

The Center's website also describes Sarah Palin's latest anti-environmental bitchfest (hint: this time she's going after Beluga whales).

Knock Me Over With A Feather

Be all, end all.

Is Cheney Satan or What?

I think the answer is yes.

Bush Tours America to Survey Damage Caused By His Presidency

Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

George W. Bush Makes Me Gag

NPR reports on the latest nonsense involving the EPA, the air you breathe, and our sorry excuse for a president:

"The chief of the Environmental Protection Agency has authority to set the air quality standards to protect public health and the environment. But the White House is now interfering with new efforts by EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson."

Thank goodness we have only 308 days left—join the countdown.

Hate Wolves?

Hate wolves? Well, then, you'll like this lady.
Her name is Lynn Scarlett. She's the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior (whose mission is to "protect" our Nation's natural and cultural heritage), and according to Lynn, "WOLVES ARE BACK!"

Now, let's take out our handy-dandy Orwellian-Doublespeak-Translation Machine and see what Ms. Scarlett might mean by this seemingly jubilant statement.

What Ms. Scarlett means is that, with a little help from Bush&Co., gray wolves—one of the first species to win protection under the Endangered Species Act (having been hunted to the brink of extinction)—have just lost protection in the Eastern Rockies.

And what might that mean? Translation: The hunt is on.

Are we talking about a bit of minor culling from a swelling, healthy, truly established population of thousands? Not by a long shot, if you'll forgive the pun.

Here are the numbers, as reported in an article entitled, U.S. Ends Protections for Wolves in 3 States in today's New York Times.

From a base population of 66 wolves introduced into Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho in the mid-1990s, there are now nearly 1,300, with an additional 230 or so in Montana that have drifted down from Canada. State management plans allow for wolf hunting, or outright eradication in some places — including most of Wyoming — with a target population of 150 in each of the three states.

Let's just double-check the math on that one: 150 ("target population") x 3 (states) = 450, total target population of wolves. I think I also saw the phrase "outright eradication" in there somewhere, didn't I? Or are my crazy-environmentalist, New York Times-lovin' eyes deceiving me again? In Wyoming, wasn't it? (Wyoming...now let me see, that's Dick Cheney's state of residence isn't it? And Dick Cheney's kind of a hunting fan(atic), isn't he? There couldn't possibly be a connection here with mollifying the hunting lobby or gratifying old Dick's seemingly unquenchable bloodlust or anything like that, right?)

It does not take a rocket scientist (or even a degree is gene pool lifeguarding) to understand that no species can maintain adequate genetic diversity with populations of just a few hundred. (I'd like to see human beings try it for a refreshing change of pace.) Dispersed over vast areas, 450—or even 4,500—is a very small number of wolves.

A fiscally responsible individual such as myself can't help but wonder why we have been paying taxes for the past ten years to enable the re-establishment of this important predator only to wipe it out again. (But I forget sometimes that we are living in the Bush-Cheney era of senseless cruelty, wanton wastefulness, giddy idiocy and tragic irony.)

The only good news here is that a lawsuit is being planned by the Natural Resource Defense Council and many other good groups trying hard to hold what is left of our ecosystem together.

Please support this effort with a financial contribution or by signing on to this petition.

Read more about the wolves here and here and here.

more on mountains

A few days ago, we discussed the insane practice of mountaintop removal. It's an unforgivable form of true ecoterrorism being actively promoted, supported, and enabled by, you guessed it, our current "administration."

The letters in the Times this week are so eloquent on the topic at hand, I felt the need to share them here.

Mountaintop Removal

A disgusting, immoral practice to be enshrined by Shrub & Co, if the fossil-fuel vampires get their way.

This administration goes out of its way to pillage America the (once) beautiful. The Appalachian Center for the Economy & The Environment is one group fighting back on this issue.

I think they just got themselves a new member.