From: cdhart@laurie.net (Carolyn Hart)
Subject: SNET: [piml] [Fwd: March 26 column -- rattlesnakes]
Date: 24 Mar 1999 06:26:37 -0500
To: piml@egroups.com


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Vin Suprynowicz wrote:
> 
>     FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
>     FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED MARCH 26, 1999
>     THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
>     And they worshiped the dragon ...
> 
>     A couple of decades back, when members of Congress raced to placate
> "green" voters by coupling with the extraconstitutional Endangered Species
> Act, there was a lot of talk of making sure our grandchildren would still
> be able to view an American bison, a grizzly bear, and a bald eagle in the
> wild. No one wanted to be responsible for the extinction of those species,
> which are virtual "totems" of the American frontier.
> 
>   Those species now appear "saved" -- though it's still debatable whether
> more might have been done, sooner and at lower cost, by simply encouraging
> private parties to establish and maintain private hunting and photo-safari
> preserves.
> 
>   Now, however, the permanent bureaucracies created under the rubric of
> "species preservation" (far from patting themsleves on the back and folding
> their tents) have taken on a life of their own, and are starting to make
> clear the real cost of signing away Americans' private property rights in
> favor of such fatally vague government goals.
> 
>   If anyone had warned, back then, that the state and federal bureaucracies
> put in place to "protect endangered species" would someday attempt to ban
> window screens because they block "threatened" mosquitos from enjoying
> their "habitual feeding grounds" -- our children's flesh -- he or she would
> surely have been hooted down as a ridiculous alarmist with no grip on
> reality.
> 
>   But let us now consider who have actually lost their grip on reality and
> common sense -- and in a case involving a predator far more deadly than the
> mere mosquito.
> 
>   In Fishkill, New York, The Associated Press reported last week that Jay
> Montfort has erected a waist-high wire mesh fence around the wooded
> property owned by his family's quarry and cement-block business, to keep
> out the rattlesnakes.
> 
>   "They're rattlesnakes," Mr. Montfort says. "They're poisonous. They're
> deadly. It seems pretty fundamental that you should be able to keep deadly
> things off your property."
> 
>   Not in New York. The state Department of Environmental Conservation went
> to court last week, seeking to have the fence removed as a violation of the
> state's Endangered Species Act.
> 
>   The fence could have the effect of "disturbing, harrying and worrying"
> the "threatened" timber rattlers, according to Theodore Kerpez, a state
> wildlife biologist. It would do that by blocking the snakes from areas
> where they are (presumably -- no one has actually asked them) accustomed to
> hunt, bask, and reproduce. The fence could thus cause the snakes
> "physiological stress," Kerpez argues in court papers.
> 
>  (A "threatened" species, you understand, is a species that does not meet
> any definition of "endangered," but whose presence is cited by the state to
> block otherwise legal private land uses, anyway. Though no one has ever
> counted the rattlesnakes of upstate New York, it seems a safe bet there are
> a million of 'em.)
> 
>   "We have an obligation to protect not only the attractive species, but
> the rattlesnakes and the other less cuddly animals that make up the
> biodiversity of the state of New York," agrees Richard Brodsky, chairman of
> the state Assembly's environmental conservation committee.
> 
>   Funny: Here I thought their only obligation was to protect and defend the
> rights of their human constituents -- including the right to quiet
> enjoyment of privately deeded property -- as guaranteed by the
> Constitutions of the United States and the state of New York.
> 
>   But even if the current law in New York is so weird as to "establish" the
> religion of Extreme Environmentalism by making it illegal to "disturb and
> harm" rattlers, surely that would refer to purposely seeking them out and
> killing them in their dens, attempting to wipe out animals that keep to
> themselves and offer little offense. Once such laws are interpreted to mean
> you can't even screen such pests off your property, can a ban on window
> screens because they cause "worry and stress" to "threatened" mosquitos be
> far behind?
> 
>   And at that point, what about those poor little smallpox germs, cooped up
> for all these years in a couple of jars in Moscow and Atlanta? I ask you,
> is that fair? Weren't they also "born free"?
> 
> Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
> Review-Journal. His new book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the
> Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at $21.95 plus $3 shipping ($6
> UPS; $2 shipping each additional copy) through Mountain Media, P.O. Box
> 4422, Las Vegas, Nev. 89127-4422. The 500-page trade paperback may also be
> ordered via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html, or at
> 1-800-244-2224. Credit cards accepted; volume discounts available.
> 
> ***
> 
> Vin Suprynowicz,   vin@lvrj.com
> 
> The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it. -- John
> Hay, 1872
> 
> The most difficult struggle of all is the one within ourselves. Let us not
> get accustomed and adjusted to these conditions. The one who adjusts ceases
> to discriminate between good and evil.  He becomes a slave in body and
> soul. Whatever may happen to you, remember always: Don't adjust! Revolt
> against the reality! -- Mordechai Anielewicz, Warsaw, 1943
> 
> * * *

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