From:  "mark duchamp" <markduchamp2@h...> 
Date:  Thu Jul 24, 2003  6:03 pm
Subject:  LET US THROW OUR WEIGHT AROUND!

 
What do you think, folks? Is it not time for us to "throw our weight
around", as advised by Aldo Leopold (quoted by Stan below)?

Stan is right: " If people with an ecological conscience fail to do
so, no
one will! "

So what are we waiting for? What are we, men or chicken? Let us raise
our
voice, collectively. Greed is destroying what is left of wilderness
around
the world, and we are watching it all happen, doing NOTHING to prevent
it.
Let us ask for a moratorium on windfarms NOW. Nothing short of that
will
save our beloved raptors.

And to the skeptics I say: sure, our request will be laughed at - at
first.
But it will make people think. And the press will get in on it (it is
now
starting to publish some of my letters - so imagine if a professional
group
of biologists enters the arena!). Half the battle will be won right
there,
when truth gets published by the media.

What will you think of yourself on your death bed when you'll wonder:
I had
the chance to raise my voice and save nature, but I remained silent
instead,
by choice. Is a life to be valued as a sum of dollars/euros, a title
on a
business card, a chip on the shoulder, or is it to be valued by how
good one
feels in his head, and in his heart, because one did the right thing?
Doing
the right thing makes one proud. Not vanity-proud, but man-proud, or
person-proud I should say, to include that most courageous female
contingent
that is fighting to save wildlife around the world. Who will be
remembered
by posterity, Jane Goodall (or Diane Fossey) or the chairman of the
RSPB,
who is counting the money received from Scottish and Southern Energy
while
closing his eyes on red kites and other birds being killed by wind
turbines
in his country?

And think of the scandal when it all becomes clear, two, five, or ten
years
down the road. When the chairman of the RSPB, and others, will lose
their
jobs.
For we are heading for a BIG scandal, I can tell you that much.
Windpower is
a scam, and scams do not last forever, especially when they cost so
much to
taxpayers and consumers (the bubble blew up in Denmark already) and as
we
have new, better technologies entering the field of clean energy:
clean-coal, fuel cells, geothermal hydrogen. Plus the forgotten solar
energy, which does not interest politicians because the savings are
pocketed
by the homeowners...

Together we can defeat the money-grabbers, turn the tables against
them, and
be proud. For this is a noble fight: we will not let wildlife be
slaughtered, and wilderness be spoiled around the world, to enrich a
few
despicable liers.

Remember the words of Aldo Leopold, aptly quoted by Stan: LET US THROW
OUR
WEIGHT AROUND!

Cheers

Mark

Mark Duchamp
Spokesperson, A.C.E.C. - Asociación Cultural y Ecologista de Calpe
Calpe, Spain


----Original Message Follows----
From: "stan moore" <hawkman11@h...>
Reply-To: raptor-conservation@yahoogroups.com
To: wind_turbines_birds@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [raptor-conservation] Aldo Leopold, Ecological Atrocities,
and
Electrical Generation
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 04:04:49 +0000

Folks --

Aldo Leopold is thought by many to be the greatest conservation
thinker in
history. In my personal ranking system, I place him as the greatest
human
in history, for several reasons which I will not go into now. Aldo
Leopold
died in 1948, but his writings remain and have immense influence in
several
professional fields, including wildlife management, ecology, ethics,
and
conservation. Leopold emphasized the need for a set of ethics to guide
the
relationship between man and nature, especially as man's population
grew
rapidly during his lifetime (and beyond) and as new technologies and
gadgetry tended to separate man from nature. Leopold spoke of
ecological
conscience, and he also coined the phrase "ecological atrocities".

In fact, in 1947, the year before his untimely death, Leopold gave a
speech
to the Conservation Committee of the Garden Club of America, and that
speech
was called "The Ecological Conscience". That speech was later
published in
a bulletin of that organization, and its concepts were even later
added to
another essay, "The Land Ethic", which is included in his posthumous
publication, "A Sand County Almanac" which is still in print 55 years
after
Leopold's death.

The phrase "ecological atrocities" was used in that speech and its
publication, and I have it in a book called "The River of the Mother
of God
and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold", Edited by Susan L. Flader and J.
Baird
Caldicot, published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 1991.

I cannot copy the entire essay here, but I would like to stress some
concepts that I find timely in regard to current concerns over the
rapidly
expanding wind energy industry in America and other countries as well.
I
have stated publicly that some impacts of the wind energy should be
considered "ecological atrocities" and in particular, the mortalities
of
golden eagles, red-tail hawks and other raptors of California's
Altamont
Pass fit that descriptive category.

Of course, the wind energy industry did not exist in Aldo Leopold's
day.
The Altamont Pass was ranchland in California, and was a part of the
stronghold for golden eagles and other raptors. Kent Carnie, now
archivist
of The Peregrine Fund and the North American Falconers Association,
published the results of his food habits study of golden eagles in the
general area in The Condor, Volume 56, No. 1, pp. 3 - 12, and his
paper was
called "Food Habits of Nesting Golden Eagles in the Coast Ranges of
California" and some of his data and advice was still useful to the
population study by Dr. Grainger Hunt almost fifty years later!

So, Aldo Leopold had no frame of reference for applying his ethics
concepts
to wind energy. But Leopold, in his paper "The Ecological Conscience"
did
supply views on another sort of rural electical development, which he
took
serious issue with, and the setting was the wild Flambeau River in
Wisconsin, which was a wonderful, wild setting for outdoorsmen to view
nature, to fish, to canoe, and to enjoy an ecological paradise. Then
came
the boosters for electrical generation by damming the river and
installing
water-powered turbines. Finally, one fifty-mile long stretch of river
was
left was wild paradise, and the boosters of "progress" wanted to take
it,
too.

Leopold said, "These dairy farmers wanted cheaper electric power than
that
offered by local power companies. Hence they organized a cooperative
REA
and applied for a power dam which, when built, will clip off the lower
reaches of canoe-water which the Conservation Commission wanted to
keep for
recreational use."

Not only did the local power users defeat opposition to this
particular dam,
but according to Leopold, they "repealed the authority of the
Conservation
Commission and made County Commisioners the ultimate arbiters of
conflict
between power values and recreational values. ... this statute...
seals the
fate of all wild rivers remaining in the state, including the
Flambeau. It
says, in effect, that in deciding the use of rivers, the local
economic
interest shall have blanket priority over statewide recreational
interests,
with County Commissioners as the umpire."

In conclusion of his description of the episode and the intrinsic
conflict
between ecological preservation and economic interests, Leopold said,
"The
farmers' raid on our last wild river is just like any other raid on
any
other public wealth; the only defense is a widespread public awareness
of
the values at stake. There was none."

Aldo Leopold used the Flambeau River situation as one of four case
histories
of the conflict between economic development and land ethics or
ecological
conscience. There was no mention of raptors in the Flambeau River
essay,
but in his summation of general issue at hand, Leopold did mention
another
sort of ethical, conscience-based issue and mentioned raptors:

"It cannot be right, in the ecological sense, for the deer hunter to
maintain his sport by browsing out the forest, or for the bird-hunter
to
maintain his by decimating the hawks and owls, or for the fisherman to
maintain his by decimating the herons, kingfishers, terns, and otters.
"

DECIMATING HAWKS AND OWLS, in Leopolds' view was a violation of
ecological
ethics, a matter of conscience.

And then Leopold reached a critical conclusion, in which he used the
term
"ecological atrocities".

"If we grant the premise that an ecological conscience is possible and
needed, then its first tenet must be this: economic provocation is no
longer a satisfactory excuse for unsocial land use, (or to use
somewhat
stronger words, for ecological atrocities). This, however, is a
negative
statement. I would rather assert positively that decent land-use
should be
accorded rewards proportionate to its social importance."

And what was Leopold's advice to persons with ecological conscience
who
dared to oppose the status quo and assert these values?

"The direction is clear, and the first step is to THROW YOUR WEIGHT
AROUND
(his emphasis, not mine) on matters of right and wrong in land use.
CEASE
BEING INTIMIDATED (my emphasis, not his) by the argument that a right
action
is impossible because it does not yield maximum profits,or that a
wrong
action is to be condoned because it pays. That philosophy is dead in
human
relations, and its funeral in land-relations is overdue."


Folks -- the best estimates are that about 50 golden eagles and 200
red-tail hawks are killed by wind turbines each and every year in the
Altamont Pass, plus other raptors and non-raptoral birds. That is 500
golden eagles and 2000 red-tail hawks in ten years, and 1250 golden
eagles
and 5000 red-tail hawks in 25 years. If that is not an ecological
atrocity,
nothing is! If those eagles were not killed, the local breeding
population
would be a source population for the whole of northern California,
where
other threats to golden eagles are omnipresent. Instead, the local
population is said to be stable, but no longer producing its own
buffer
against precipitous decline if local conditions change, as by some
increase
in local adult mortalities.

So what should thse with an ecological conscience do? The master said
it
best -- If people with an ecological conscience
fail to do so, no one will! If people with an ecological conscience
fail to do so, no one will!


Stan Moore San Geronimo, CA hawkman11@h...
 







"Man is the most dangerous, destructive, selfish, 
and unethical animal on earth." 
Michael W. Fox, Scientific Director and former 
Vice President, 
Humane Society of the United States.

"The life of an ant and that of my child 
should be granted equal consideration, 
for what does it really pain man to do so"
Pete Who. 2003 

"Look deep into the eyes of any animal, and then 
for a moment, trade places, 
their life becomes as precious as yours and you 
become as vulnerable as them. 
Now smile if you believe all animals deserve 
our respect and our protection, for in a way, 
they are us, and we are them."
-Philip Ochoa Board Member, ALL FOR ANIMALS