Sunday, February 14, 2010

On those not exactly 'vanishing' and not really endangered polar bears,

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service estimates that the polar bear population is currently at 20,000 to 25,000 bears, up from as low as 5,000-10,000 bears in the 1950s and 1960s. A 2002 U.S. Geological Survey of wildlife in the Arctic Refuge Coastal Plain noted that the polar bear populations “may now be near historic highs.”
And yet, based on global-warming bullshit 'studies' they've been designated 'threatened' by our idiot bureaucrats; and this is a bigger threat to them, by far, than 'global warming'. How? Read the piece for this edition of 'Unintended Consequences'.

As a note, Peter Capstick once wrote about how marking the leopard in Africa endangered- though it was no such thing- got more of them killed than legal sport hunting ever did; seems that when landowners could count on safari companies paying them for rights to hunt them, the landowners would put up with livestock predation because they nevertheless made money. But when safari companies would not pay- because no hunter wants to pay thousands to hunt a trophy he can't bring home- for hunting rights, the landowners and ranchers started treating the leopards like vermin, shooting and poisoning them to protect their livestock.

Of course, the WWF and other weenies didn't really care, they'd stopped the evil hunters from hunting them and that was more important than actually keeping the leopard populations in good health.

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