Endangered

The people in charge say there are too many rules and regulations. That includes the rules to safeguard the world around us. We are pulling out of the Paris Climate agreement. We had a guy in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency who wanted to eliminate many of the rules to protect clean air and water to satisfy the oil and gas industry, and a Secretary of the Interior who helped shrink some National Monument areas by thousands of acres. It hasn’t stopped. The same people are proposing legislation and amendments to cut back and weaken the Endangered Species Act. The Act, passed in 1973, was designed to save and protect wildlife that had been ravaged by man. It has saved the very symbol of our country, the bald eagle. But dozens of species of animals, birds, alligators, insects, and plants have been brought back to thrive from near extinction.

The ranchers, the timber industry, the oil and gas industry say they are being shut out of  valuable land to explore and expand which, of course, would mean more profits. This is the reason the Endangered Species Act was passed in the first place. But, now the people  in charge say there are too many rules restricting businesses from Making America Great Again.

The earth almost seems to be screaming at us about what is happening that too many of us are too blind to see. Polar ice caps are melting. How many pictures of polar bears on melting ice flows do we need to see? Erupting volcanoes, wildfires, extreme heat and extreme cold, receding sea levels, flooding rain are causing millions of dollars in damage to homes and businesses that have continued to swallow up more and more of nature’s space.

We have been fortunate enough to visit some of the places where the vastness and majesty of nature puts our place here in perspective. Glacier Bay and Denali National Park in Alaska, the Continental Divide and the Roosevelt National Forest in Colorado, the Grand Canyon, Death Valley, the high desert in New Mexico, and Joshua Tree National Park in California have shown us the beauty of our world where eagles glide overhead and caribou navigate impossible terrain.

The bald eagle may be the best example of a species being saved. It’s been estimated that there were 300,000 to 500,000 bald eagles in the United States in the early 18th century. By the 1950s, there were estimated to be 412 nesting pairs in the lower 48 states. Hunting forced Congress to pass laws first to protect bald eagles from being shot and then banning the pesticide DDT in 1972 which inhibited the bird’s ability to reproduce. By 1992, there was an estimated 110,000 to 115,000 bald eagles in the US. The bird was removed from the federal government’s endangered list in 1995. It was taken off the threatened list in 2007.

Man has been struggling since the beginning of time to find the balance between progress and finding a way to preserve the world around us. We have had awful failures and life affirming successes. We can see the importance of nature everyday, if we just take the time to look. The great American writer E.B. White wrote, “I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.” We all should  listen so we don’t become endangered ourselves.