The Paradox and Absurdities of Carbon-Fretting and Rewilding

[sunny225]

www.captainsjournal.com/2024/01/28/the-paradox-and-absurdities-of-carbon-fretting-and-rewilding/

The Paradox and Absurdities of Carbon-Fretting and Rewilding

BY HERSCHEL SMITH


The Bureau of Land Management is planning a truly boneheaded move, angering some conservationists over the affects to herd populations and migration routes. From Field & Stream.



The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) recently released a draft plan outlining potential solar energy development in the West. The proposal is an update of the BLM’s 2012 Western Solar Plan. It adds five new states—Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming—to a list of 11 western states already earmarked for utility-scale solar development on BLM land.



“Our public lands are playing a critical role in the clean energy transition – and the progress the Bureau of Land Management is announcing today on several clean energy projects across the West represents our continued momentum in achieving those goals,” said BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning in a press release issued on Jan. 17.



All told, the plan would “provide approximately 22 million acres of land open for solar application, giving maximum flexibility to reach the nation’s clean energy goals,” the BLM press release states.



Ponder that for a moment. 22 million acres. That’s 34,375 square miles, the square root of which is 185.4. Imagine a square parcel of land 185 miles by 185 miles. This is an unbelievably large swath of land simply being turned over the commercial power generators to install solar panels.



Hunting and fishing conservation groups have given the proposal a lukewarm reception. “We recognize that public lands in the west provide important options to help meet the nation’s renewable energy needs,” said Jon Holst, Wildlife & Energy Senior Advisor for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP) in a press release. “Our public lands also contain critical unfragmented habitats for fish and wildlife populations that offer world class hunting and angling opportunities. We will be looking at the details of this draft plan to make sure that the interests of hunters and anglers are incorporated.”



In March 2023, a group of conservation organizations including the TRCP, Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, The National Deer Association, and others had submitted a set of recommendations regarding the proposal. The organizations primarily asked the BLM to prioritize development in previously disturbed areas while avoiding areas with high recreational and resource values, among other suggestions.



Notice that they’re not giving this a resounding ‘no’ as I would, just a ‘please don’t do it wrong’. But they will do it wrong simply by doing it at all.

more at link

[Ozarks Tom]

The environment and ecosystem be damned, there's money to be made!

[cccindy]

Even here in the east, solar projects are being sited on farmland.
Why don't they cover every inch of already-urbanized land with solar panels? Including every tarred roof, asphalt street, blacktop parking lot soaking up solar heat in the summer sun? And saving the energy lost (as heat!) in long-distance transmission to population centers.

[sunny225]

Feb 4, 2024 18:08:06 GMT cccindy said:

Even here in the east, solar projects are being sited on farmland.
Why don't they cover every inch of already-urbanized land with solar panels? Including every tarred roof, asphalt street, blacktop parking lot soaking up solar heat in the summer sun? And saving the energy lost (as heat!) in long-distance transmission to population centers.

Ah, but that makes too much sense! Truly.

If nothing else shows that they do not care anything about the environment, this certainly does.

[sunny225]

www.captainsjournal.com/2024/02/06/learning-to-love-feral-hogs/

Learning To Love Feral Hogs

We’ve discussed the contradictions, confusion and befuddlement in the rewilding movement before. From the destruction of dams in California in an attempt to save the river fish, only to introduce beavers who then build dams, to the massive solar farms that divert water and kill plant species making for essentially dead deserts, they can’t seem to make their minds up about much of anything except that they hate humans.

The reintroduction of wolves into Colorado has peaked the interest of rewilders everywhere. In fact, it’s practically romantic.

“It was so perfect. You could look around, and it felt like at any moment John Denver was going to show up. It was ‘Rocky Mountain High’ in every direction,” said Joanna Lambert, a wildlife ecology and conservation biology professor at University of Colorado Boulder and director of the American Canid Project. The stars rolled up last: five wolves, silent in their crates but omnipotent in the waft of their musky aroma. It smelled like the wild, Lambert observed.

But why would they care? Well, you see, they think it’s better for the environment.

The study was conducted by scientists at CSU’s Warner College of Natural Resources, focusing on the effects of three apex predators: wolves, cougars, and grizzly bears in Yellowstone. These carnivores, positioned at the top of the food chain and not preyed upon by other animals, had populations that were depleted over time.

The return of wolves to the park in 1995 was concurrent with the natural recovery of cougar and grizzly populations. Their absence for nearly a century had significantly altered the park’s landscape and food web, transforming regions rich in willow and aspen along small streams into grasslands due to intense elk browsing.

Too many Elk, they say. But they didn’t think that way when they were throwing bales of hay over the fences to the Elk when they thought they needed feeding in particularly harsh winters, causing the Elk not even to return to Yellowstone (when you’ve got a handout, why leave?).

But why are grasslands bad? The rewilders believe that trees are a more productive means of carbon reduction. But is that correct?

Forests have long served as a critical carbon sink, consuming about a quarter of the carbon dioxide pollution produced by humans worldwide. But decades of fire suppression, warming temperatures and drought have increased wildfire risks — turning California’s forests from carbon sinks to carbon sources.

Well, we’ve discussed the stupidity of fighting forest fires before, but let’s continue.
A study from the University of California, Davis, found that grasslands and rangelands are more resilient carbon sinks than forests in 21st century California. As such, the study indicates they should be given opportunities in the state’s cap-and-and trade market, which is designed to reduce California’s greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.

So if the rewilders are wrong, does it matter? Not to them. It’s an evolving religion, you see. And even the most absurd claims can be made on behalf of carbon sinks and the environment.

An unscientific bias against “feral” or “invasive” animals threatens to undercut one of the great stabilizing trends making ecosystems healthier, a new paper argues.

Introduced species such as feral pigs, horses, donkeys and camels represent a powerful force of “rewilding” — the reintroduction of wild animals into ecosystems where humans had eradicated them — according to a study published Thursday in Science.

The study argues against widely held beliefs about whether invasive species are harmful — or what Lundgren described as the quasi-religious perception that some species inherently belong in a given landscape and others don’t.

That belief is the driving force behind a wave of expensive and often futile campaigns since the 1990s that eradicate species including feral hogs in Texas, wild horses across the American West and donkeys and camels in Australia.

more at link

[Ozarks Tom]

Those tender hearted "rewilders" would vomit if the saw a pack of wolves tearing apart a baby elk or deer. Their utopian dreams of a perfect wilderness have no basis in reality. Of course they wouldn't even flinch if it was a rancher eaten alive while trying to save a calf. They live in a different world.