Human Lives Being Imperiled to Save the Mollusc and the Plover

It’s time for the American Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its British counterpart the Environment Agency (EA) to put humans first on their epic Endangered Species Lists.

The new mantra of everyday people who make the populations of the U.S. and Britain should be: ‘People First, Rare Molluscs, Plover, & Delta Smelt Last’. Thousands of people in both nations are being flooded out of house and home and lives are being imperiled because weak western leaders like Barack Obama and David Cameron allow their environment protection agencies to continue to cower to the demands of radical environmentalists. Out of decency for the devastated, photo ops for Prime Minister David Cameron and politicians visiting Britain’s flooded areas wearing “wellies” (as in Wellington rubber boots) should be curtailed. Wading into the waters in your wellies to get your picture in the newspapers is a luxury not afforded to people having to be rescued from rising, life-threatening floods.

---

It should go without saying that the politicians of countries devastated by major flooding should do more than preen before the press while real people struggle to survive. American patriots should adopt the 140,000-signature strong Daily Mail petition demanding Cameron to use foreign aid cash to tackle the floods for their country. It now turns out that in spite of the afflicted region being one of the most ‘undefended flood plains in England’, the Thames was not dredged in case a rare mollusc was disturbed. (Daily Mail, Feb. 13, 2014) The EA, of course is claiming that the mussels were not the only reason the Thames was not dredged, even though in a 2010 report, seen by the Mail, they ruled out dredging between Datchet and Staines because the river bed was home to the vulnerable creatures. There’s nothing more vulnerable than human life in epic floodings. In short, the mollusc were saved when the Environment Agency put the welfare of ‘aquatic species’ before warm-blooded real people. “The Army has been called in, hundreds of families have been forced to evacuate their homes, and small businesses are wondering if they’ll ever be able to reopen.” (Daily Mail) In North America, the same thriving scam artists still making millions on the Big Lie of man-made Global Warming are boldly blaming the worst winter in a century on the fairy tale of trumped up Climate Change. The dirty little secret you can’ find in mainstream media reports is that radical environmentalists running the EPA and EA have made the mollusc, the plover and the Delta Smelt more important than vulnerable-to-drowning people. The current flooding in Britain happens overseas too. Even with devastation as the result, in South Dakota the waters of the mighty Missouri River are held back each spring to protect the plover, a shore bird that nests along the Missouri. “If they let out too much water in the spring, it drowns out their nests and kills the baby birds. So the corps holds it back to allow the birds to hatch.” (William Kevin Stoos, CFP, June 1, 2011)

“Fast forward to the spring of 2011. As I watch my friends in Dakota Dunes frantically trying to escape the mighty flood waters released in record amounts by the Corps this week, while their houses are ruined by the Muddy Mo, and my friends, neighbors, and family members work feverishly to protect our own homes and each others’ homes in Wynstone, South Dakota--up river a ways--I thought about the plover. “Folks around here are asking: “Why is the Corps just now releasing record amounts of water, thereby creating a flood of epic proportions, the likes of which have never been experienced in recorded history?” If purposely flooding the folks on the Missouri River from Yankton down to Omaha and below is “flood control” (sic) then “flood control” is the biggest and cruelest oxymoron ever. Given that the United States experienced record amounts of snow and moisture last winter and this spring, it is certainly fair to ask: “Did the Corps not anticipate that the reservoirs upstream in South Dakota would be brim full?” Was there no thought given to the idea of releasing water incrementally over the past many months so as to avoid the largest single release of waters in history and the horrendous man-made catastrophe that has befallen our friends and neighbors along the Missouri?”

That’s the true tawdry tale of the plovers saved by environmentalists along the Missouri. Then there’s the never-ending curious story of the Delta Smelt, a tiny fish that is exclusive to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a once fertile area that serves as a transition for water originating in northern California, ending in water delivery west of the delta for agriculture and south of the Delta for citizens of southern California. According to Save-the-Fish radical environmentalists, pumping stations used for water delivery were pulverizing the smelt and leading to a dramatic decrease in population and possible extinction. “The Delta smelt is not edible, does not eliminate pests or have any meaningful commercial value. Sometimes, despite environmentalist’s protestations to the contrary, certain species reach a natural evolutionary dead end,” wrote William Busse in the Maricopa County Conservative Examiner back in September of 2009. “However, using the weapon of the Endangered Species Act, environmental groups sued, and on December 14, 2007, Judge Oliver Wanger of the United States District Court for the Eastern district of California, issued an Interim Remedial Order. “The impact on farmers in the area has been devastating with the San Joaquin Valley unemployment rate reaching 14% and leaving thousands of previously productive farming acres scorched and unusable. In addition, water utilities in southern California have already begun raising rates and creating tiered pricing to address the 85% reduction in imported water.” To this day California is still under deadly drought-- and still diverting water to save the Delta Smelt. It’s high time for weak western leaders like Cameron and Obama to shuck their wellies and to get the radical environmentalists ruining the lives of so many innocent people to back off. Meanwhile, if the EPA and EA are to serve any humanitarian purpose they should put people over plover and fish.