MORE OF LIBERAL ENVIRONMENTALISM’S FAILURES

Posted on September 4, 2008 by admin

The extirpation of a “Threatened Species” (the spikedace) from the Verde River by the Liberal Environmentalists’ cure for any and every thing that ails the environment—protection (see last post)—isn’t the only proof this approach doesn’t work. There are other instances in which protecting the environment has failed to restore balance, heal the land, bring back native plants and animals, and save endangered species. Here are some more:

DESERTIFICATION: On Wupatki National Monument, adjacent to former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt’s family’s ranch in Northern Arizona, the amount of bare dirt (soil without plants on it) has more than doubled in 13 years of “protection.” In contrast, four trials of using cattle to encourage plant growth on a study plot on the Babbitt Ranch monitored by EcoResults (a not-for-profit I helped found) increased plant cover by native grasses by an average of 20% per trial.

ENDANGERED SPECIES: A ranch along the Gila River in New Mexico hosts one of the largest known populations of an endangered bird—the southwestern willow flycatcher. Two adjacent “protected” areas host none of those birds.

NATIVE PLANTS: On a preserve near Santa Barbara, California, where I live today, exclosures have been constructed to protect areas of native grasses from human impact on the theory that the current invasion of California grasslands by plants from other continents is caused by the damage done to those habitats by more than a century of human use. After 15 or so years of post-human management the exclosures have proven more hospitable to the invaders than the natives. The protected areas have become almost pure stands of invaders, while outside the fence, where the land continues to be grazed, and thus be used by humans, there are healthy stands of natives grasses right up to the fence.

VERNAL POOLS: In Central California, when cattle grazing was removed from seasonal wetlands called vernal pools, Nature Conservancy scientists found that post-human management made these concentrations of native diversity and endangered species vulnerable to invasion by nonnative plants. This invasion caused some of these seasonal wetlands to dry up before the rare plants and animals that inhabit them could spring to life and reproduce. In as few as 3 years of “protection” these areas, which have been called one of the highest concentrations of rare and endangered species on Earth, have literally disappeared.

To their credit a number of mainstream environmental groups, including The Nature Conservancy, Audubon, Defenders of Wildlife, and others have recognized this situation and have facilitated the return of grazing to these unique areas. Still, the other situations I described above, and plenty more like them, have experienced no such progress.

My experience and my examples come mainly from ranching and rangeland management in the American West, but the phenomenon I am describing occurs in other types of habitat with other kinds of management, too.

HAWAII: On the Hawaiian island of Kauai farming was removed from the Hanalei Valley to benefit native birds. When bird populations began to suffer, farming was restored, and the birds came back.

INDIA: In “Cattle and Conservation at Bharatpur: A Case Study in Science and Advocacy,” Michael Lewis describes a situation in Bharatpur, India, in which the grazing animals belonging to surrounding villagers were removed from an area of wetlands that had been created as a hunting reserve for the local maharaja and recently converted into a park. Nine villagers were shot to death achieve this removal. Since the villagers and their livestock were forcibly removed, the marshes, ponds, and canals have become clogged with plants the cattle used to eat. As a result, bird numbers have begun to drop as has the tiger population, which used to be one of the most dense in the world. As of 2003, the Indian Government was struggling to deal with this apparent anomaly in environmental theory: Removing the impacts of humans is not supposed to cause parks to deteriorate.

In all of these examples, and plenty more, the remedy mainstream liberal environmentalism or Big Green has identified as the only way to deal with our environmental problems—reducing human impact—has failed to achieve its goal. It has failed to save endangered species, improve habitat, and encourage the survival of native plant species. In every case I have listed it did the exact opposite of what it set out to do: it exterminated the endangered species it intended to protect, destroyed the habitat it was intended to restore, made areas more, rather than less, susceptible to invasion by nonnatives, and hastened the desertification of land it was supposed to preserve.

So, what does Liberal Environmentalism do? What is it for? Why are so many people committed to it? Rabid about it? Stay tuned.

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LIBERAL ENVIRONMENTALISM DOESN’T WORK

Posted on August 21, 2008 by admin

Liberal Environmentalism doesn’t restore nature, heal the planet, bring back native plants and animals, save endangered species. In fact, in many of those cases and more, Liberal Environmentalism doesn’t even make things better, it makes things worse.

The Drake Exclosure, central Arizona, managed as a "World Without Us" since 1946.
A sedge meadow on the Verde River in Arizona—a true desert oasis: a source of stability and habitat in a land of extremes.
                    

A sedge meadow being “protected.” Livestock (cattle) have been removed to eliminate the damaging effect they allegedly have on riparian habitat and, therefore, on the native fish that live in the river. As a result, trees ungrazed by cattle have begun to invade the meadow.

 A sedge meadow being “protected” from livestock (cattle) to eliminate the damage they allegedly cause to native fish habitat. As a result, trees have invaded the meadow and caused it to erode

 

 

 
               
The end results of protection
    

 

 

 

Another part of the Verde that is unprotected (continues to be grazed under good management) and remains underoded and healthy

In the previous post (see Liberal Environmentalism’s Deepest, Darkest, Secret) I argued that Liberal Environmentalism’s claim that “protecting” nature, i. e. reducing the impacts of humans on forests, grasslands, deserts, meadows, mountains, etc. invariably makes those areas more natural, more healthy, better functioning, and a better home to their native plants, animals, and ecological functions is bogus.  

One example I offered to support that claim is that, when this remedy was applied to protect a native fish, the “threatened” spikedace in the Verde River in Central Arizona, the move that was intended to protect the fish—removing cattle grazing from along the river—seems to have extirpated it instead. How this happened, I explained, went like this: After grazing was removed, a large increase in trees and willows began to crowd the riverbanks, transforming the stream from wide, shallow, gravelly, and warm (ideal habitat for spikedace and other warm-water natives) to narrow, tree-shaded, mud-bottomed, deep, and cool, which is ideal for large, non-native Spikedace-eating predators such as smallmouth bass, which ate the native minnows.

But that’s just part of the story. Removing human impact (in the form of cattle grazing) created much more of an ecological disaster than just extirpating a native minnow. It drastically changed the course of the river, the shape of the riverbed, and the character of the riverside habitat. Here’s how:

Until recently, much of the riverside habitat of the Verde River consisted of sedge meadows. Sedges are grass-like, water-loving plants that are an irredescent green for much of the year. We call the meadows “sedge meadows” even though they also include rushes and grasses.  These meadows play an extremely valuable role in the ecological functioning of desert rivers like the Verde. When the river floods, the grass-like leaves of the sedge plants bend with the force of the water and form a thatch (like a thatched roof), which protects the meadow’s rich soils from erosion. The sedge leaves also filter sediment from the floodwaters, enriching and adding to the soils that support them. The roots of the sedges form a dense mat that helps hold the soil in place.

Sedge meadows thus create a habitat that is extremely rich and very stable even though it is frequently subjected to one of the most powerfully destructive forces on earth—fast-moving, sediment-laden floodwater.  Perhaps most important of the vital roles sedge meadows play in the life of the desert is as a water-storer. Their living community of grass-like plants, root mats, and deep, organic-rich soils acts as a living sponge, absorbing water when flows are high and releasing it slowly when times are dry.

These meadows thus even out the flash flood and deep drought water cycle characteristic of the desert and make water available for longer periods of time to larger numbers of living things—plants, animals, and humans—in a habitat where this is very, very important. When the cows were removed from the Verde they were no longer there to nip the occasional tree seedling that managed to sprout in the meadows. Relieved of this “predator” these seedlings grew into saplings whose stems stood up through the floodwaters creating turbulence that swirled and dug and eventually penetrated the protective sedge thatch and root mat at their base. Thus exposed, the meadows’ rich and vulnerable soils began to wash away. The results can be seen in the photo sequence shown at the beginning of this post.

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LIBERAL ENVIRONMENTALISM’S DEEPEST DARKEST SECRET

Posted on August 4, 2008 by admin

LIBERAL ENVIRONMENTALISM’S DARK SECRET IS THAT IT DOESN’T WORK, AND IT’S NOT ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT.

Environmentalists (the liberal variety) are taking a lot of hits these days. Their ability to keep us from drilling for our own oil is being blamed for $4 plus gas prices. Their refusal to allow any substantial increase in large-scale energy production is being blamed for serving as a straitjacket for our economy and our prosperity. Their manufactured “global warming” crisis is being blamed for institutionalizing the shortages mentioned above and for threatening to put aspects of our lives, from the most momentous, such as how many children we have, to the most minute—our home thermostat settings and how much gas we buy—under the control of liberal bureaucrats.

Almost no one, however, takes issue with Liberal Environmentalism’s most basic claim—that protecting nature, i. e. reducing the impacts of humans on forests, grasslands, deserts, meadows, mountains, etc. makes those areas more natural, more healthy, better functioning, and a better home to their native plants, animals, and ecological functions.

Some may gripe that enviros want to protect too much and say “It would be nice of we could protect everything, but…,” but those same people are glaringly quiet beyond that. Even Liberal Environmentalism’s most vocal adversaries have little or nothing to say about whether contemporary environmentalism works to save the bunnies, birds, trees, fishes, and ecosystems that make up what we call Nature.

That is about to change.

Liberal Environmentalism’s deepest, darkest, secret is that it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work to do the one job it claims that only it can do—restore nature, heal the planet, bring back native plants and animals, save endangered species, and so forth. In fact, in many of those cases and more, Liberal Environmentalism doesn’t even make things better, it makes things worse.

That requires an example. A good one involves the Verde River in Central Arizona.

In the mid-1990s a couple of environmental groups sued the U. S. Forest Service to remove cattle from public lands along hundreds of miles of streams in the Southwest including the Verde. They sued because they deemed the impacts of grazing to be a threat to two threatened species, the Verde being home to one of these species—the spikedace. Instead of arguing the suit, the U. S. Forest Service conceded to environmentalists’ demands out of court without the knowledge or agreement of the Arizona Cattle Growers’ Assn. and New Mexico Cattle Growers’ Assn., which were intervenors in the case.

In 1997, after all cattle were removed from the upper stretches of the Verde, to everyone’s surprise, it became apparent that the spikedace had left with them. Monitoring by state and federal agencies has turned up no spikedace in the Verde since grazing along the river was stopped. In fact, the number of all native fishes in the Verde has dropped precipitously since what was alleged to be the major threat to them (grazing) was removed. (from 80% native / 20% nonnative to 20% native / 80% nonnative)

U. S. D. A. scientists, searching for an explanation to this counter-intuitive happening, noted that, after grazing was removed, a large increase in trees and willows began to crowd the riverbanks transforming the stream from wide, shallow, gravelly, and warm (ideal habitat for spikedace and other warm-water natives) to narrow, tree-shaded, mud-bottomed, deep, and cool, which is ideal for large, non-native spikedace-eating predators such as smallmouth bass. And then the big fish ate the little fish.
The Verde River 1975—grazed, wide, shallow, gravelly, and warm, ideal habitat for large numbers of spikedace and other warm-water native fish. The Verde River 2008, grazing has been removed from this area for 15 years, and the river is narrow, tree-shaded, mud-bottomed, deep, and cool, and there are no spikedace.
Small portions of the Verde continue to be grazed. They looked surprisingly like the river did when it was good spikedace habitat.

Small portions of the Verde continue to be grazed. Today, they look surprisingly like the river did when it was good spikedace habitat.

The reduction of human impact on the Verde’s riverside habitat by removing grazing is an application of the assumption that forms the bedrock on which contemporary liberal environmentalism is founded. That assumption is that all environmental problems are caused by the overuse, misuse, or just plain use of nature by humans, and that the way to solve all of those problems, or to avoid them, is to limit our species’ use of nature, ideally to zero.

Some in the environmental movement, quite a few actually, have taken this belief that “humans don’t cause environmental problems, we are the problem” to its logical extreme. For instance, when University of Texas evolutionary ecologist and lizard expert, Dr. Eric Pianka, the “2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist,” advocated the elimination of 90 percent of Earth’s population by airborne Ebola. He was given a standing ovation by the Texas Academy of Science. More environmental writers than I can (or want to) quote here have said that the best thing that could happen to planet earth is for homo sapiens and our impacts to disappear.

HOLD THE EBOLA

In the case of the Verde River’s spikedace and its other native fish, the removal of human impacts seems to have been the worst thing that could happen. If that result doesn’t disprove the basis for contemporary liberal environmentalism, it at least raises significant questions about it. It certainly helps make the case that mainstream environmentalism doesn’t work, at least not all the time, because Big Green not only didn’t achieve its goal of protecting the spikedace, it exterminated a significant population of the rare fish. And without so much as an “oops” or “sorry” to boot.

If that surprises you, it‘s just the beginning of the story of Big Green’s failure in the case of the Verde and the spikedace. It gets worse.

Note: This was first posted on my “Learner Blog” – rightway2bgreen.blogspot.com

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WHY I CHANGED

Posted on July 31, 2008 by admin

A reader asked that I explain why I changed from a liberal to a conservative environmentalist. A good explanation is offered in an adaptation of an editorial I wrote that was published by the Writers on the Range syndicate of the High Country News. It, too, was called…

THE RIGHT WAY TO BE GREEN

By Dan Dagget

The presidential election is approaching, and as usual the environment is an issue considered to be owned by the liberals, which, in this case, includes even the presumed Republican candidate.

 I would have had no problem with that when I was fighting strip mines in Ohio in 1973 and environmentalism was synonymous with leftist politics. In the early 80s, when a friend told me someone named Dave Foreman was forming an environmental group named Earth First! that would be so far to the left it would push the entire debate in that direction, I was among the first to show up.

 As I have become older and more experienced, however, I’ve come to believe the exclusive connection between the left and the environmental movement is neither good for the environment nor for environmentalism.

 The main reason for this change of mind and heart is I’ve become convinced the private-sector really is more effective than government at producing just about anything, healthy ecosystems included. I came to this conclusion for the usual reasons-the failure of the Soviet Union and other public-sector flops. More important, however, was the fact that, in thirty years of activism, the most impressive environmental successes I have encountered were achieved by private individuals operating according to principles that make up the conservative playbook. In each of those cases individual initiative, personal accountability, the free market, and rewards for results were more effective at saving endangered species, healing damaged ecosystems, even combating global warming than the government alternative-regulation and protection.

 These successes even got me to thinking that the reason environmental problems seem so hard to solve may be because the leftist methods we use to deal with them are so ineffective.

 And isn’t Nature a conservative? After all, she rewards success not compliance.

 Put all of this together, and it adds up to a significant question: Why have environmentalists chose the leftist approach, which is a confirmed loser and unnatural to boot, over an approach based on conservative principles that is proven to be more effective? The answer came when I took those success stories to my environmental peers.

 I knew how most environmentalists feel about everything conservative, so, when I told them that I was coming to believe conservative principles offered a better way to a more effective environmentalism, I wasn’t surprised by their chilly response. What did surprise me was their total lack of interest in how people they normally think of as adversaries had succeeded in dealing with problems that had stymied them for decades. 

 After a few years of this, I was the one who finally got the message. I concluded that many of those who call themselves environmentalists are more interested in imposing leftist prescriptions than in achieving success on the ground. For them, environmental issues are a means to achieve liberal political ends rather than the other way around. In fact, that’s how many environmentalists measure success—in the number of acres brought under government control, in laws passed, in regulations created, and in the election of politicians committed to increasing all of the above. My environmental listeners weren’t interested in the successes I described to them because those successes weren’t achieved by leftist means and didn’t further leftist agendas.

 That realization convinced me of the need for a conservative alternative to liberal environmentalism. Liberals deal with problems by applying policies–a living wage, affirmative action, universal health-care, wilderness designation. Conservatives, on the other hand, work to create a situation in which people can use their creativity and initiative to produce a product for which there is a demand and, therefore, a reward. An environmentalism based on conservative principles would determine success and dispense rewards for achieving results—environmental results, not for applying policies.

 That would change the face of the environmental debate entirely. First, it would give people on the right, many of whom are as concerned about real environmental problems as liberals, an environmental strategy to support that did not require them to sign on to something they oppose—increased regulation and bigger government.

 Second, it would give true environmentalism—an environmentalism directed at achieving results, not applying policies—a frame of reference through which it can make sense to the rest of us. At present that is not the case.

 What I mean by this is: there are plenty of environmental successes out there that have been achieved by conservative means. In fact, there are probably more conservative environmental successes than liberal ones—if you measure success in terms of results achieved rather than policies applied. You probably haven’t heard of those successes, however, but don’t be surprised. In the rare case that conservative environmental successes are reported by the mainstream media they are reported as anomalies, as oddball events, as “man bites dog” rather than as achievements in a larger context.

 When the media reports liberal environmental achievements, such as laws passed, regulations tightened, or land withdrawn from use, they are invariably presented as a step in the right direction, as progress, as part of a continuing story. We are reminded how bad things were yesterday, how progress is being made slowly but surely, with great and heroic effort, so we look forward to tomorrow and the next installment in this unfolding saga.

This wouldn’t be so bad if the conservative media reported the other side of the story, as it has on, say, the Iraq War. However, the conservative media treat conservative environmentalism just as badly if not worse than the liberal media. Since conservative pundits view environmentalism as a purely liberal phenomenon, they refer to environmentalists as “wackos,” work to debunk or diminish environmental issues, and treat conservatives who express concerns about those issues as candidates for “deprogramming.”

 And yet, if conservative environmental successes are going to be reported anywhere, in the conservative media is where it is going to have to be. These successes don’t fit the liberal template, nor do they advance the liberal agenda, so they will never be reported other than peremptorily in the liberal media.

Creating a conservative environmentalism would give the right wing media a context in which to report conservative environmental successes, and thus, the incentive to do so. It would create a story, with conservatives as the heroes and conservative achievements as the victories, that the talk shows could update every day, just as the liberals currently update global warming.

 That would mean that, for the first time,…

  • the fact that conservative approaches regularly outperform liberal approaches in dealing with environmental problems would no longer go unreported.
  • the environmental playing field, both in politics and the media, would no longer be conceded to the Democrats—both sides would have to compete for our support.
  • we would all live in a healthier, cleaner, more abundant environment because more effective means would be used to address environmental problems
  • Even liberal environmentalism would benefit from the creation of a conservative alternative because it would finally be held accountable for achieving concrete results, rather than just enacting policies.

 Last, but not least, all of us would benefit because neither side in this long running dispute would be able easily to cast the other as incorrigible villains—We would have one less reason to hate one another. 

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WHO’S BEHIND THIS?

Posted on July 30, 2008 by admin

My name is Dan Dagget. I’m an unlikely candidate to be an advocate for the creation of a conservative environmentalism. Unlikely, because for much of my life since 1973 I’ve been a liberal environmentalist and a fairly radical one at that. I started out fighting coal surface mines in southeastern Ohio in the county in which the United Mine Workers of America was born. Then I moved to Arizona where I worked to designate wilderness, fought to increase protection for mountain lions and black bears, and helped initiate a campaign to ban uranium mining in the vicinity of the Grand Canyon. My involvement in that latter campaign included helping to organize some of the first direct actions of Earth First!. In 1992 I was designated one of the 100 top grass roots activists in the United States by the Sierra Club.

In the late 1980s I became a writer and speaker on environmental issues and, later, a land restoration consultant. I have written two books—Gardeners of Eden, Rediscovering Our Importance to Nature and Beyond the Rangeland Conflict, Toward a West That Works. Beyond the Rangeland Conflict, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Gardeners of Eden, was described by a prominent environmentalist as “the most important environmental manifesto since Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic.” I have also contributed articles and editorials to a variety of magazines and newspapers, and I’ve given given hundreds of presentations across the West. 

Recently, I decided to launch this blog; first, because blogging offers much greater accessibility to readers than books or articles and is more flexible and immediate than those more traditional media. Also, via the interactive nature of computers and the internet, it enables a writer to incorporate a greater degree of continuity in developing an argument. Last, and perhaps most important, it offers infintely more freedom than any other type of writing—no editors to impose their prejudices, biases, and timidity.

So, here goes. Welcome to the Rightwaytobegreen.

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