Wanna Be a Steader!

Environmentalist Wackos Trying to Run Our Lives - AGAIN!!

Oh my, oh my!  Those environmentalist wachos are at it again - or should I say, "still."  They've cost us billions of dollars in precious forests and cost many their homes by not "allowing" people to get rid of the underbrush so that wild fires CAN be controlled, they have made us nearly 50% dependant upon foreign oil because they won't "let" us drill for and refine our own; higher costs for food, clothing, transportation - you name it.  They have literally made inflation happen out of sheer stupidity.  Now we have this story.  Sorry to be such a downer in this post, but if you ask me - they are FOOLS trying to manage everyone else's lifestyles.

Blessings from Ohio, Kim Wolf<><

Border-fence opponents worried about animals
Environmentalists cite migration routes, insects drawn to lights

Posted: September 29, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com       
  Mexico-U.S. border     
The proposed 700-miles of fencing authorized in an immigration bill passed this month by the House already is under fire from environmentalists and some U.S. officials who say it could harm the migration routes of animals.

An estimated 1 million illegal aliens entered the U.S. across the 2,000-mile southern border last year, but the activists and some wardens with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are worried about the barriers' potential effect on a wildlife corridor linking northern Mexico and the U.S. southwest known as the "Sky Islands," according to Reuters.

In that stretch of 40 mountain ranges are scores of species from both southern and northern climates such as the jaguar and the parrot of the Mexican Sierra Madre Mountains and the black bear and the Mexican wolf of the U.S. Rocky Mountains.

"Bisecting the area with an impermeable barrier such as a double reinforced wall or fence could really have a devastating effect on these species," said Matt Skroch, a wildlife biologist and executive director of the environmental non-profit group Sky Island Alliance in Tucson, Ariz., according to the news service.

(Story continues below)
"If they build it, we could really say goodbye to the future of jaguars in the United States," he added.
But WND columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin points to an Arizona Daily Star report revealing the massive migration of illegal aliens across the wilderness has created its own environmental problem, with millions of pounds of trash left behind.

Authorities estimate the 3.2 million-plus entrants caught by the Border Patrol from July 1999 through June 2005 dropped 25 million pounds of trash. That doesn't include the unknown amounts of garbage left by border-crossers who don't get caught.

The House proposal – expected to come up for a Senate vote in the next few days – envisions double-barrier fencing along parts of the border in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas topped with bright lights. In many wilderness areas, the new fencing would replace patchy, chest-high barbed wire barriers.  

North American jaguar  
But William Radke, manager of the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge near Douglas, Ariz., is worried the fencing "would have a negative effect on everything from the insects that would now be flying around the lights instead of pollinating the cactuses, to the birds that eat them, right up to the large predators like the jaguars."

Snakes, turtles, wild turkeys and road runners also would be prevented from crossing, he told Reuters, and the bright lights would interfere with birds' ability to navigate by the stars.

Radke also is concerned the barrier would cut off the highland trails used by "pioneer" jaguars crossing from Mexico and repopulating the Peloncillo mountains east of Douglas after decades of absence.

Radke explained that the jaguars are coming north because their habitats are filling up in Mexico.
"If we cut off that access they are going to be restricted to areas where they are going to be in conflict with their own populations, it would have a negative impact," he told Reuters.