8-29-11 Feds At Work Against Alaska Economy Again

Check out today’s ADN, polar bear story by AP reporter, Dan Joling.  (Polar Bear Paw, NGP Photo)

Polar Bear Comment

By

Dave Harbour

With the Polar Bear population not decreasing, the Feds have established nearly 187,000 square miles as “critical habitat” to protect them.  Doug Vincent-Lang (NGP Photo), endangered species coordinator for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, diplomatically says, “We simply do not believe that the existing science justifies this expansive proposal.”  Establishing a critical habitat designation means the Feds could take action to further control or stop human activity in that area–the size of California.  Only Texas (261,914 Square miles) has more land mass than the land mass the Obama Administration seeks to control through their manipulation of the Endangered Species Act which defines how critical habitat designations may be used to protect species.  The Feds have a US Fish and Wildlife Service Marine Mammals Manager in Alaska. Her name is Rosa Meehan, and she notes in the AP story that though there are no direct threats as the USFWS finds in the case of other species, the threat to the polar bear is “climate change”.  Since the government-enviroextremist crowd noted the climate was actually cooling a few years ago, they switched their environmental fund raising crisis from a premise of “global warming” to “climate change”.  That way, “heads I win, tails you lose”.   If the climate is changing and change is dangerous the Feds can thus promulgate any number of regulations to create massive government control on the private sector.  Ironically, with China and India producing several new coal fired power plants each month, the USFWS effort to control fairly benign human activity in Alaska’s Arctic is presumptious, foolish, and — ironically — environmentally inconsequential.  Furthermore, in order to do the work that many environmental ‘scientists’ do, they must fly over fleeing polar bears, shoot them with tranqulillizers and tag them or put radio transmitters on them.  With the Feds chasing down polar bears in aircraft, then shooting them, it’s amazing that the bears are doing so well.  The final irony will come when the government-enviroextremist cabal succeeds in shutting down oil and gas, mining activity (and perhaps commercial fishing and ocean transport) in

America’s largest state, a state with most of the country’s future oil and gas and strategic minerals with the largest and most sustainable commercial fishery.  If Alaska shuts down, can America be far behind?  And isn’t it logical to assume that some future regime will pillage Alaska for those resources because the current Administration was too weak to responsibly develop them to preserve the economy and national defense?

(Note that this is just one effort by the government-enviroextremist cabal to shut down Alaska’s economy and endanger the entire nation.  For nearly three years we have written about the cumulative effect of this death by a thousand cuts.  The ‘comment periods’ below are further evidence of this blatent aggression against Alaska and free enterprise.  In essence, these comment periods are signaling: “We are going to do these things to you but must go through the motions of inviting public comment.  If you comment in favor of our efforts to increase restrictions on human activity, or don’t comment that will give us a record that you are supportive or not interested and we should just go ahead with our plans.  If you object to our plans, we will make minor changes that will help us with any appeal you many launch and go ahead and do what we wanted to do anyway.!”)