Prairie Rattlesnake
"Environmentalist." A term that makes thinking folks, and even a few Democrats become ill. There are significant differences between holier-than-thou environmentalists and responsible conservationists.
By way of brief explanation; an environmentalist believes the natural world should remain free of any human use or interaction except for those that have government permission. Their approach is restrictive of human activity and basic liberty. A conservationist believes the natural world is there for the responsible use and enjoyment of human beings. The conservationist approach is to facilitate the access of human beings while still providing reasonable protections where they are needed. The issue typically turns on what is viewed as responsible and reasonable. A Sierra Club member is typically at one end of the spectrum and the ATV user groups are at the other.
The Environmental Movement began in the 1960s as a project of the hippie, back to nature craze. The goal of those unwashed, drug addled, draft dodging spoiled brats was to remove all commercial and most recreational activities from public land. During the past forty years, they have grown older but none wiser. While they may have learned the purpose of soap and water, they now do their damage wearing three-piece suits.
The land management agencies have been infiltrated by members of the environmental movement and policies have been implemented that have wreaked havoc with the economies of the rural west. Their efforts have destroyed families and enterprises that were generations old. Most native born westerners that still attempt to raise livestock, harvest timber, mine the resources necessary for industry or recreate by hunting, fishing, camping or riding horses on public land despise the urban elites that claim to know how to manage the West from their desks in the East.
Unfortunately, the environmentalist groups have the excesses of the past to support their attempts to deprive Americans commercial and recreational access to public lands. Over grazing, strip mining and clear cut timber operations laid waste to large portions of public and private land during the late Nineteenth and much of the Twentieth Centuries. Like so many movements, there were well-intentioned motives for protecting our natural heritage in the beginning that ended up being co-opted by the extremists.
The self-righteous rhetoric of tree hugging zealots who have a vision of the planet that would reduce the world's advanced industrialized nations to stone age culture is nothing but a mask utilizing moralistic propaganda for the purpose of controlling people and restricting freedom. It is designed to pilfer the pockets of the tax paying citizen and exert government controls over the use of public lands by the citizens that own it.
Thanks to the spandex clad, pot smoking fern feelers, their three piece lawyers and Birkenstock wearing academic allies, they have nearly succeeded in bringing America to the verge of economic failure. They are greatly responsible for the personal financial suffering of all but the wealthiest Americans in the form of obscene prices for food and fuel while America sits on huge proven energy reserves. Out here in the Big Open, they are hated.
"My name is Al Gore and I am here to help you."
Among the ideas that they have managed to convince their useful government idiot allies to support is the protection of rattlesnakes. The only people besides the wide-eyed environmental types that love the species are herpetologists and religious snake handlers - not folks that most of us find particularly compelling as associates.
Rattlesnakes are protected by federal laws passed by those that never see one in the wild or encounter them coiled up on the porch of a rural cabin or ranch house posing a serious threat to humans, pets and livestock.
The effects of a rattlesnake strike to the flesh of man or beast is profound. The tree huggers that have proudly placed this dangerous creature on the protected list have never seen the affects of a snakebite and their literature advises that few folks die as a result of a strike. Surviving does not tell half of the tale.
What most of the public does not realize is that a strike will result in prolonged and excruciating pain, multiple surgeries, possible limb amputation, permanent nerve damage, and limitation of the use of the limb for life. From my simple and barbaric standpoint, such risk is unacceptable.
The following links provide a well written documentary and photographic record by a thirteen year old victim:
http://www.rattlesnakebite.org/index.htm
http://www.rattlesnakebite.org/rattlesnakepics.htm
Here is an example of urban horse person Greenie idiocy. Recently, I subscribed to a magazine dedicated to trail riding. I thought it might be a good source of information for the type or riding I do. The magazine is just too wimpy for my tastes. It is designed for those that like organized trail riding under very controlled conditions. Not my thing. When "organizers" start telling me I cannot carry a weapon or have my dog along, I find some place else to ride.
In a recent edition, an environmentally enlightened female horse owner wrote a sappy article that included experiences with rattlesnakes around her barn. Apparently, she found an adult rattler inside, managed to trap it and then released it someplace away from her facility presumably in one of her turnouts or pastures. Compounding her dedication to Greenie stupidity, she also found two baby rattlers in her barn and "gently released them outside." For crying out loud. This had to be in California. If her horses had any idea, they would quit the outfit for sure.
This sort of nonsensical thinking pervades virtually every area of our social and political life. These are the same folks that wring their hands about removing all risk in society by taking away the right to bear arms, mandate the removal of swings, dodge ball, merry-go-rounds, and monkey bars on playgrounds and in our parks, while simultaneously advocating the presence of mosques in the local neighborhood and gushing over how open it is to have homosexual sensitivity sessions and the distribution of condoms in our secondary schools. What the hell is the matter with these people?
These folks are the same ones promoting the reintroduction of wolves in the West - the subject of another post in the future. Polyannas without a clue. Most of this crowd also stand in giddy rapture over the prospect of electing a Marxist candidate with a total experience resume of 143 days in the US Senate. You couldn't become a district manager for McDonalds with that amount of experience though you could become a government agent, policeman or a correctional officer. Go figure. Might keep that in mind when it comes time to vote.
Conservation and preservation is important to those of us that love to wander through wild country. We accept the risk of being in those places, and we accept the responsibility of dealing with those risks even if it includes gunfire. For those folks that do not believe we have a right to protect ourselves and our pets and livestock from dangerous things, I would like them to identify which of their family members, friends, pets or livestock they are willing to sacrifice. I wonder how those potential sacrificial lambs might view those so willing to see them potentially suffer or die.
