Even if you don't like ME...
 

:help:
don't hold it against the critters, ok? Check this out, and I'd appreciate anyone who decides to sign it. Humor the tree-huggin' hippie. Pretty please with sugar and bananas and cherries and whatever else you like on top?

Thanks, guys
:thankyou:
Sidhe

:tux: :guinea: :elkgrin:

A hearing on Capitol Hill this week kicked off a drive to rewrite the law that protects more than 1,800 animal species believed to be near extinction. No details have emerged about what provisions might change, but the Chairman of the House Resources Committee is Richard Pombo who likes the Endangered Species Act about as much as he likes being photographed without his cowboy hat.

Since 1973, the Endangered Species Act has protected animals that might otherwise not survive human encroachment. But developers and others have complained loudly that the law limits their ability to profit from the land and have sought to make it less restrictive. The Senate subcommittee chairman who oversees the Act is Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, whose strong environmental record should give conservationists some comfort. But the hard-charging Pombo has already signaled he'll accept nothing less than radical changes in the law. Pombo is the same lawmaker who last week used a procedural maneuver to preserve taxpayer subsidies to logging companies in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska

http://action.lcv.org/campaign/endangered_species01?

okie dokie, as a tree kissing long-hair.. (and a lover of small furry things (although not in the biblical sense)) count me in. the wonderful thing about the protection act is that is has halted a trafficway here in Lawrence for about 3 years now. ROCK ON SPOTTED OWL!!! they have lost millions of dollars on this thing.. I'll have to see if I can get a picture of it.. there's this big-ass high way that.. just... ends at a place where a bridge ought to be.. I dunno, it's a little victory.

The US has 4 million miles of public roads.
20% of that is urban.
80% is rural.
50% is unpaved.
1% is the Interstate Highway System.
10% is in the National Forest System. :eek:
Can you say roadkill, boys and girls? Granted much of that 10 % in the Forest System is unpaved and low volume but still, critters beware.

one of the weirdest things I have seen of late.. an ex of mine and I were driving down to see her family (the love me.. and I'm kinda partial to them) in misouri... and on the way there I noticed a dead animal that I hadn't seen before.. yeah I look around all of the time... so I made her stop.. it was a freaking armidillo! HERE!.. yeah and there is no such thing as global warming.. although I did do alot of learning about them after that.. pretty cool little critters, although it seems highways are the worst possible place for them to be hanging out.

Ok I admit it I'm British but what's an unpaved road.

<img src="http://www.claymont.org/photos/gravel_road.jpg">

<img src="http://www.niar.twsu.edu/belize/images/walking%20on%20dirt%20road.jpg">

= 2000 words?

Ok I was kidding. Looks tropical where is it?

I haven't a clue. 'gravel road' and 'dirt road' in <a href="http://images.google.com/">images.google.com</a> plus a little arbitrary selection.

Skunks. This is a real gravel road = 3000 words

I love the Endangered Species Act, but you could write volumes about the bizarre ways it gets enforced here in California. (Above and beyond the volumes you could write about how we do ANYTHING in California) Two fascinating examples:

On one of the Channel Islands (that's basically Catalina for those who don't know West Coast geography) there is a tiny little fox which is native there and found nowhere else. Cutest little bugger you ever saw, but they are practically extinct. Seems that the introduction of pigs that went feral messed up the balance for that area, and to make a long story short, a species of EAGLE which had not been living there before came over from the mainland to take advantage of all the baby pigs and they have forced out the Bald Eagles which DID "belong there". So now, in order to enforce the Endangered Species Act, the Park Service and the ecologists find themselves in the messy position of having to shoot both pigs and eagles, which wipes out the currently dominant life forms there, in order to "save" the little fox who might not survive anyway.

The other case is up at the newly ground-broken University of California Merced, where in one of the most brazen sweetheart deals of the century a local rich guy was allowed to "donate the land free" so that the UC system would start building an entire university from the ground up in the middle of nowhere instead of taking over available areas with fully constructed structures, utilities, and access (one of which was in downtown Fresno). The payoff is that the guy owns all the rest of the land surrounding this spot and will be able to cash in bigtime with his monopoly on all housing sites, shopping centers, and anything else that follows a growing university. Ooooops! Vernal pools :lol: Itty bitty fairy shrimps, only found during the few months of the year when it rains enough, but on the List. So now we have a scheming would-be developer turning purple because he has to set aside many prime acres right in the middle of where he planned to put a golf course and luxury housing (which every university MUST have) so as not to harm something which is difficult to see with the naked eye. Yep, spotted owls are great, but fairy shrimps rock too :biggrin:

I love the University one. Maybe I will start a thread called "Spot The Scam". If your into the endangered thing there a guy who comes into the bar in Bangkok we call him the tiger guy his "job" is saving tigers in Thailand.

Yes, I've hear how much the inhabitants of those countries are interested in "saving" tigers, specifically the penis which is attached to said tiger. Unfortunately, in the process of detaching the penis the tiger has to be sacrificed. But oh well, the virility of some old Chinese rich guy does so much more for the local economy than a few pesky cats :mad:

Ah so you've heard about the Sri Racha Tiger Zoo that doesn't have tigers anymore because they had to be put down because the zoo didn't have a license to keep tigers. Nod, nod, wink, wink.
Damn I'm gonna start that spot the scam thread.

No, that's a dirt road. A gravel road is built so when it rains you aren't up to your hubs in mud like a dirt road. ;)

I'm more impressed with the timestamp on the photo! 2019! Wow, not only is that a huge wet dirt road but it probably hasn't even been started yet!