93 Roosters Confiscated At Cockfighting Arena In Desert

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LONDON (AFP) - Animal rights protesters clashed with spectators at Britain's last major hare-coursing event before the sport becomes illegal under new laws banning hunting with hounds.

 Three people were arrested by police following the clash at the final Waterloo Cup, which had been moved forward by a week to avoid the ban on hunting which comes into effect from Friday.

About 200 protesters attended the event in Great Altcar, Lancashire, to demonstrate against the sport, in which a pair of competing greyhounds chase a hare.

They were met by hundreds of jeering spectators who waved fox tails and threw a dismembered hare, bottles, cans, stones and dozens of earth clods. Two live fireworks were also thrown, but nobody was injured.

Mounted police used their horses to drive back a group of around 20 spectators who tried to charge at the protesters.

Tony Moore, who led the protest on behalf of Fight Against Animal Cruelty in Europe, said: "This is not a day of jubilation for us. I just feel bad that it has taken so long to achieve this ban. We shouldn't have to be here today."

Simon Hart, chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, watched the demonstration and was singled out for much of the verbal abuse.

He vowed that the Waterloo Cup would continue in some way.

He said: "I'm absolutely, 100 percent certain that the Waterloo Cup will take place in some form in 2006.

"It may not be here, it may not even be in this country, and it may be in a different form, but the Waterloo Cup will live on. We will return.

"The mood today is not downcast or sentimental, but one of quiet determination," he said.

Options to continue the sport could include muzzling the dogs or holding the event in Ireland.

Thirty-two courses were run Monday and four hares were killed.

Hundreds of packs of foxhounds, hare hounds, deer hounds and other hunts and clubs are planning to meet on Saturday, the day after the hunting ban comes into force in England and Wales.

The pro-hunting Countryside Alliance said the meets will be widely advertised and held at locations well placed to allow everyone who supports freedom and tolerance to support their local hunt.

Supporters of fox hunting have been particularly vocal against the ban on hunting with hounds adopted last November.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050214/wl_uk_afp/britainhuntinghares_050214190044

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EASTERN SPOTTED OWL

In the midst of the current barrage of Orwellian terms about the Endangered Species Act (“improve”, “strengthen”, “strip”, “rape”, “throw out”, etc.), an article on page A3 of the 13 February Washington Times should jar us all back to reality. The title of the article is “Deer Threaten Ginseng Crop, Biologist Says”. The picture shows a West Virginia University professor holding a ginseng root. The scientist tells us in the journal Science that “ginseng could be extinct within 100 years if deer keep grazing at current rates.” “One solution that he believes will ensure the herb’s survival is to reintroduce mountain lions, wolves, or other natural predators in the Appalachian Mountains.” “Nature is out of balance here because we’ve killed off the top predators; so the obvious solution is to restore them.”

I am sure that this revelation caused light bulbs to go on everywhere from Washington, DC to the North Shore of Chicago. Imagine, a widely distributed plant that grows in forests is believed to be “healthful” and is becoming extinct BECAUSE of deer plus a “scientist” puts forth a preferred solution of reintroducing wolves and mountain lions. Wow, this one has it all. What is “all”? Why “all” is everything the Endangered Species has been expanded to cover as of this date and an unlimited potential for unimagined future Federal power expansion. Keeping in mind the wording of the Endangered Species Act and all of the Federal power expansions it has generated, let’s consider how the ginseng plant can, like the spotted owl on the west coast, cause more havoc to more people than anyone can imagine until it is too late.

If ginseng is approaching extinction, no matter the time, Listing under the Endangered Species Act whether under this Administration or the next green bunch in the fringes of ginseng’s range is a sure thing. One need only see how the ubiquitous rocky mountain bighorn sheep in the Sierras are Listed as a “distinct population segment” while they thrive throughout the western states.

A plant, as opposed an animal, is much more “plastic” when it comes to listing it in all or parts of it’s range. By “plastic” I mean that unlike animals where you can list subspecies, races, populations, distinct populations, and distinct population segments (anything above a pair), plants also have varieties and that makes Listing anything a snap. The scientists can no doubt identify Western Appalachian ginseng, or Great Lakes ginseng, or lowland ginseng, or mountain ginseng, or glacial till ginseng or on and on. Listing will be easier than almost anything to date.

Ginseng is widely distributed in woodlands. It will be easy to show that logging or home building or clearing or mining or any disturbance will jeopardize it. Critical Habitat designations will dwarf western designations of woods needed for spotted owls. Most Federal Forests and private woodlands can be designated “Critical” (at NO COST, since the Endangered Species Act destroyed the part of the Constitution that required “no taking without compensation”). Logging, home building, roads, and any manner of forest disturbance will require a “permit”. Even clearing a half acre next to grandmas so you can tear down her place and move her in with you will require a bureaucrats permission. But this isn’t the half of it.

Deer can come under Federal jurisdiction over most of the country. Since the deer are what is making the ginseng “extinct”, just like California’s mountain lions (that are making the bighorn sheep in the Sierras extinct) the Federal government will take over deer control programs to “save” the Listed ginseng. The only reason they don’t take over full jurisdiction on California’s cougars is that the cougars kill people and the Federal government doesn’t see any profit in handling that sort of thing. There is no such problem with taking over deer management, since they don’t kill people and most Federal bureaucrats want to hasten the day that hunting is no longer allowed. But I have saved the best for last.

The scientist says (why do I always hear a drum roll when I write that?) that wolves and mountain lions “should” be reintroduced in the Appalachians. That is like the hokey 10 years ago about “reintroducing wolves in Yellowstone Park”. The wolves soon inhabited the Upper Rocky Mountain States and have wreaked havoc on big game, livestock, dogs (hunting, watchdogs, and pets) for hundreds of miles in every direction from Yellowstone in less than a decade. The Appalachian Mountains is merely a seed area for the Eastern half of the country to be stocked with mountain lions and wolves.

The mountain lions and wolves will kill deer. They will also kill dogs and livestock and foals and mares and cattle (when driven off soon enough they may only eat 20 or 30 lbs. of meat off the hind quarters of the still living steer) oh, and kids and old people. In my visits to West Virginia I have noticed lots of kids and old people walking in rural areas. They will of course have to educated about “puffing up” and “rolling in a ball” and not being in a “predator’s habitat”, you know all the absurd government propaganda that convinces urban Americans that there is no problem “out there”.

Then there is the danger to hunters. In thick Eastern woodlands mountain lions and even wolves will blunder into and occasionally attack hunters like the increasing grizzly bear attacks on western hunters. Aside from injuring and killing some hunters, the predators will discourage other hunters from risking attack, especially for ever rarer chances to see a deer. Those not so discouraged will not last long after a hunter or landowner kills a wolf or a Federal (because they kill deer that eat Listed ginseng) mountain lion because it was threatening him or his family and because the bullet entered behind the cougar’s shoulder the man is sent to prison and his family is forced to go on welfare.

The list of advocates for all this is endless. Federal bureaucrats can get millions and lots of new positions to “manage” ginseng and the “natural predators”. They will need more positions to “oversee” State deer harvests and regulations in deer/ginseng areas (nearly all of the majority of States.) When they go to buy up a place like Upper Darby in Ohio for a refuge, the next time they will claim it is “necessary” for the preservation of the “Upper Scioto Floodplain Ginseng” and maybe that will push them over the top. The professor and a few of his counterparts in say Kentucky and perhaps Wisconsin will get grants for research about Listing, and then for “Monitoring”, and soon more professors will get into the lucrative predator/deer/ginseng business and determine the need for more enforcement (Federal) and the regulations will be written and modified and adjusted.

The Non-Governmental Organizations will raise tons of donations. Defenders of Wildlife will again assume the role of “paying for losses” (except dogs and people and things not 100% provable and things like sheep where Defenders doesn’t think they should be, etc.). The chardonnay will flow and the brie and caviar will sell good on the North Shore of Chicago at gatherings to “raise money” to save woodlands by reintroducing “top” predators. The Sierra Club and Wilderness Society will jump on the “need” to for the Federal government to buy and close more woodlands and to force private landowners to stop uses on their own land unless a “permit” is granted and permits won’t be “granted”. Lawsuits before “friendly” courts will be more numerous than killer whales in the Bering Sea. Radicals from the Ruckus Society and ALF and ELF and the Wildlands Project to the National Wildlife Federation and the Humane Society of the US and the Animal Welfare Institute will symphonically publish articles and create mayhem to “save” ginseng and restore the predators.

The State fish and wildlife agencies will work hard to see that they get every Federal dime available to or due them. Bonuses will be granted for the most Federal dollars obtained. The State politicians will merely shrug and say there is nothing they can do.

What of hunters? Well deer and bear (there is only so much to eat in the woods) hunting will go “extinct” eventually. Hunters will see and hear dogs killed. Hunters and farmers and rural resident will be more cautious about going anywhere alone. Dogs will have to be kept close and inside at night everywhere outside cities of 50,000 or more. Livestock will be killed, often in large numbers from individual flocks or herds. Humans will be maimed and killed. And best of all neither the Federal or State governments will be liable or responsible. When citizens complain to State officials they will be directed to the “responsible” Federal bureaucrats. Those Federal bureaucrats will direct you to the Endangered Species Act and their regulations and want to know what your name is.

All to “save” ginseng! This is no exaggeration. The precedents and court rulings make all this not only possible but likely. There have been no successful heroes to date. As long as the Endangered Species Act remains as the growing lab specimen it has become, abuses such as I have described here will both proliferate and grow in totalitarian harm. The government bureaucrats and the professors and the Non-Government Organizations are, like the predators they advocate, merely behaving in preordained ways.

The “top predator” throughout the world for thousands of years has always been MAN. MAN determines what plants and what animals in what amounts exist at what locations. When we allow the Federal bureaucrats to arrest people for shooting a grizzly bear in their yard or a wolf in their pasture while other countries that signed the UN CITES (the treaty the Endangered Species Act implements) kill wolves on sight and grizzly bears at the drop of a hat if they are threatening; we make a mockery of the US Constitution. There is NO “best” or “predetermined” mix of plants and animals anywhere. The lower 48 were and would be still just fine if there was only the few wolves in Northern Minnesota and a handful of grizzly bears on the Montana/Canada border country. To have allowed this unchecked growth of Federal authority over plants and animals at the expense of State Constitutional authority is bad government and bad environmental management and a violation of “domestic Tranquility” that is one of the first and basic charges “We” gave to government in the Constitution.

The Endangered Species Act can only be changed by Federal politicians. No, correct that, Federal politicians with integrity and guts. The Republican administration of Nixon loosely managed and sympathized with the Federal bureaucrats that drafted (with their UN counterparts) CITES and the Endangered Species Act. Thirty-five years later we have seen what it is doing and how and why it must be amended. Thirty-five years later there is a Republican White House, House, and Senate. If it (positive change that protects our government and our people and our rights while providing for plants and animals) is not achievable now, will it ever be?

Amendments should confirm the Constitutional guarantee of “no taking without compensation”. They should not grant permanent Federal jurisdiction over any plant or animal other than those named in duly ratified treaties with sovereign nations and not “Conventions” brokered by the UN. The Federal role should consist of providing funding for research and Listing. Listed species should be identified to State governments and incentives offered to States and private property owners should be temporary in nature and voluntarily acceptable by States and private landowners. State authority over plants and animals should be preserved, not systematically destroyed. Perhaps a “requirement” that any US delegations to UN meetings should first and foremost protect all provisions of the US Constitution would be advisable and productive.

One more little thing, that might go a long way toward checking this Federal environmental growth would be to forbid any public land or environmental project or any part thereof from being named after any Federal elected official or employed bureaucrat until say 25 years after their passing. In the case of new refuges and parks and additions and etceteras, the decrease of incentives to add or expand the Federal presence would be a good thing.

Jim Beers
14 February 2005

Source: http://www.allianceforamerica.org/bb/viewtopic.php?t=2718&sid=129e1f52f8f4babb067762c27ac3d7f8