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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Saturday, October 18, 2008

ESA Outrages, Part III

By Rich Kozlovich

Property owners face a daunting task against government agents and activists if there should be some type of endangered species of plant or animal on their property. Robert J. Smith wrote that these agents “routinely prevent use of their lands or property, including such activities as harvesting trees, planting crops, grazing cattle, irrigating fields, clearing brush along fence lines, discing firebreaks around homes and barns, or building a home.“ Even Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Regional Director, Sam D. Hamilton recognizes that because of the ESA effect:

“The incentives are wrong here. If I have a rare metal n my property, its value goes up. But if a rare bird occupies the land, its value disappears.”

One such example of what is wrong with ESA is the property owned by Ben Cone, Jr. Cone owns several thousand acres of pine forest in Pender County, North Carolina. Like so many who own undeveloped lands he took pride in maintaining it. They enjoy the wildlife, the outdoor experience and many times they are the ones who create habitat for all sorts of wildlife.

For almost 10 years after inheriting this property: 

“he planted special grasses for wild turkey, selectively logged 30-50 acres on a five years basis to create open areas for wildlife and conducted controlled burns to enhance foraging for quail and deer.”  

Red-cockaded woodpeckers had been on his land since the 1970’s, but since he wasn’t logging there at the time it was no big deal.  It soon became a big deal when he decided in 1991 that he would start logging his property. FWS informed him that twenty nine ….29….. red-cockaded woodpeckers in 12 colonies were living there and that was now their home. By the time they drew lines around each of these habitats they removed 1,560 acres from his control…this was now designated “critical habitat”. These 29 birds cost him 1,560 acres.

These birds spend their entire life within a few miles of the spot where they hatched and they are quite picky as to where they will live. They will only nest in the cavities of trees in mature pine forests between 60 and 70 years old, and the forest floor has to be open and free of hardwood trees or brush. It turns out that Mr. Cone actually helped to create a wonderful habitat for these birds with his responsible stewardship of the land and now he was going to be punished for it. If ever the phrase, “no good deed goes unpunished”, ever applied; it applied now.

There was only one solution….he immediately stopped his 75 to 80 year rotation plan for his forests and started clear cutting on a 40 year rotation. If they needed trees that were at least 60 years old they were going to have to find someone else’s trees because no tree on any piece of land that he still controlled were ever going to live that long.

After he clear cut 700 acres the FWS realized how stupid their actions were and (get this) offered him a deal. If he stopped cutting for four years and paid….PAID….$45,000 dollars to create a habitat for these birds on government land they would return his land to him….and he took it. What is really sad is that everyone who is aware of what goes on with all of this ESA corruption views this as a good deal. He had to pay the government $45,000 and four years of production to take back what was already his.

There is another caveat regarding this bird’s preferred living conditions. They prefer long-leaf pines; hence, landowners take predictable actions to protect their land from the predation of government officials enforcing the ESA. They simply plant trees that aren’t attractive to endangered species.

The information cited here is based on the book, Green Gone Wild, by M. David Stirling



Response to Comments II

By Rich Kozlovich

I wrote the article “Sub-Prime Pest Control” and posted it on September 20th, 2008. Gerry Weitz of Hearts Pest Management in San Diego took umbrage with my views and so I published a Response to Comments". Gerry has responded and here are his comments with my second response.

I believe my observation about you being a sincere individual is a valid one, but I fear that you are under the influence of misinformation and fallacious thinking.

Here are just a few examples I have experienced:
My very first exposure in the industry was with a man who came to my house to do a gopher fumigation in our back yard. He did not have a license to do landscape gopher work! As things turned out, I bought the company from him. I didn't realize the remifications of the practices of the former owner until I tried to expand the business and the former owner told me I couldn't report my chemical usage to the state because our gopher applications were not approved! To solve the problem I had to hire a landscape operator until I got my own landscape operator license.
There are so many egregious issues in this paragraph that If you had sent this piece of information to me privately I would have responded privately, and I would have never published it. I am really surprised at your whole approach to this issue. In Ohio we had Litulis Kilgore, another unlicensed person making illegal applications. This is known as the "Proof by Example" fallacy. Just because they used pesticides for profit doesn’t make them exterminators and it is intellectually irresponsible to use people such as this as examples for why legitimate operators should be all hot and bothered to adopt a philosophy that is antithetical to good pest control and good public health!

You may remember the Kilgore issue of about 15 years ago. He was one of those people applying methyl parathion around homes and businesses. Kilgore was only semi-literate and when asked how did he determined how much was to be used in his mix, he stated that “common sense will tell you that”. Methyl parathion is one of the most toxic liquid pesticides developed; so what was the impact on the health of the population that was so heavily exposed? What did the CDC find? In spite of the fact that the level of breakdown product from MP in the children’s urine was startling, they couldn’t find any difference in health problems between them and others of the same socio-economic group, and that also included the comparisons for the adults that hadn’t been exposed. Eventually they decided that those children who were exposed “may” have an IQ problem.

Why is it a “maybe”? Because this problem did not occur in all those exposed. Some seemed to be effected and others were not. Since IQ is highly subjective anyway, they have nothing! Believe me, if there was even the slightest potential for some malady as a result of this issue, they would have been screaming it to the heavens….but because the worst….the worst…..they can come up with is that “MAYBE” it impacts IQ for one of the most toxic materials available nothing is being said.

If any legitimate applicator in Ohio would have known about it we would have called the Ohio Department of Agriculture post haste and reported him. Under no circumstances would we have bought his business. Forgive me for being unkind, but I have to ask…did you report this man to the officials responsible for those illegal pesticide applications in your state?

Another example was finding Delta-Dust totally engulfing a kitchen countertop.
Clearly that was a misapplication, but easily remedied and I have to ask….what terrible things happened as a result? Just because someone does something stupid, doesn’t mean that it was really dangerous and that the whole rest of the world has to change. Fifty thousand people die on our highways every year. Do we need to get rid of cars because there as so many stupid drivers doing stupid things on the highways? We live in a risk versus benefit world and we base our decisions on what is the overall good.

We must remember that DDT was used to dust people all over Europe at the end of WWII with no ill effects. I have an elderly Hungarian lady as an account who calls herself one of the “DP’s” of the 1950’s who made a point of telling me that being dusted with DDT was the best thing they could have done to her and all the others who were “treated”. That procedure saved countless lives, preventing a typhus epidemic in Italy and probably over much of Europe. Although I don’t condone the misapplication you mention, I have to still ask; what terrible thing happened?

The activists and their acolytes at EPA make claims that have no basis in science or reality. A case in point is the endocrine disruption clause in the Food Quality Protection Act. The primary study that this was based on was the Tulane study which turned out to be fraudulent. They were exposed and Tulane pulled the study and the lead researcher was prohibited from applying for federal grants for five years, a punishment which I deem to be seriously flawed since he perpetrated fraud on the public with the public’s money and we are now stuck with the regulation as a result of that fraud.

As for EPA’s view of this study! Lynn Goldman, assistant administrator of the Office of Prevention, Pesticides & Toxic Substances at the Environmental Protection Agency under Carol Browner during the Clinton administration, stated that this was the cleanest science she had seen. Hogwash….how can something be science if it hasn’t been peer reviewed…and it hadn’t. Peer review was what exposed the fraud and she has a degree in medicine….she HAS to know better, yet that didn’t prevent her and the rest of the activists at EPA from plowing ahead.
I hear of technicians who use Termidor to treat bees.
I assume that you are also meaning wasps when you say bees, and although California and New York may not allow it, Termidor is labeled for wasps in the world of the sane. http://www.cdms.net/LDat/ld3DR020.pdf
The EPA has mounds of documented evidence of pesticides in our water and evidence that it is killing off marine life. It is a known fact on our chemical labels that most pesticides are highly toxic to aquatic life. There is so much that can and is reported.
These are two separate issues. Yes the labels clearly state the dangers to marine life. However, I have serious misgivings about EPA have “mounds” of information regarding chemical pesticides causing devastation to marine life through normal and legal use. If this were true EPA would be free to eliminate these products…and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. EPA is notorious for making claims that bear no resemblance to reality and when you take out the weasel words; there isn’t much left. To say that the thinkers at EPA wallow in a sinkhole of poor reasoning is being kind.
We really should do our best to get on board with the environmental movement. As I mentioned, Hearts Pest Management is an EcoWise Certified company and there is nothing in our certification that states we can not use pesticides.  
I have no beef with any pest control program that a company wishes to use, whether they call it IPM, Green, Organic or anything else they wish to use as a promotion to attract customers. I do however have a beef with those who make false claims about pesticides, pesticide applicators and the effect they have on society and the environment. The reality is that as a direct result of pesticides we are living longer, healthier, better fed lives than ever in human history.

As far as getting on board with the green activists?

The green movement is irrational and misanthropic. Everywhere in the world where their programs hold sway dystopia is rampant. They oppose pesticides, genetically modified foods, roads, dams, hydroelectric plants, electric plants of other types, chlorine in the water, and a host of other modern conveniences that make life so much better for so many people. They want everyone to go back to the primitive, yet they all live in the modern world with its conveniences. Why don't they move to those areas of the world that are primitive? If that is paradise; why aren't they living there? Why would I want to get on board with those who have shown such a massive disregard for human life?

They constantly harp how their programs are “for the children”, but children are dying because of them to the tune of hundreds of thousands each year. Tens of thousands of children in Southeast Asia go blind each year because their diets lack sufficient vitamin A. Golden Rice is a genetically modified food that would correct this immediately. They have thrown road block after road block in front of this product to keep it off the market. If they are so concerned about the health of children in the first world; why then do they distain the health, welfare and lives of children in the third world so badly?
No reasonable government will ever elliminate the use of pesticides as it could lead to uncontrollable epidemics, but we who use pesticides should be concerned about using them in a way that develops resistance in insect species, such as we have now with cockroaches.
These are also two separate issues. I take it then that you believe that Canada has a unreasonable government? I concur, because they are actively working for the elimination of pesticides, and I don’t consider California or New York much better.

As far as resistance goes….that will occur because it is the pattern of nature. Plants cannot run, they can’t hide, they don’t have teeth, claws, tough hides covered in fur and so the only way they can defend themselves is though a barrage of chemical defenses. As pests become resistant to one of these defenses; the plants develop another. It is already programmed in each of their genetic codes.

One more point. The vast majority of chemical pesticides people will consume are naturally occurring in the food we eat and over 90% of all carcinogens we consume are naturally occurring chemicals in the food we eat. There are 11 different carcinogens in coffee. In one cup of coffee you will consume more carcinogens than from the entire amount of synthetic pesticide residue from all the food you consume in one year.

Before we have any more discussions, I must insist that you first read Paul Driessen’s book, Eco-Imperialism, Green Power, Black Death. You can find it in my home page link to “My Book Reviews” where I have provided a link to order it.

I won’t be attending National. Best wishes. RK

____________________________
Rick, thank you for reposting my comment in its' original form.

If you are going to the NPMA convention, I would be happy to discuss these issues more with you.

Here are just a few examples I have experienced: 
My very first exposure in the industry was with a man who came to my house to do a gopher fumigation in our back yard. He did not have a license to do landscape gopher work! As things turned out, I bought the company from him. I didn't realize the remifications of the practices of the former owner until I tried to expand the business and the former owner told me I couldn't report my chemical usage to the state because our gopher applications were not approved! To solve the problem I had to hire a landscape operator until I got my own landscape operator license.

Another example was finding Delta-Dust totally engulfing a kitchen countertop. I hear of technicians who use Termidor to treat bees. The EPA has mounds of documented evidence of pesticides in our water and evidence that it is killing off marine life. It is a known fact on our chemical labels that most pesticides are highly toxic to aquatic life. There is so much that can and is reported.

We really should do our best to get on board with the environmental movement. As I mentioned, Hearts Pest Management is an EcoWise Certified company and there is nothing in our certification that states we can not use pesticides. No reasonable government will ever elliminate the use of pesticides as it could lead to uncontrollable epidemics, but we who use pesticides should be concerned about using them in a way that develops resistance in insect species, such as we have now with cockroaches.

Web Sites Worth Exploring

Editor's Note:  This was an email from James Marusek to Benny Peiser at CCNet - Cambridge Conference Network, that appeared on the blog “Greenie Watch”. I asked for and received permission to reprint it by Mr. Marusek, a retired Department of the Navy Nuclear Physicist & Engineer. I have also linked his web sites, The Legacy of the Environmental Movement and IMPACT in my blog roll. I would like to thank Mr. Marusek for his consideration. RK

In the beginning of April, after almost 4 decades of service to my government, I have retired to a quiet life or at least so I thought. On the 3rd of June, a large tornado ripped through my property. Fortunately it jumped over the house but there was still significant damage requiring a major cleanup effort. (BTW,  the tornado was the plain vanilla kind, 100% natural - a normal weather phenomena, uncontaminated by mankind) There is probably a bright side to all this. I now have over a 6-year supply of firewood to heat my home and I am better fit as a result. Its a fallout of cutting up large trees and picking up and tossing the pieces, some weighing over a hundred pounds. Sometimes I feel like I have been run over by a train locomotive. So much for the quiet life!

I have heated my home solely with firewood for the past 30 years. Firewood is an unappreciated plentiful source of renewable energy and it's oldest source. The use of wood to produce heat dates back almost 250,000 years. It is interesting to note that there were 196 wood burning electricity plants in the United States as of January 2007, including 72 with 40 megawatt capacity or larger. Last year wood generated more net electricity in the U.S. than solar cells and wind turbines combined.

In my spare time I have been expanding one of my web-pages called "The Legacy of the Environmental Movement" that I introduced in April. I think it is important to understand the intent of the environmental movement over the past 3 decades and their roadmap into the future. The current global warming scare is only one piece of a much broader picture, like a single piece in a child's puzzle. From my viewpoint, it felt right to put some of this puzzle together and this web-page was my tool for accomplishing that. My original web-page has now expanded into 90 web-pages. These web-pages currently link to over 1,500 articles and books. Sometimes I feel a bit overwhelmed by the amount of information available.


Sunday, October 5, 2008

Killing Malarial Mosquitos Now!

by Paul Driessen

I would like to thank Mr. Driessen for allowing me to reprint his work. RK

Not long ago, most Americans thought malaria had disappeared from Planet Earth. Few remembered that it had killed thousands every year in the United States, into the 1940s – or that it was once prevalent in New Jersey, Ohio, California and the South, as well as in Europe and even Siberia.

All but a handful knew this preventable disease was killing an African child every 30 seconds – a million every year. Almost none realized malaria was still a global problem largely because of strident environmentalist opposition to insecticides and DDT to control mosquitoes that spread the disease.

While billions were being spent on cancer and HIV/AIDS, the 2003 US Agency for International Development budget for fighting malaria was $30 million – and almost 90% of it was being spent in the Washington, DC area, on contractors, conferences, educational materials and “capacity building.”

The New York Times, Washington Times, Wall Street Journal and many others took exception, arguing that DDT and modern insecticides were essential in combating malaria. The Congress of Racial Equality and Association of American Physicians and Surgeons implored President Bush to support renewed DDT use.

No other chemical in existence, they pointed out, does what DDT does, at a fraction of the cost of supposed “alternatives.” Sprayed in small amounts on the walls of mud and thatch huts, this powerful spatial repellant keeps mosquitoes from entering homes for six months or more, irritates the few that do enter so they don’t bite, kills any that land, and slashes malaria rates by 70% or more.

President Bush responded to the outrage and launched the President’s Malaria Initiative in June 2005.

Several months later, the Kill Malarial Mosquitoes Now coalition presented the President, USAID and Congress with a strongly worded declaration, signed by Nobel Peace Prize Laureates Desmond Tutu, Norman Borlaug and FW DeKlerk, Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore, and hundreds of physicians, clergy, civil rights leaders and other “people of conscience.” Malaria funds must be spent saving lives, not hosting conferences, they insisted. America must support DDT, bednets and drug therapies.
In response, Senator Tom Coburn led a bipartisan House-Senate-White House-USAID effort that increased malaria funding to over $100 million for FY-2006, with most of it to be spent on nets, drugs and sprays. President Bush pledged $1.2 billion for the PMI over a five-year period.

In October 2006, Dr. Arata Kochi announced that the World Health Organization would reinstitute DDT use for indoor household spraying, in conjunction with nets, other insecticides and combination drug therapies. “Help us protect the environment,” he urged world leaders, “while we save African babies.”

Since then, financial commitments by nations, agencies and corporations have increased exponentially, and there has been real progress in controlling malaria – as opposed to hollow claims of progress in the past.

As a follow-up to net distribution efforts, a survey by the Mali health ministry found that 51% of young children had “slept under a net the previous night.” In Kenya officials distributed 11,000,000 long-lasting, insecticide-impregnated nets. PMI director Tim Ziemer noted that two nets per family and 50-70% regular use reduced infant and under-five childhood malaria mortality by up to a third.

Homes were sprayed and millions of nets and drug therapies distributed in Rwanda, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Zanzibar. In several Ugandan districts, the prevalence of malaria parasites in blood samples fell from 30% to 3% after houses were sprayed with the insecticide Icon, according to former Uganda malaria manager Dr. John Rwakimari. Mozambique’s seven-year insecticide, bednet and drug treatment program reduced malaria rates by 88% among children. Zambia’s multi-pronged program has also been successful.

But enormous challenges remain.

Half of the world’s people are still at risk of getting malaria, the WHO noted in September, and the disease killed another million people in 2006. Nearly 250,000,000 people were infected, and access to treatment is still inadequate, the agency admits – without acknowledging why that is so, and how malaria could be reduced dramatically if officials would abandon their politically correct policies.

It is impossible to treat a quarter billion victims a year, especially in impoverished countries where medical facilities are primitive, at best. However, reducing patient loads is stymied by political forces that refuse to permit comprehensive strategies to control mosquitoes and prevent infection.

The operative policy is right out of the National Basketball Association: Nothing but nets. But “without continual reminders, people just stop using their nets, and malaria surges again,” says Africa Fighting Malaria board member Dr. Donald Roberts, who has studied DDT and malaria for 30 years.

“Even when every child in a village got a net, half of them were re-infected in three weeks,” Rwakimari told me. Worse, net programs focus mainly on babies, small children and pregnant women, leaving other family members unprotected “Spraying a house with DDT eliminates behavior as a consideration. It protects everyone in the house 24 hours a day.”

Eradicating malaria requires nets, insecticides and spatial repellants to keep infected mosquitoes away from healthy people, and infected people away from non-malarial mosquitoes – plus artemisinin combination therapies (ACT drugs) to eliminate plasmodium parasites from people who still get infected.

Most insecticides for killing mosquitoes are also used in agriculture, which raises resistance issues; DDT is our only long-lasting spatial repellant; and no one is doing research to find equally effective replacements.

In fact, Pesticide Action Network, World Wildlife Fund and other activists stridently oppose all spraying. They claim DDT causes testicular tumors, lactation failure in nursing mothers and reduced biodiversity. Ill-informed UN and WHO bureaucrats make the same arguments – though “the claims are not supported by real world data,” says Roberts. And these speculative to phony risks are trivial compared to malaria.

Compounding these problem are a growing inflow of substandard and counterfeit drugs, and high import duties that price quality foreign medications out of reach for many victims. In addition, too many patients stop taking their prescriptions as soon as they feel better, sell the remaining pills, and then relapse, notes University of Alabama at Birmingham medical researcher Dr. Robert Novak.

Another huge problem is the “near total absence” of monitoring and data gathering and analysis, says Novak, who also co-chairs the Integrated Malaria Management Consortium. “Except on rare occasions, the only things people are measuring are how much money is being spent, how many nets have been distributed, how much effort is being exerted. They’re not measuring reductions in disease and deaths, or analyzing whether a strategy is actually working – often because that’s harder to assess, or the results would be too embarrassing.”

Available data suggest that, used without spraying, a $10 bednet has only a 20% chance of saving a life.

We would never tolerate a 20% efficacy in saving American lives, and we shouldn’t tolerate it for African, Asian or Latin American lives either. Yet without truly comprehensive programs that combine insecticides, larvacides, spatial repellants, nets, combination drugs and careful monitoring of results – along with fully transparent programs and accountability for success or failure – even a multi-billion-dollar program will simply perpetuate malaria at levels that developed country bureaucrats deem “acceptable.”

The carnage must end. We did it in Panama, the United States, Europe and elsewhere, long ago, using methods that were primitive compared to what are available today. It’s time to demand nothing less for Africa – and for governments and people in malaria-afflicted nations to take charge of their future, stop making excuses, root out incompetence, and employ comprehensive strategies to eradicate this disease.



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