BackTo1492

“It is a bold attempt to grope our way back to October 1492 and find a different trail, a trail overgrown and nearly forgotten” - Words of Dave Forman, founder of Earth First - and more recently, a director of The Sierra Club. He goes on to describe his intellectual child, The Wildlands Plan: “We seek wolf tracks rather than gold” . . “Return big, charismatic species such as buffalo, grizzly bears, elk, wolves, puma (otherwise known as cougars) to their pre-Columbian haunts.” These are words he used to describe his plan for America - about 20 years ago. At the time, it appeared to be just another crazy rant. Today, it is a shadow plan being stealthily realized by government fiat.

He goes on: “a vast system of connected wilderness reserves that would crisscross the continent . These reserves would dwarf the largest national parks. Rather than build roads, laborers would remove existing ones, along with dams, power lines and other human-made structures. Planners would choose the reserve sites with plants and animals, not people , in mind, selecting them not for recreational opportunities, but for their ecological potential. Up to half the contiguous United States would be involved in a transformation whereby “islands” of civilization would be surrounded by wilderness tracts and corridors.”

Note: since the animals would be connected, the people would not - except by air - and probably we would be forbidden to use airplanes, since they might disturb the animals.

“We live for the day when grizzlies in Chihuahua have an unbroken connection to grizzlies in Alaska, when greywolf populations are continuous from New Mexico to Greenland, when vast, unbroken forests and flowing plains again thrive and support pre-Columian populations of plants and animals”. So says Forman and co-author Reed Noss, prof at Oregon State in Corvallis, OR.

50 Grizzlies require about 12 million acres - about a dozen Olympic National Parks)

“Our goal is to create a new polical reality based on the needs of other species”, Forman. In 1492, Cholera, rabies, smallpox, yellow fever were rampant. Without modern medicine, industry, etc and with people stacked up in big city high rises, they would become rampant again.

You can bet the half of the US to be converted to an animal park is the Western Half - not the Eastern. It starts with places such as the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State. Not too many people live here. It you destroy their livelihoods and industry, they will leave on their own.

This is the philosophy behind the Elwha fiasco. Salmon is simply a word thrown in to get the backing of the public. But destroying the only spawning area for Elwha salmon certainly is not the way to enhance them. Forman’s dream is coming true. Do you like it?

Government has already torn up many forest roads. Bureaucrats are working to deny people water, insist on huge “buffer zones” for most everything. They like to call it “science”. But it has all the earmarks of religion. Real science is that which you can prove. Unproven theories can just as easily be religion as science.

For a dozen years bureaucrats working on unproven theories have denied us the use of a fabulous 70 acre piece of ground right next to the Port Angeles harbor. A few years ago, they denied us the valuable use of another large tract of waterfront property using the tribe as their excuse. The (so called) natives are simply immigrants who’s ancestors got here earlier than our European ancestors. Yet the WILD LANDS plan hints that maybe they will be allowed to stay in the great animal park to hunt with bow and arrow? I don’t think so. But, the idea is loaded with sentimentality - so they use it.

One interesting and revealing clue about the true philosophy of modern “animal rights activists” is their selection of the species they attribute rights to. They are nearly all predators. Early settlers battled hugely against predators. Predators killed their livestock and sometimes people. To encourage people with the necessary skills and weapons, they put bounties on wolves and other predatory creatures. And I recall from my youth, men I knew who made their living off those bounties. Today, those bounties have been replaced with fines and/or imprisonment if you do kill predators. All of that helps to discourage folks from living in the country and eliminates attractive species (deer, elk, mountain goats, etc)

I have video that shows salmon runs in the Elwha were excellent 50 years after the dams were built. Also video of the gorgeous Trumpeter Swans which visit the Elwha each winter - but not again after this coming one, and video showing the disgusting landscape and air full of rock dust when the upper lake was drawn down by only 10% back in the 90s. If your group would like to see it, let me know.