Save the Whales. Release the Elephants. Kill the Eagles.

 

shutterstock_94987243If you’re an animal rights activist, you’ve had some high profile wins lately. In March, three years after the highly-critical documentary “Blackfish” was released, Sea World caved to PETA and similar groups, and announced it was ending killer whale shows and captivity:

SeaWorld will turn its attention to “new, inspiring, natural orca encounters” with educational programs emphasizing enrichment, exercise and health with its remaining killer whales, CEO Joel Manby said on a conference call. The orca shows will end in San Diego in 2017, while the San Antonio and Orlando parks will end the shows by 2019.

“Today marks a bold and impactful shift for our company,” Manby said. “The killer whale issue is a growing reason why many people don’t visit SeaWorld and this is about doing the best thing for our orcas, our guests, our ambassadors and our company.”

The company, which said it has not collected any orcas from the wild in more than 40 years, said its orcas will live out their lives at SeaWorld. That includes one pregnant orca named Takara.

Of course, PETA being PETA, that wasn’t enough:

PETA, which has called for SeaWorld to move its orcas to sanctuaries, hailed the move as a positive step. But PETA senior vice president Lisa Lange called for SeaWorld to send its orcas to “sea pens” located next to the ocean and even release some in the wild, a controversial proposal because captive animals often can’t adjust to the wild.

“They should be able to release the animals into more natural settings where they feel the ocean current, the sun on their backs,” she said in an interview.

Nevermind the fact that Keiko, the whale in the movie Free Willy, died after he was released back into the wild in 2003.

In another win for animal rights activists, after almost 150 years, The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus paraded their elephants around the three rings for the last time on May 1st:

Decades of litigation, protest and mounting scrutiny from swaths of animal rights activists, as well as a shifting public opinion toward the captivity and use of wild animals for entertainment, forced the circus to phase out its long-running elephant act for good. Feld Entertainment Inc., the circus’s parent company, announced the decision in March 2015, initially planning to retire their remaining touring elephants by 2018. But nearly a year later, the company said their elephants would perform for the final time in May, at least 18 months earlier than expected.

After their performance Sunday in Rhode Island, the six female elephants joined five others that also retired at shows in Wilkes Barre, Penn., on a train headed south, toward the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Center for Elephant Conservation in central Florida. There, the show’s 11 remaining elephants will join its herd of 29 to live out their days.

Nevermind the fact that, when National Geographic toured the conservation center, they found that the elephants’ new home wasn’t much better.

Killer whales like Shamu, and Asian elephants, have entertained kids and adults for years, and I would imagine that every reader has been to either Sea World and/or the Ringling Brothers Circus, probably multiple times. We all have different, mostly positive, memories and emotions evoked when we think back to those shows.

Now think of the bald eagle. One instantly thinks of America, the flag, patriotism, and national pride. One of my favorite moments at an NFL game was watching a bald eagle fly over an American flag that covered the entire field, as the National Anthem was playing. I filmed some of it:

Sadly, it seems the Obama Administration doesn’t hold the bald eagle in similar esteem:

The Obama administration is revising a federal rule that allows wind-energy companies to operate high-speed turbines for up to 30 years, even if means killing or injuring thousands of federally protected bald and golden eagles.

Under the plan announced Wednesday, companies could kill or injure up to 4,200 bald eagles a year without penalty — nearly four times the current limit. Golden eagles could only be killed if companies take steps to minimize the losses, for instance, by retrofitting power poles to reduce the risk of electrocution.

Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe said the proposal will “provide a path forward” for maintaining eagle populations while also spurring development of a pollution-free energy source that’s intended to ease global warming, a cornerstone of President Barack Obama’s energy plan.

In order to continue to push their nonsensical climate change agenda, Obama has no problem killing our national symbol en masse. It is striking that there is already a “current limit” of eagles that wind turbines can chop up, but that limit isn’t enough to satisfy the demands of “green energy” zealots.

These wind farms are already huge eyesores, and massive failures, as documented in story after story after story. The most notorious failure and cautionary tale comes from Germany:

Merkel’s energy plan called for the addition of 25,000 megawatts of sea-based wind turbine power by 2030. However through the first six months of 2012 only 45 megawatts had been added to Germany’s existing 200-megawatt supply, according to an industry analyst quoted by Reuters. And despite massive subsidies funded by a household energy surcharge (which currently comprises 14 percent of German power bills), major wind projects in the North Sea are being delayed or canceled due to skittish investors.

The basic problem? Wind farms are notoriously unreliable as a power source. Not only that, they take up vast amounts of space and kill tens of thousands of birds annually.

Back here in America:

The Fish and Wildlife Service concluded that the US population of roughly 40,000 golden eagles could endure the loss of about 2,000 birds a year without being pushed toward extinction. And the agency suggested that bald eagles, estimated to number about 143,000 nationwide, could sustain as many as 4,200 fatalities annually without endangering the species.

The new proposal, which is open for public comment through July 5, would make wind farms and other energy developers responsible for monitoring eagle deaths from collisions with facility structures.

This is the Obama Administration’s second bite at the apple. In 2013, a federal judge in California blocked the 30-year pass for the wind energy industry to kill eagles. The American Bird Conservancy filed that successful lawsuit, but it is obvious that the Obama Administration wants to — and will — allow wind turbines to destroy thousands of eagles and other birds, in its continued vain attempt the save the planet.

The AP interviewed Michael Hutchins of the American Bird Conservancy:

Unless the plan requires better tracking of bird deaths at or near wind turbines it is unlikely to succeed. Hutchins … said officials must ensure that bird-death reporting is done by independent observers rather than by the industry, which he said treats such data as “trade secrets.”

Mortality data should be transparent and open to the public.

The reporting of this data is currently voluntary, and the Interior Department refuses to release the information.

Of course. The “most transparent Administration ever” (bird) strikes again.

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  1. Misthiocracy Member
    Misthiocracy
    @Misthiocracy

    I belong to the Pave The Earth Foundation and People For The Ethical Treatment of Taxpayers.

    • #1
  2. Aaron Miller Inactive
    Aaron Miller
    @AaronMiller

    Democrats advocate for animals but kill them. They advocate for the poor but further impoverish them. They advocate to end international oppression and violence but encourage it.

    What is the opposite of the Midas touch?

    • #2
  3. James Gawron Inactive
    James Gawron
    @JamesGawron

    Misthiocracy:I belong the the Pave The Earth Foundation and People For The Ethical Treatment of Taxpayers.

    Mis,

    How can I get an application?

    Regards,

    Jim

    • #3
  4. Bishop Wash Member
    Bishop Wash
    @BishopWash

    So, the same government that went after a lady for giving a gift to Hillary Clinton with an eagle feather she picked off the ground at a zoo, is okay with thousands of eagles being killed to somehow appease Gaia?

    • #4
  5. EJHill Podcaster
    EJHill
    @EJHill

    Save the whales. Because a whale saved is a whale earned.

    • #5
  6. Vald the Misspeller Inactive
    Vald the Misspeller
    @ValdtheMisspeller

    Aaron Miller:Democrats advocate for animals but kill them. They advocate for the poor but further impoverish them. They advocate to end international oppression and violence but encourage it.

    What is the opposite of the Midas touch?

    Obamanomics?

    • #6
  7. Pony Convertible Inactive
    Pony Convertible
    @PonyConvertible

    I found out yesterday that our State DNR has spent tens of thousands dollars to relocated box turtles from the corridor of a new interstate highway that is being built.  So far they have relocated 45 turtles.

    What a waste.

    • #7
  8. Aaron Miller Inactive
    Aaron Miller
    @AaronMiller

    That’s nothing, Pony. I once saw college reps collecting sea slugs that washed ashore, so they could return them to the ocean at a nearby pier. I assume the college had been given grant money for stuff like this.

    Save the slugs!

    • #8
  9. Paul Dougherty Member
    Paul Dougherty
    @PaulDougherty

    I am amazed at just how efficient these windmills are at pinging these birds. So much for the much vaunted eagle-eye.

    • #9
  10. Arizona Patriot Member
    Arizona Patriot
    @ArizonaPatriot

    Misthiocracy:I belong the the Pave The Earth Foundation and People For The Ethical Treatment of Taxpayers.

    I’m a PETA member.  People who enjoy tasty animals.

    • #10
  11. RightTurn Inactive
    RightTurn
    @user_503489

    This is what it sounds like when doves *splat*

    • #11
  12. Misthiocracy Member
    Misthiocracy
    @Misthiocracy

    James Gawron:

    Misthiocracy:I belong the the Pave The Earth Foundation and People For The Ethical Treatment of Taxpayers.

    Mis,

    How can I get an application?

    Regards,

    Jim

    Sadly, PETT went dark around 2006

    • #12
  13. Hoyacon Member
    Hoyacon
    @Hoyacon

    Pony Convertible:I found out yesterday that our State DNR has spent tens of thousands dollars to relocated box turtles from the corridor of a new interstate highway that is being built. So far they have relocated 45 turtles.

    Hey, they’re turtles. It takes awhile :)

    • #13
  14. David Sussman Member
    David Sussman
    @DaveSussman

    Or maybe Conservatives are the true animal rights advocates.

    • #14
  15. Cantankerous Homebody Inactive
    Cantankerous Homebody
    @CantankerousHomebody

    PETA Kills Animals! Never Forget!  They broke into that one house to abduct a dog and killed it before the owners got home.

    Not only that, the reflection of the sun off the field of solar panels will cause birds flying over them to catch on fire.

    Also, the rapid change in pressure caused by the wind power turbines cause bat lungs to rupture and they die from drowning in their own blood.

    By contrast the eagles get off kind of lucky.  As it is with all environmentalism, as my one professor said, it’s survival of the cutest.

    • #15
  16. Elephas Americanus Member
    Elephas Americanus
    @ElephasAmericanus

    Forget the bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), which is not even a true eagle. The real story? Wind turbines are killing Aquila chrysaetos – the golden eagle.

    goldeneaglephoto4

    The golden eagle is the most common national animal in the world, the symbol of Austria, Germany, Egypt, Kazakhstan, and Albania. But more importantly, it is the symbol of the single most important nation to whose identity group one can belong in America: Mexico.

    The very foundation myth of the Mexican nation relies on the golden eagle: Huitzilopochtli, the Mexica (the politically correct name for what you insensitive hatemongerers call “Aztecs”) god of war, sun, and human sacrifice (Who are you to judge?) told his people to look for a golden eagle perched on a cactus killing a snake, and there they would found their empire. That image is the modern Mexican coat of arms and is emblazoned on the Mexican flag – you know, that flag that so many Mexican illegal immigrants wave at immigration rallies to show how much they love the United States.

    mexican flag waved in san diego

    That bird on the peso and your can of Tecate? A golden eagle. And that same golden eagle that those Gaia-loving turbines turn into raptor tartare is also the bird featured on the coat of arms and flag of the Global Left’s favorite pseudo-nation, Palestine:

    353px-Coat_of_arms_of_Palestine

    So by killing golden eagles, wind turbines are discriminating against the very symbols of Mexicans and Palestinians – two of the Left’s most sacred identity groups.

    In short, wind turbines are RACIST!

    • #16
  17. barbara lydick Inactive
    barbara lydick
    @barbaralydick

    EPA and O Administration – Hypocrisy on stilts

    Tho, here in CA we must protect the snail darter at the expense of thousands of farm jobs, millions of lost export dollars, and farmers watching their fields lie fallow for lack of water as billions of gallons are diverted to the ocean for those wee fishies.

    • #17
  18. tigerlily Member
    tigerlily
    @tigerlily

    Misthiocracy:I belong to the Pave The Earth Foundation and People For The Ethical Treatment of Taxpayers.

    As a civil engineer, I wholeheartedly endorse and would like to contribute to the Pave The Earth Foundation. As a taxpayer, ditto for PETT.

    • #18
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