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Who Will Save the Snakehead?
The Wash Times carries this serio-comic story about Westerners filing a petition to place the northern snakehead fish--an "invasive species" that has created a panic in Maryland and nearby environs--on the endangered species list.
A band of 13 commissioners from Western counties who have filed to seek protection for a rare new species: the northern snakehead fish, also known as the "Frankenfish."
[Petitioner Alan Gardner] understands that the carnivorous, Asian-bred fish not only can swim but also crawl across land and wreck havoc on local wildlife. And no, he lives nowhere near the Potomac River, where the snakehead makes its home -- and that's the point.
"As I read about this fish in the Potomac, I thought, 'You know, that sounds like an interesting proposition,'" says Mr. Gardner, a commissioner in southwestern Utah's Washington County.
"I discussed it with some other commissioners, and we thought that this could really let people in the East know how the Endangered Species Act works and how it can affect the lives of everyday people," he says.
Sure, saving the Frankenfish is preposterous. But not much more so than some previous attempts to list species found in the West, says Roger Mancebo, a Pershing County, Nev., commissioner.
Mr. Mancebo cites the recent effort to win protection for the sage grouse, a bird so common that it's hunted in 15 states.
Whole thing here.
Reason Managing Editor Jesse Walker wrote memorably about the snakehead--and just how tasty a treat it is--a while back here. And Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey has discussed the whole invasive species bogeyman here and here.
clarityiniowa|4.11.05 @ 10:46AM|#
Oh, man, this is beautiful. I can just see the "Save the
Snakehead" tee-shirts.
We have mountain lions in Iowa now. Not sure we ever did before,
but we do now. I always thought mountain lions required, well, you
know... mountains, but there you are, mountain lions in Iowa.
Hopefully keep the deer population down and steal a few
undocumented babies now and then, what other good they will do is
beyond me, but there are some folks wanting to protect the "Iowa
Mountain Lion."
|4.11.05 @ 10:53AM|#
clarityiniowa, Felis concolor used to range all over
the continental united states, but was pushed back into the Florida
swamps and the Rocky Mountains by 1920 (when they acquired the
moniker Mountain Lion, probably!). So, yeah. Unless these are
dysfunctional Puma they'll stick to keeping the deer population
down and getting shot for eating some rich lady's yappy-dog.
And they'll need protection, because given animal control practices
in his country of ours, we'll start shooting them if that yappy-dog
loses a fight with the tabby cat down the block.
|4.11.05 @ 11:25AM|#
Until further notice, please stop sending Me large groups of
victims to "sort out". I'll have you know that we JUST closed out
the Crusades, and now we're finally tackling WWII. I don't know
when we'll ever get to the Cold War. I simply don't have the
staff.
Thank you in advance.
|4.11.05 @ 12:39PM|#
On to the bigger question: Is it right (moral, justified, etc.)
for these guys to do something that they know is wrong to make the
point to the folks bck East that they shouldn't be sticking thier
"Save the (insert here)" noses into other parts of the
country?
I say the ends justify the means, because some people only learn by
getting the stick (instead of the carrot).
clarityiniowa|4.11.05 @ 1:39PM|#
Ian - Thanks for the provenance on pumas. Anyways, they're apparently back with a vengeance, and I'm sure they'll be protected, until and unless some illegal alien's kid gets sucked up by one - U.S. citizens getting killed and eaten doesn't seem to raise much of a ruckus with the left wing crowd hereabouts.
|4.11.05 @ 1:42PM|#
...as demonstrated by all the stories about predators eating immigrants that have appeared in Reason, or anywhere else, over the past few years.
|4.11.05 @ 1:51PM|#
So when this case gets slapped away in ten minutes because it is
completely without merit, the litigants will do the reasonable
thing, and conclude that the cases they disapprove of had
significant differences in the facts involved.
They won't just conclude that eastern librul judges have everybody
and are picking one them. Of course not.
|4.11.05 @ 1:56PM|#
"They won't just conclude that eastern librul judges have
everybody and are picking one them. Of course not."
Of course, because phonetically spelling "Liberal" the way an
"ignorant" person speaks proves beyond a doubt that the judges are
always objective. Gee, I can't imagine why people might feel that
easterners are picking on them. Where ever did they get that crazy
idea?
|4.11.05 @ 2:00PM|#
The threat due to large predators is overblown. More people will be killed this year because of insect stings/bites than will be killed by wolves, bears, lions, etc. Tens of thousands will be killed this year by microscopic predators... you know, bacteria and viruses. Our resources are limited. We can get a bigger bang for the buck by going after the microscopic killers than the macroscopic ones.
|4.11.05 @ 2:08PM|#
More people will be killed driving into deer than by predators.
Why are there so many deer? Not enough predators.
So clearly, the rational thing to do is to loosen the restrictions
on killing predators. I mean, think of the children.
clarityiniowa|4.11.05 @ 3:15PM|#
joe - ...as demonstrated by all the stories about predators
eating immigrants that have appeared in Reason, or anywhere else,
over the past few years.
A, I was joking about the eating of illegal immigrant/vs. U.S.
citzen's babies, and
B. I was referring, by the term "hearabouts," to my home state, not
Reason and/or Hit and Run.
clarityiniowa|4.11.05 @ 3:20PM|#
This is an interesting case, because conservationists and
environmentalists (I make a distinction between the two purposely.)
often rail against "invasive species", i.e. snakeheads, eurasian
milfoil, zebra mussels, etc., but are prone to support the "return"
of predators such as the mountain lion/prairie panther/puma
whatcamacallums, wolves and the like, to an area where they haven't
been seen in a century or more.
Every species comes from somewhere. Not all squat on the same plot
of ground indefinitely. Strikes me as a case of something that
could be done something about, or not.
|4.11.05 @ 3:43PM|#
"I was referring, by the term "hearabouts," to my home state,
not Reason and/or Hit and Run."
Oh oh oh oh oh. Gotcha. My bad.
A CENTURY of more? The issue is the presence of absence of species
that conflicts with how the ecosystem developed over evolutionary
time, and you're writing about "a century or more?"
|4.11.05 @ 5:34PM|#
clarity,
invasive species, while they may not be the doom-bearing heralds of
the apocalypse many environmental groups make them out to be, are
still bad - pike introduced by a few fishermen in Montana are
eating up the trout populations; trout-fishing tourism is one of
Montana's major sources of income. A weed species of plant in the
southwest may invade and choke out native plants during wet years,
die off horribly when the climate swings back to dry, and leave the
entire landscape looking like the moon because the things that were
adapted to that dry climate were all killed off.
Also, missing keystone predators like Pumas are also bad. Drive out
the animals that eat deer, and strangely, deer explode in
population - and then proceed to denude the countryside of
vegetation, get hit by cars, and spread the dread Lyme Disease (duh
duh dunh!). And then to control them we have to let more hunters
out there, increasing the chances some numbnuts with a six-pack and
a rifle will shoot himself or some dumb kid. By reintroducing
predators into their old habitats, we get pest species like deer
under control, and the numbnuts will have to go deeper into the
woods with his six-pack, reducing the chance that he'll shoot
anyone other than himself. And the real hunters will get to enjoy a
challenge again, since they'll have to hunt for a
deer.
clarityiniowa|4.11.05 @ 5:36PM|#
joe - Define the ecosystem. How wide a range is the average
"ecosystem" anyway? How is it defined for a certain geographic
area?
Within a day's ride from where I am typing, I can find virgin
prairie, dense forest, no fewer than four major watersheds, one of
the only two known chains of bluffs made by ancient loess deposits
(windblown dust and sand).
How do you define these ecosystems, what belongs where, and over
what period of time?
Supposedly there were dinosaurs here once. If they should return,
are they "indigenous species" or "invasive species?"
clarityiniowa|4.11.05 @ 5:38PM|#
Ian - Same challenge. What exactly BELONGS in my particular neck of the woods - er, make that prairie - and what doesn't? Who decides, and to whose ultimate benefit?
Larry A|4.11.05 @ 5:39PM|#
Actually, there have been a number of cougar/mountain lion/puma
attacks child/woman stories recently. Particularly in California
where they are protected. Seems like one nailed a jogger last month
or so, and another ran into an off-duty LEO who happened to be
packing an equalizer.
I understand there are several parks there which are rated unsafe
for children for that reason.
clarityiniowa|4.11.05 @ 5:42PM|#
Good for the puma/cougar/mountain lion thingy, say I! One got nailed half a mile from my folks' house by an SUV. Maybe SUVs should be relocated to another ecosystem where they have more natural predators to keep their population under control.
|4.11.05 @ 7:26PM|#
Other names for the puma/cougar/mountain lion:
Panther, painter, mountain screamer, night screamer, mountain cat,
mountain devil, mountain demon, catamount, Indian devil, devil cat,
ghost cat, American lion, Mexican lion, silver lion, brown tiger,
red tiger, deer tiger, purple feather, purple lion, king cat, sneak
cat, red jaguar, gray lion, varmint, and right about here it starts
to get ridiculous.
It's classified as the largest member of the "small" cats, genus
Felis, but recent studies suggest an affinity with
cheetahs (genus Acinonyx), with the extinct
Miracinonyx of North America as a possible common
ancestor. Alan Turn in Big Cats and Their Fossil Relatives
suggests the two are also the closest living relatives of another
hard-to-classify member of the cat family, the snow leopard (genus
Uncia). All three have a small, domed head and a
relatively light, long-limbed build (the latter exaggerated in the
case of the cheetah, not so true in the case of the puma, and
mostly disguised by thick fur in the case of the snow
leopard).
(I'm a geek.)
|4.11.05 @ 7:29PM|#
Alan TurnER in Big Cats and Their Fossil Relatives -- cool book. Nifty illustrations by Mauricio Anton.
|4.11.05 @ 8:12PM|#
Stevo Darkly, I must say that you almost always have the most interesting posts. Thank you, and please continue.
|4.12.05 @ 12:25PM|#
clarity,
If you are genuinely interested in understanding the issues you ask
about, you shouldn't bother with a novice like me. Richard T. T.
Forman has a great book, "Land Mosaics: the Ecology of Landscapes
and Regions" that gets at the questions you raise, including the
inevitability and necessity of incorporating human values into the
understanding of management of the environment.
clarityiniowa|4.12.05 @ 5:08PM|#
joe - Of course I'm interested, and I'll probably give that tome
a sniff, although I'm also interested in what my fellow H&Rers
base their opinions upon.
Who's to say the snakehead ought to be left alone in a certain
lake, but eliminated somewhere else, the prairie panther belongs in
Iowa, but not in Illinois, etc.?
Human values indeed. The logical extension of designating one
critter "invasive" and another critter "indigenous" is to try to
stuff all of humanity back into Olduvai Gorge.
A few years back we in Iowa were treated to an invasion of the
Asian Ladybeetle - A sort of super-ladybug that lands on everything
light colored, pinches like hell when they get mad and stink like
graveyard dirt when you smash 'em. We hate them, but apparently the
mourning doves are just gobbling them up. Most of us here love
mourning doves - they are pretty, they coo pleasantly, and for some
they would be fun to shoot and eat. Apparently we have more
mourning doves because we have the pesky Asian Ladybeetles.
There are always tradeoffs, even, or especially, in "nature."
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