Bend the facts

[Ron Gatrelle]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kenelm Philip" <fnkwp at aurora.alaska.edu>
To: <leps-l at lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2001 2:45 AM
Subject: Re: Bend the facts



 > Kentucky was mostly all hardwood forest 200 years ago and plows and saws
 > probably created the clearings where you found good butterflying in
years'
 > past.

 And that hardwood forest appears to have been the result of the
 diseases introduced by the first Europeans to arrive in North America,
which
 catastrophically reduced the populations of the Amerindians. The first
 Europeans noted that the forests in North America resembled an English
 park--with widely spaced trees standing in grassland. They also noted that
 the land was filled with smoke from the fires that the inhabitants set to
 keep the land free from underbrush. It was estimated that one could have
 driven a coach through the 'forest' from the Atlantic coast to where St.
 Louis now stands. The forest that the pioneers hacked their way through
 was a recent artifact produced by the ancestors of those same pioneers.

 North America has not had an ecosystem unaffected by humans since
 the first humans arrived many thousands of years ago--and the effects
 were _not_ trivial.

 Ken Philip
 fnkwp at uaf.edu

 *************

 Humans are viewed and treated as Aliens to be controlled or eradicated -
and by other humans!  We are continually denied as a valid "part" of nature
and this planet's natural cycles. We are penalized for "evolving" to the
top. By the time the Sun blows up we will be the only creature that has
found out how to get off this rock and also some place else to go. Who
knows, we may even find a way to take all the others with us - even the
extinct ones. Hmmm, if we find a way to being extinct creatures back to
life - how could anything then be called "endangered" (in danger of
extinction -gone to never return)?

Those who see humans as the scourge of this planet - should be the first to
volunteer for extermination. Oh, I forgot. They are OK and should be
allowed to stay - it is everyone else who needs to go. Sometimes some
people or groups of them become so powerful - gain so much control - that
they put that plan in action. Well, maybe we are the scourge.
RG


 
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