The St. Louis, Missouri, Sunday Post-Dispatch Early Metro Edition, 11 November 2007, carried a front-page story titled "WILDERNESS, PURE AND SIMPLE. The Missouri Wilderness Coalition wants federal protection for 50,000 more acres, making it off-limits to ATVs, logging and mining." Proposed areas include Van East Mountain and Lower Rock Creek in the Fredericktown Ranger District, plus five other areas in Mark Twain National Forest.
The proposal would shut off most access to several scenic areas within Mark Twain National Forest for local residents who enjoy using the Forest for recreation and livelihood and use All-Terrain Vehicles to get around in the woods. Despite the front-page photo of Jamie Wilson and his son riding horses on Cedar Creek Trail, the kind of use restriction proposed by The Missouri Wilderness Coalition generally includes eventual banning of horses whose hooves 'disturb the fragile environment' of the trail in addition to leaving behind unsightly piles of horse manure offensive to Wilderness travelers.
The Environmental Movement has long since outlived its usefulness. Instead of working for a clean environment, the Movement has degenerated into pursuit of money and political power and willful theft of private property through legislative and judicial corruption. Early good work has been replaced by the current Global Warming scam.
There is a strong parallel between illegal immigration and today's Environmentalism. Illegal Aliens sneak into these United States, claiming they are here only to find work and support their families back home. But then, corrupt politicians start buying votes through handouts of food stamps, free education, free medical care and other political bait. Then the Illegals organize into immense street rallies and demand instant citizenship without civic responsibility and return of the entire southwestern United States to Mexican government ownership. A significant number of intercepted Illegals are identified as foreign agents who come to set up sleeper cells and await orders to attack America.
Radical Environmentalists have a solid track record of similar illicit, deceptive and dangerous activity. Tree Huggers never are satisfied with what they have. They want more Wilderness, more protection for more Endangered Species, more farmers and ranchers run off the land, and more factories, sawmills, mines and oil wells shut down and no new properties brought on-line. Curiously, brainwashed Greenies believe that mining benefits only mining companies, petroleum production benefits only oil companies, and timber harvesting benefits only logging interests.
Pick any thousand Environmentalists at random and ask, "What are ten common items made from lead, or zinc, or cobalt? What are ten common products that include items containing lead, or zinc, or cobalt? How would your life be different if lead, or zinc, or cobalt were no longer available? Maybe 75 of the thousand Environmentalists can answer correctly, but 925 of the thousand Environmentalists don't know, never heard of cobalt, use cobalt products daily, and are in favor of legislation to ban mining worldwide.
Hypocrisy is rampant. Gangreen Environmental Extremists want logging stopped, but live in houses build largely or almost entirely of wood and wood products. They want mining banned, but drive automobiles made of metal obtained by mining, on highways built of rock and cement that came from mines. They want oil companies run out of business, but power their vehicles with gasoline and cook their food and heat their homes with natural gas or propane.
Lifestyle rollback is for the rest of us, not for Greenies and Wilderness proponents.
The Post-Dispatch newspaper is among the biggest hypocrites, with a long record of supporting proposals to benefit a few of the city's 'elite' by destroying the lifestyle and property rights of rural folks.
The Post-Dispatch has a large (although fortunately declining) readership and circulation. Out of curiosity, I put the Metro Edition with the Wilderness article on my kitchen scale. The newspaper weighs 2.25 pounds. Multiply that by the thousands and thousands of circulated copies of the 11 November 2007 edition, other editions published 52 weeks each year, plus all those other daily editions, and you find that the Post-Dispatch newspaper that favors the end of logging in National Forests is a major consumer of newsprint made from trees.
Environmentalism no longer solves real problems, but has itself become a problem. It is time to sweep away the clutter and return to sensible forest management and true Conservation.
The Charter of groups such as the Missouri Wilderness Coalition needs to be revoked, the tax-exempt status cancelled, organizational bank accounts and property confiscated, organization officers sent to prison, and the members assessed for all the damage created by the organizations they support. The expired Endangered Species Act and all its accumulated garbage must be totally de-funded and swept away. Government grants to Green groups must end immediately.
Greenies may find that rural people are willing to learn from and practice the tactics used by Green Extremists to shut down business and drive residents from the land. There may come a time when rural people are so fed-up that cars with city license plates, parked at trail heads in the forest, mysteriously get four flat tires and sometimes catch on fire. Why not? Destruction of property has a long track record among Environmental and Animal Rights radicals. Can rural people help it if a tree just happens to fall and crush a few city folks' cars parked in the woods?
Urban Environmentalists, if you would enjoy our forests (that's OUR forests, please note, not YOUR forests), practice the Golden Rule. Do not come as a Thief In The Night, pretending to camp and hike while actually scheming to shut down forest use for the people who live there.
If you strongly believe in Wilderness with highly restricted access, do what real people do: Buy the land and pay the property tax. Don't freeload on rural taxpayers. Do not shut down another part of the rural economy for the personal preferences of the couple of hundred city people who may visit the place in a year. Mining, logging, hunting, forest access and motorized recreation are important to us country cousins and we intend for it to stay that way. Go find something else to meddle with and screw up.
