The Delisting Scramble November has offered us more than just the ghastly aftermath of our national elections. We have also been visited by the unseemly spectacle of federal and state wildlife managers rushing helter skelter towards removing Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections for Yellowstone’s grizzly bear population. Due process be damned. Or, put another way, let the environmentalists sue us over patently deficient procedure and use of science; they win in court, and then take the fall. At which point state managers are perhaps smugly sure that a Congress under the thumb of regressive Republicans will use legislative fiat to remove protections for Yellowstone’s grizzlies, shortly bef
Photo by scoopempire.com In an astonishing move, the government of Romania recently banned trophy hunting of the country’s large carnivores. This was welcome reprieve for the country’s 5,000 or so brown bears (of the same species as grizzly bears), which constitute the largest population remaining in Europe outside of Russia. Several thousand wolves and hundreds of lynx and wildcat which find refuge in the verdant forests of Romania as well are also now protected from sport hunting. Even those intimately familiar with wildlife management in the country did not see the ban on hunting coming. In fact, the government had been sending out opposite signals as it ratcheted up hunting in recent yea
Labeling and Naming From the time our hominid ancestors first uttered a semiotic grunt, we humans have been obsessed with categorizing and labeling things. And for good reason. Labels can efficiently convey a large amount of emotionally-resonant information with just a few syllables, including the appearance, behaviors, location, and usefulness of stuff. All of which can be vital for humans trying to survive and reproduce in a complex social and natural environment. Although Kierkegaard may have made a worthwhile existential point when he wrote “Once you label me, you negate me,” in all other regards he pretty much got it wrong. Among other things, labeling can denote relatedness and descent
Justified Intolerance? I recently came across a publication by the Pew Research Center reporting on how those supporting Trump and Clinton see each other. Of all categories on either side, college-educated and white-female Clinton-supporters were most likely to “have trouble respecting” those who supported the others’ presidential candidate—on the order of 66-68%. I unabashedly include myself in this group. I am profoundly distressed by the fact that there are multitudes planning to vote for Trump. Which confronts me with a cognitive-emotional conundrum. On the one hand, my life-long normative emphasis has been on finding compassion and understanding for those who are different. But, on the
