Names don't make it so

Names don't make it so

 

November 15, 2011

 

By Julie Kay Smithson, property rights and natural resources researcher propertyrights@earthlink.net





Calling a litigious outfit an "environmental group" is like trying to make a silk purse from a sow's ear. Where is the proof that litigating almost every natural resource plan in America to a halt -- or forcing "mitigation" in the form of vast acreage offered up at the altar of "habitat" -- has actually made a positive difference to any specie of flora or fauna? Where are these self-proclaimed "environmental" organizations when America's border with Mexico is piled high with human excrement, bales of marijuana, discarded water containers, etc., ad nauseam? The selfsame "environmental" organizations -- including, but far from limited to -- the Audubon Society, Sierra Club, "The" Nature Conservancy, etc. -- are strangely mute during conflagrations that incinerate millions of acres of that "habitat" which they proclaim to the public is in dire need of "protection."


Someone holding a chain saw is no more a forester than the litigious groups -- milking the "Equal Access to Justice Act" (5 U.S.C. § 504; 28 U.S.C. § 2412) http://uscode.house.gov/uscode-cgi/fastweb.exe?getdoc+uscview+t05t08+23+1++()%20%20AND%20( for all it's worth -- are "environmentalists."


In my carefully studied opinion, a farmer, rancher or master gardener -- whose private property has been responsibly stewarded for many generations and is still productive, fertile and healthy -- is more qualified to be called an environmentalist than those cloaking themselves with that word.