Overpopulation is Poverty's Best Friend

If poverty planned a wedding, overpopulation would be its best man and maid of honor with runaway capitalism, out of control consumerism, colonialism, classism, racism, political corruption, and greed as its bridesmaids and groomsmen. There are many evil traits in the human basket of trends that contribute to creating suffering in the world, but overpopulation is the basket itself. Overpopulation undermines the opportunity to get ahead, creating so much suffering along the way.

Let’s pretend that the US with its 331+ million and growing numbers were full of people who were all eating low on the food chain, driving less, flying less and taking the proverbial cloth bags to the store to shop for local organic food. Let’s pretend that this was also true of Canada’s 38+million and Australia’s 25+million. Each one of these developed countries would still be overpopulated and stressing out all of their basic resources.

That is because ratcheting down our consumption as individuals does not keep us from the collective damage done from our position on the food chain of life. We are apex predators and so successful in curing disease and inventing higher yields of crop production that we are now overwhelming all of our resources with our numbers alone. We seem to have lost our ability to calculate the exponential growth factor. The average person in the developed world uses over 100 gallons of water a day. So over 33 billion gallons of water are needed daily in the US in a country faced with fresh water scarcity due to pollution, climate change and overpopulation.

We depend on the world to give us water, food, shelter and energy. Even without stretch limos and private jets, without fur coats and energy-eating stadium shows we are pressuring our water resources to produce beyond their capacity. We are turning our freeways into permanent traffic jams and clogging our cities with too many who must go without decent jobs, decent housing and the like. We are creating energy demands that are literally burning our forests to a crisp, decreasing air quality and reducing our capacity to produce year-round food for our global 8 billion who are still growing by a whopping 81 million a year.

No developed country can claim innocence when it comes to using, stealing and even killing for the resources needed to keep going and growing to support energy intensive modern lifestyles. No underdeveloped country can claim that their rising numbers are not also trapping them in cyclical poverty. A woman who has to feed 7+ children with few resources and little support can never become independent. Both situations can be true at the same time and we must stop feeding the beast of growth with claims that one part of the world has taken more than its fair share of resources. It undoubtedly has, but that is not reason enough to stop looking into ways we can tame the beast of growth everywhere. Growth at this stage of our existence, with a very threatened biosphere, is the poison effecting all of our wells.

Overpopulation is also the best friend of military rule, oligarchy and autocracy. Large populations are hard to manage with democracy, it is just easier to control people with harsh rules than let them have a say in their lives. There are many examples of this but the recent ruling in Israel stands out. It is a country designed for 3 million but is bursting at the seams with 9 million people. Their leaders just voted to strip their Supreme Court of its power to block decisions made by the Knesset.

Expanding to the definition of poverty to include poverty of the mind, poverty of creativity, poverty of lack of open space, and the poverty of the loss of wildlife, the developed world is suffering from that kind of poverty right now. Wildlife is declining, homelessness is increasing, food, health care and housing prices are increasing with the higher demands. It goes without question that the US, Canada and Australia look like a shining bright lights to those seeking justice, education and freedom from dire poverty, and the disasters that climate change is hoisting on them. But those bright lights cannot accommodate the demand that will only increase in a world being crushed under our outrageous demands for even the basics of life’s requirements. Tens of millions will be seeking a better life as oceans rise and already are which will create more poverty, not less. This will sink the ship of the developed world saddled with its own limits so other answers must be sought.

Thankfully several NGO’s are trying to get this message out. Population Media Center is doing grass roots work in places like Niger to address family size in culturally sensitive ways. The NGO’s: Population Institute of Canada, NumbersUSA, Negative Population Growth and Californians for Population Stabilization are several NGO’s which I have supported over the years. They been working tirelessly for years to raise awareness about this pummeled issue, but their voices need amplification for they have the wisdom to know the right answer when asked at poverty’s wedding, “Is there any reason why this wedding should not take place?”

Independence Day Delusions; Why Sustainability Matters

Much has been written about those for whom Independence Day in the US was not cause for celebration. While our country was freed from British rule in 1776 slaves were not yet free and women had to fight for the right to vote which wouldn’t come for another 144 years. Abolitionist Frederick Douglas famously said,” I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us, I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us.” Then of course there is the as yet unreconciled matter of stealing lands from those who had called North America home for thousands of years.

But I would like to offer another perspective about independence. Certainly, it is a double-edged sword when it is offered to men and not women, whites and not blacks, straight and not gays and so on down the line. Independence is a wonderful concept when offered to all. We all want our independence from tyrants, idealy we want independence without rendering other people homeless. We want freedom from the immobility of prejudice that binds us to a limited life. The first time you drive a car or travel on your own is a wonderful feeling that you are now an adult. The benefits of independence are many. You can be free to make your own decisions, your own policies. It is great not to have to pay taxes to a foreign power, or fight in their wars.

Taking a look at independence from the perspective of growth, however, brings it all into a more discerning light. Independence cannot live up to its promises when sustainability remains an elusive goal.

Independence is not a panacea by itself. The freedom from the oppression of rule is only a first step. Independence does not free a country from oppression of overpopulation and the poverty it brings, as well as the resources it destroys. Because unlimited demand for limited resources is a recipe for disaster, a celebration of independence needs to be accompanied by a simultaneous concerted effort to incorporate goals of sustainability. Let me illustrate.

When India finally gained Independence from Great Britain in 1947 its population was 340 million. Today it struggles to meet the needs of its citizens because at over 1.4 billion, it is on course to overtake China as the most populous country in the world. India has only 2.4 percent of the world’s total land area, while needing to support 14 % of the world’s population. Rates of growth are decreasing but actual numbers are still rising. The addition of 1,060,000,000 since independence was declared contributes to the fact that over 63% of Indians live in extreme poverty. Bad leadership, corrosive politics and other factors certainly contribute to India’s woes, but even with great leaders and unlimited rupees, how would the tremendous challenges of taking care of over a billion people in a land 3 times smaller than the US be resolved?

When Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa and Black people were finally free from apartheid in1994, its population was 43.27 million. Today it has grown by over 18 million people. At 61. 5 million the suffering continues. South African Poet Mongane Wally Serote once wrote “We neglect the creativity that has made the people able to survive extreme exploitation and oppression. People have survived extreme racism. It means our people have been creative about their lives.”

No doubt they have been creative but removing the shackles of racism did not prevent the imprisonment of overpopulation for it overwhelms creativity. It is the rock in the game of rock, paper scissors. South Africa is a dry country and climate change is making it drier. Adding over 18 million people since Apartheid ended has not been good for the quality of lives of South Africans. Take the town of Cape Town South Africa. It’s population, like that of all of South Africa has soared and climate change has diminished its ability to get water from its source, mountain snow melt. Why is it is rapidly facing a water crisis? Today 4.6 million people need water in this city. In 1994 half as many people needed water. If you were the mayor of Cape Town which number would you prefer to have in your city? 2.3 million or 4.6 million?  How can you have the equality promised by the dismantling of the evil apartheid, in a land overwhelmed with a demand that cannot be met no matter how well run because the limits to growth have been ignored? You don’t of course, you only have chaos and more injustice as those who are better off buy the remaining scarce sources of water. Yes, it’s true that the wealthier citizens use more water per capita, but redistributing that water more fairly is not going to solve the problem.

The US is also burdened by overpopulation but you wouldn’t know it by watching or reading any news source. The US operates under a deep but false narrative that it has no limits. These deeply ingrained beliefs direct policies of expansion and growth beyond the capacity of US aquifers and rivers, beyond the ability to sustain openlands and the wildlife they need to support. With over half a million homeless people, rising cost of living, rising pollution, rising traffic congestion, more people to manage is never the secret wish of any mayor, governor or president.

The first census data conducted when Thomas Jefferson was Secretary of State revealed a country with just under 4 million people in 1791. Today the US is not even stabilized at a whopping 331 million. It is allowing itself to continue to grow unsustainably mostly with weak policies and even weaker enforcement of mass immigration, both legal and illegal.

Every time independence is the goal, every time justice is sought this struggle must be married equally to an ideal of sustainability. Gandhi and Mandela would be horrified to see the continued poverty in their respective countries. They fought so hard for independence and equality believing that it would indeed lead to better living conditions for their people. Yet that continued growth in a finite space has undermined their idealistic goals. Both of their countries are looking at a precarious future of extreme poverty and suffering.

According to the United Nations Family planning agency, “Where rapid population growth far outpaces economic development, countries will have a difficult time investing in the human capital needed to secure the well-being of its people and to stimulate further economic growth. This issue is especially acute for the least developed countries, many of which are facing a doubling, or even a tripling of their populations by 2050.”  

 The growth of numbers within each of these countries has come within the context of being free to self-govern without the reigns of injustice to bind them to cruelty, and yet they have all grown beyond their means of self-support, thereby taking the wind out of the sails of independence.

 Admittedly, it is hard enough to fight for independence from greedy overlords, yet without a focus on sustainability the goals of a better freer world cannot be actualized. We don’t need just to fight for independence from harsh rule we need to fight for independence from crippling numbers.  Countries grow beyond limits from either high fertility or high rates of immigration or both. That growth is the enemy of Independence.

 Independence Days are often celebrated with parades, special foods and a lot of flag waving. But to truly celebrate a better world each country needs to create a Sustainability Day to commemorate laws and actions which keep them from growing beyond their limits. Now that would really be something to celebrate.

Independence Day Delusions: Why Sustainability Matters

The Drip Drip Drip of I told you so... In Celebration of National Pollinator Week

Drip Drip Drip is the sound of a faucet that can no longer access a sufficient water supply. It is also the poetic sound of trying droplet by droplet to wake up America and people around the world to how growth is a Ponzi scheme from which we must divest because it is a losing game on a limited planet. The “I told you so” is self-evident because so many of us have been harping on this message for a long, long time.

Prairie Dogs are keystone species. A keystone species means that are a species on which so many others depend. Prairie dogs tunnel underground creating homes for many animals, including one of my favorites, the burrowing owl. Keystone species provide something biologically essential for many other species and are responsible for their existence. Just like a corner of a foundation holds a building together, they are the thread that hold the whole ecosystem together. Without them, there would an unstoppable flow of consequences throughout the food chain.

A classic keystone specie is the American Beaver which creates habitat for a wide range of species from dragonflies to wolves with its ability to create dams and redirect rivers. Honeybees as well as native bees ensure the continued reproduction and survival not only of the plants they pollinate but also of the other insects and animals up the food chain that depend on their existence.

Honeybees are a keystone species directly connected to us. If you like fruit like apples and cranberries, if you like melons, or squash and broccoli, take your hat off to this member of the Hymenoptera order of insects imported from Europe. In fact, over 100,000 species of plants would disappear from the earth if honeybees were to become extinct.

We are currently celebrating National Pollinator week, June 19th-25th, a week dedicated to all of those insects who we were raised to hate and spray, but do a great service in the way they make flowers bloom and allow fruits to make their way to our plates. Native bees are in even deeper trouble, because they are not bred for use in crops. They too are needed to pollinate wild plants, but even though native bees are indispensable to the health of the natural world they are declining globally. Recent research has found that more than 40% of insect species are declining at rates faster than mammals, birds and reptiles. But if you are over 50 or so, you don’t need to read the research, you can remember the days when your windshields were streaked with dead insects after a ride in the country. Now there are no more trips to the car wash needed after a country drive, for their numbers are far fewer than in the good ole days of insect-streaked windshields.

Humans are far from being a keystone species. Certainly, domesticated animals have increased because of us as they depend on us to breed them and use them as pets or food. But wild species trend downward as we trend upward. When it comes to wildlife we are an ‘eliminator’ species, for we eliminate other wild species as we expand our presence and sprawl over the landscape. This of course will mean that we will eventually we eliminate ourselves. Conservation efforts have certainly helped bring back some iconic species and saved some critical habitat, but on a global scale we are pushing up against limits indicated by the rapid decline in insects as well as other species.

When we follow the growth model of trying to support more and more people on our land, we destroy the habitat of the very species we need. When we push limits with our destructive behavior of converting open land and farmland into subdivisions, we put cement where plants used to be. This blocks the ability of aquifers to recharge because rain just runs off the new highways and driveways into neighboring streams and rivers. When we sprawl over the landscape, we are preventing the water cycle from doing its thing

Following the bulldozers and the cement mixers are the chemical cocktails dumped on those subdivisions to be sure they are aesthetically pleasing to buyers and sellers. Rows and rows of insect-destroying sod are laid which then must be watered and monitored so as not to allow for any natural plants to exist.

It is astonishing that our public discourse allows for the pointing of fingers at climate change and agricultural production, but all goes silent when the culprit behind it all is brought up. The great lie of omission is that behind it all is our population growth. Behind all of this conversion of natural landscape to human infrastructure and its paucity of wildlife is that our numbers continue to grow fueling the way we are sprawling over the landscape. ( See From Sea to Sprawling Sea, www.sprawlusa.com)

We cannot continue to lie to people while trying to save pollinators or any other specie. To avoid the drip, drip, drip of I told you so, we need to have the courage to look at the numbers of insects going down and make the connection that it is because our numbers are going up.

 In the name of the pollinators we are losing, we must stop ignoring the most important driver of scarcity, our homegrown driver of population growth. We are running out of water and insects in the US due to both population growth and climate change, but only climate change gets mentioned, and we don’t do much about that either. The good news is that now that we are sitting at the already unsustainable number of 335 million, we do not have to worry so much about what used to drive it, high birthrates and low death rates.

What we do need to pay attention to and pay attention fast is our proclivity for encouraging mass immigration which is includes both those who come here with and without legal paperwork. It is theoretically an easier problem to solve. Making all immigration legal would alleviate only those burdened with the task of policing those without proper documentation, but  it will do nothing for the pollinators looking for nectar.

Now the drivers of mass immigration are complicated. They are historical, political and sociological. Some look only at the need for workers and see increased immigration as a solution. Others see a way to save money by paying lower wages and still others see some of the desperation and immediately want to reach out and help. Still others believe that we are being hysterically xenophobic by saying we are full, as has been our pattern throughout history.

But when you take several steps back you can more easily see that to preserve the American landscape, to honor life-giving keystone species and protect our water supply, we must get off the growth train. There are limits to growth and National Pollination Week will not ultimately be successful unless it carries this critical message: we are in overshoot. We are overpopulated relative to our limited resources as indicated by the continuing loss of keystone species. People have been criticized for saying not in my backyard (NIMBY) when it comes to growth. They are called out for being selfish or xenophobic. What we need to say is that there is no more room in anyone’s backyard in the US for ecological reasons. It doesn’t make for an easy acronym, but it is truer to the reality of life in America in 2023.

I hope that the organizers of this important week will be unafraid to connect the dots of out of control growth to the elimination of pollinators, but I doubt it, which makes me wonder how much they really care about pollinators. What I do know is that there is no glory in saying I told you so.

More Growth is NOT the Answer: Stop altering zoning laws for denser housing

Author’s note: Because our national policy is so weak on immigration, both in policy and enforcement, cities must take on the responsibility of saying no to growth. The New York Times just did a story on Phoenix, which has no water to support their growth and they are not issuing new building permits, finally, too little too late but a warning to the rest of us of what lies ahead.

When people saw kids and cages and suffering at the border, the response was, WE WILL TAKE THEM IN, and Sanctuary Cities were born. So the dog whistle to the millions who want to come to the promised land was called and now the pouring in of those in need of our limited resource threatens to make our country the one which will house the most suffering.. The needs of those hurting can't be met but hurting those who will also run out and are running out of resources. We cannot house our own, let alone those pouring over our borders now seeking our limited water, jobs, shelter and tax revenue. Remember we are at an incredibly unsustainable 339 million and if we look the other way while we allow growth to come from other countries we are destroying the very foundations of our country, which cannot take on the world’s needy forever.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?? Send a letter to your city leaders

SAMPLE LETTER TO YOUR MAYOR and City Council

TOPIC: More Growth is NOT the  Answer for our city of _____________

Dear Mayor_____________,

I'm writing to ask you to consider the effects of a growing population on our local community, in particular the water shortages we face. I know you care about our citizenry as I do, that is why I am sharing this perspective to help you in your policy making efforts going forward. 

We are witnessing the recent trends to change zoning laws to accommodate a desire to have smaller housing stock to address a very real issue of affordable housing. This sounds like a politically correct and sensitive action to take, but it will not serve our city well.

 Adding more people to limited watersheds, means we will all have to do with less and it’s not just about water. I could just as easily talk about the results of more growth in our limited city: increased traffic, more crowded parks, schools and demands for services which are already stressed.

 It is a mayor and city council’s job to serve the people who already live in the city while planning for a very different world which is knocking at our door.

 When the number of home seekers is larger than the homes available it drives up the costs. Changing zoning laws to increase density will create a never-ending cycle of construction which is also unsustainable. It takes more resources of energy and water and building supplies which are also becoming scarce as we continue to endlessly build in a world of limited resources. Construction is noisy and polluting with the added bonus of adding more carbon to our atmosphere already at a dangerously high 416 parts per million (ppm) . According to MIT, a new house construction emits anywhere from 15 to 100 tons of CO2.

I recognize there is only so much a mayor can do when federal immigration policies dictate the population projections for the country. When we open our doors wider to welcome more people, we create a Catch 22 situation where the housing prices will just keep rising. Instead, we need to create the kind of policies which will preserve the quality of life that we enjoy today for the next generation. That would be the honorable thing for us to do.

Endangered By Design - Aiding and Abetting the Loss of Wildlife

Written By Karen I. Shragg and Henry L. Barbaro

There is now a day devoted to endangered species. Predictably this day will be filled with sad stories of the precarious situations in which many iconic animals and many lesser-known ones find themselves. If we follow the typical scenario, the wildlife community will address this crisis with a combination of proposals that include preserving individual tracts of land, restricting pesticides, increasing hunting regulations, and reducing carbon emissions. These efforts are not working and will never work because of human overpopulation, which is the fundamental driver of a growing list of endangered species, locally and globally.

It is ironic that wildlife conservation advocates, supposedly steeped in ecological understanding, have done everything but expose the human enterprise as the real guilty party in the demise of wildlife. Just by being the numbers we are and living the lifestyles we do; people are impacting wildlife in ways we are still discovering.

A recent Forbes article provides a good description of where biodiversity stands worldwide --

 ...an astounding 27,000 species are at risk of extinction, which is an even more astounding 27% of all species we currently know about. That means more than a quarter of all species are threatened with going the way of the dodo.

Broken down by species, the IUCN details 40% of all amphibians are at risk, followed by 34% of conifers, 33% of reef corals, 31% of sharks and rays, 27% of crustaceans, 25% of mammals and 14% of birds.

It’s tough to argue with the fact that humankind is having a dramatic – and terrible – impact on the animal kingdom. Industry, pollution, agriculture, deforestation, air travel and decreasing habitats are conspiring to make it very hard for thousands of species to survive, let alone flourish. And that truth stretches to every corner of the world, be it forest, mountain, reef, ocean, city or savannah.

Will today’s generations be on the right side of history, or will people 100 years from now look back in disbelief as to how people knowingly squandered our biological riches?  All this despite having a day, the third Friday in May, devoted to raising awareness on the assault on species – all who were here long before us.

To change course by addressing overpopulation and its impact on wildlife, we must go back to when we could have nuanced conversations based on critical thinking. We need to create public as well as scientific discourse where undeserved labels of nefarious intentions are no longer shouted out from the soapboxes of social media.  We must listen -- deeply listen -- to those offering a new way of looking at our problems. We must report the respective evidence widely, with a kind of journalistic integrity sorely missing in today’s world -- one unafraid to tell the truth.

 Although humanity as a whole is in this fight to preserve biodiversity, each country in the world has the ultimate responsibility for developing a reasoned population policy based on their respective limited resources, which includes the needs of wildlife. This concept was reinforced when the omnibus bill (passed in December 2022) included $575 million for family planning in areas where population growth threatens biodiversity.  The U.S. Congress clearly acknowledged that the primary cause of species extirpation and extinction is human population growth.

 An obvious question is what countries have the most endangered species?  Mexico is number one (665 species), so perhaps some of the $575 million should go to them.  But in terms of birth rate, Mexico only ranks #99 (at 17 births per 1,000 in 2020).  Indonesia is #2 for endangered species (583), but their fertility rate has a world ranking (#94) similar to that of Mexico.  In contrast, Madagascar is an island nation that has almost double the fertility rate of Mexico and Indonesia and is #3 in terms of endangered species (553).  For the sake of biodiversity and passing on the planet's biological heritage to the future inhabitants of Spaceship Earth, it's compelling for Madagascar to reduce its fertility rate.

This is where America comes in.  Our nation is #6 when it comes to the relative number of endangered species (475).  (America has more endangered species than Brazil -- #9 at 413 species.)  Of course, America's fertility ranking is rather low (#141) with 10.9 births per 1,000, but our immigration rate is extremely high.  Of all the nations on Earth, the U.S. has the greatest number of immigrants by far (~50 million), with Germany coming in at a distant second place with "only" 16 million. 

With a very clear bridge between human population and wildlife habitat, if America is going to preserve its biodiversity, then we must reduce our historically high rates of immigration. The good news is that we already have the tools in our toolbox for addressing growth by immigration. We have E-verify, which helps employers know who they are hiring since much of immigration growth is driven by the promise of jobs. There are legal tools available to us for enforcing the idea that all jobs must go to those with proper paperwork. The other good news is that most Americans are in favor of restricting immigration, especially those who live in border states and can see how unsustainable our current policies are making their lives. The Center for Immigration Studies polling of voters as far back as 2006 indicate a strong desire to curb immigration. https://cis.org/Report/Publics-View-Immigration .With a focus on tackling population growth, the wildlife we say we care about might just have a chance.

Author’s note. Here is my bio, but below is the bio of my collaborator , Henry Barbaro. Hopefully the fact that we are co-writers on this piece will give it legs!

Shragg is a retired nature center director, with a doctorate in critical pedagogy. In 2015 she authored Move Upstream a Call to Solve Overpopulation. Karen's long time activism on the impacts of overpopulation has taken her around the world as a speaker attending COP 25 in Spain and speaking in both China and England. She now runs an environmental consulting LLC and consults on overpopulation.

Barbaro is a land use regional planner and an environmental scientist working in the transportation field. Henry has over 25 years of experience working as an activist on his passion, reducing American population growth in order to protect biodiversity. As such he has done work for Massachusetts Coalition for Immigration Reform, New England Coalition for Sustainable Population, the Massachusetts Environmental Education Society, and the Massachusetts Sierra Club. 

Indictments

You have been formally charged

With crimes against society

With crimes against humanity

And the sane just let out a long held-in sigh

With barely enough energy to applaud that

Justice may have escaped from its intolerable imprisonment

But I pay little attention now

Not that I presume anything but your guilt in the extreme

Not because I don’t wish for orange jumpsuits to become your wardrobe for life

But because in the end it’s just another distraction

Another media frenzy

To distract us from the horrors

Of killing off more innocent life forms

And poking holes in the life support system of a planet

Whose welcome we have worn out

Which in your deluded arrogance

Allows you to think you don’t need.

The Medicine of Extinction: Why the Curio Trade Has to Stop.

Wild animals are being squeezed out of their habitats all over the world because of human overpopulation. We reached 8 billion people on our limited planet last year and we continue to add over 70 million net gain each year. Countries with relative abundance continue to attract those seeking refuge and prosperity from their beleaguered countries. With that continued growth comes the devastation of wildlife habitat and the use of more and more land converted to agriculture to feed us, and land to house, transport, and power us. It brings with it pollution of our air and waters as well as the ubiquitous addition of carbon to our ever-warming atmosphere.

The one thing that isn’t automatic to our growth addiction, and that in theory at least we could stop immediately, is the practice of using these magnificent and ever more rare animals in the practice of falsely claiming to cure ailments with the skin and bones of rare, wild animals.

According to Science Review (Dec 9, 2020) 565 mammalian species have been used as sources for medicinal treatments in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Of these, 155 are considered threatened and 46 others are near threatened. That doesn’t even include all the snakes, alligators and seahorses that are being hunted for their supposed value as pills in nature’s pharmacy in what is referred to as the curio trade.

The problem is that where there is money to be made, wildlife be damned. Pangolins are the most trafficked mammal in the world. There is a thriving black market for the meat, and scales of this unique and endangered mammal in China where people have used them for centuries to ‘cure’ everything from arthritis to cancer and to promote breast-feeding for lactating mothers. The claims that they enhance male fertility is also hurting these creatures. If this worked, it would be cheaper and easier to recommend that people in need of these cures just chew on their fingernails because pangolin scales are made out of the same material -- keratin.

https://www.awf.org/blog/27-million-pangolins-are-poached-every-year-scales-and-meat.

 Some ancient traditions have much to offer the modern world. I have a daily practice utilizing the ancient traditions of qi gong and yoga which have helped me tremendously to live a more flexible, healthier life. But in a modern world where so much human pressure is already causing the extinction of our fellow creatures, the use of wild animals for medicines, based on superstitious folklore, has to stop especially where scientifically-based cures are available. It is unethical and even criminal to keep on with the traditions of killing endangered wild animals. It is creating a demand that is not helpful to us for curing diseases and certainly is harmful to them, creating one more preventable reason we are losing animals like pangolins.

Traditional indigenous practices rely heavily on cultural and social traditions of highly-revered practitioners who attach long-practiced rituals to the administration of their concoctions. They swear by the practices of their ancestors and to question them and the efficacy of the ground up rhino horn or powdered bodies of sea horses is considered to be blasphemy of the highest order. But no matter the issue, story is often more powerful than science. There are so many examples of this. We know that pesticides and herbicides sprayed on our lawns are harmful to our water supply. We know that they cause cancer and kill off insects needed by the food chain and for pollination, yet 80 million pounds are used annually in the US on lawns. There is no mayor of a US city that could honestly say that they need or want more people to house, feed and find jobs for, and yet we remain at a loss to find a way forward to curb mass immigration. Stories are not easily stopped by facts, and yet here I am again trying to do just that.

The comedian John Mulaney has a bit about how it is so much easier to stop something than it is to start something. His comedic claim is that it is 100% easier not to do something than it is to do something. I wish that were true when it comes to tradition propped up by centuries of embedded belief systems and making money from the wildlife trade. According to the World Economic Forum, illegal wildlife trading is the most lucrative of crimes, netting somewhere between 7 and 23 billion dollars each year for those who profit from the slaughter of some of our most iconic wildlife. Some of that is for items other than medicine, like elephant ivory, and wild birds and fish for the pet trade, but much of it is for the wild medicinal claims inspiring the harvesting of the creatures already suffering from the biodiversity loss caused by human overpopulation. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/09/fighting-illegal-wildlife-and-forest-trade/ 

Wild animals need to beware of being honored with a day -- it means that each has become so rare and so popular for human usage that their days are numbered. February 20th for example is World Pangolin Day, a day designated to let the world know about their unique beauty and that more than one million were illegally trafficked in the last 10 years, made easier by the use of the Internet. In 2019, 195,000 were trafficked for their scales. They are in such a precarious state that World Wildlife Day, celebrated on March 3rd, isn't enough to house its misery.

Other rare and endangered animals currently on the fake pharmacy list of traditional practitioners claim to cure everything from the common cold to fevers and from asthma to cancer. The Smithsonian lists these amazing and unfortunate animals as the top ten medicinally endangered ones: Rhinoceros, Chinese Alligator, water buffalo, Asian Elephant, Musk Deer, Sun Bear, Grevy’s Zebra, Tiger, Banteng (wild cow) and Hawksbill Sea Turtle.

Faced with climate change disruptions and biosphere destruction, it seems logical that using zebra meat to cure tuberculosis should probably stop. When aspirin has been invented it’s hard to justify killing a rare water buffalo for its supposed ability to cure fevers. Even if there were proof that this worked, aspirin seems a more ethical way to go. Sea horses are one of my all-time ocean favorites. I have yet to see one on my many dives, perhaps because the curio trade has caused over a million deaths of these horse-like fish each year. They have been sought after for their reputed cures for everything from infertility to baldness, asthma and arthritis. Wild animals need also to be on the lookout for trusts in their name. The Sea Horse Trust is helping to spread the word that this trade must stop not only to protect the sea horse but to protect the wallets of those who are still sick and poor while the animal lurches forward down the road of extinction.

This all must be looked at through the lens of time and numbers. The Zhou Dynasty of China is reputed to being the time and place where traditional medicine began. That was 3,000 years ago long long before there were modern pharmacies, when traditional medicines had only one thing to rely on for cures: animals, plants and their extracts. Back when our numbers were in the millions not billions, wild animals were so numerous that the thought of causing their extinction by the demand for using their bones, skin and meat was never in question. But numbers matter when it comes to wildlife. More people equal greater demand. When animals began their journey to our medicinal pouches and eventually to our medicine cabinets, the world had 50 million people in it. In today’s world that is just over the combined population of Toyko and New York.

Lions, for instance, used to have territories throughout Africa the Middle East, Southern Europe and India. Now they live in only 20% of their former ranges. Over 1/3 of these kings of beasts have disappeared in the past 20 years, a decline of 75% according to a study published by the University of Oxford Conservation research unit. https://africageographic.com/stories/vanishing-lions-a-75-decline-in-africas-iconic-predators-in-just-five-decades/

But the appetite for the medicines made from them have grown even more popular, creating the impetus for cat farms where wild lion and tigers are farmed for these medicines creating a new kind of tragedy. Big cat farms exploit these majestic animals for greed and money as they breed them and relegate the frightened felines to a life behind bars, in preparation for slaughter, as this video illustrates https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knbJujxYMvw

When people move to other countries their customs come with them. Demand for animal parts is widespread as a result. Wildlife is not only used for bogus medicinal purposes but also for good luck or love charms.

The Audubon Society (May 5, 2022) did a story about how hummingbirds are considered good luck charms in Mexico. Since pre-colonial times hummingbirds have been considered good luck symbols for attracting love. Not so lucky for the hummers who find themselves packaged with love prayers and sold for an average of $50 a packet. Their tiny fragile body parts are sold wherever there is a demand. These illegal packages, horrifying to bird lovers, have been found as far north as Minnesota where I reside.

There are many environmental degradations which are proving hard to reverse. The ubiquitous chemicals and plastics in the oceans, air, and in our bodies, along with slowing, stopping and humanely reversing our population to lighten our collective footprint, are all exceedingly difficult to solve. But NOT killing wildlife for ancient superstitions? Let’s STOP doing that, if John Mulaney is right, we could just stop doing what is hurting them and not helping us. It seems like a win-win solution to me.

ABUNDANCE

Abundance

The kind that matters

The kind that brings joy riding in on its coattails

Is found in the most unlikely of places

It is found in less

Less numbers

Less energy

Less pursuit of landfill-bound toys

And magic bullet energy which only fuels the machinery of more.

It is hidden in  

The understated

It is written in undeveloped landscapes

It is tethered to the remaining unruly rivers

Untamed by demands to quench our never-ending thirst.

An abundance of joy

Awaits those who graft a new story on to their hearts

Who unwrap the beauty of less

And feel its wonder in the skies still able to permit rainbow views

And starry nights that humble

It opens the door to chance encounters with wild critters

The first to feel the dark side of worshipping growth

Cramming more and more into a country

never meant to hold this many without great sacrifice.

The Danger of Jumping to Solutions: How you can be humanitarian and work to curtail mass immigratio

I can see it in their eyes. I know the second I lose my audience when speaking about how to truly protect our country’s wildlife, the issue to which I have devoted my career. Speaking to groups of all sizes and stripes, I can tell when they agree with my premise that it is unacceptable to stand back while so many wild animals are threatened with extinction. When I stay in my lane and discuss the way pollution hurts every animal from honeybees to coho salmon, they cheer. When I say that we need to stop cutting old growth forests to protect critically endangered species, they applaud. When I say we need to better fund wildlife law enforcement they take out their checkbooks. When I say we need to protect rivers and riparian habitats by getting rid of dams and the notion that they were ever beneficial, I still have most of them with me. But when I say that truly protecting wildlife requires taking a hard look at the issue of overpopulation and the way population growth is undermining the best of these efforts, furrowed brows appear on their newly timid faces.

I can string them a long a bit longer by discussing how promoting small families is a worthwhile pursuit. But when I dive deeper into the main reason we are growing in the US and other developed countries, they start to squirm and even leave the room. When I tell them the unfiltered truth about the huge numbers of people currently streaming into our country, many who do so without invitation or permission, their minds shut down as they jump to possible solutions while questioning my ethics. Some even employ the most cowardly position and cancel me before even hearing me out. In our current climate of cancel-culture, it doesn’t matter how many wars you’ve protested or how many injustices you’ve stood up for, if you are going to even say the word’ immigration’ in your talk you will be canceled. That is what happened to me, and my scheduled talk called “Legally Extinct”, at the International Wolf Symposium in 2022. It was not only an act in defiance of the First Amendment it was harmful to the future of wolves.

Limits to our country’s resources are already stretched beyond recognition, yet the topic of allowing more people into our borders has become forbidden territory for most NGO’s, academic, and journalistic circles. It seems pretty rudimentary that adding more people will only exacerbate our problems. Increasing our demands for limited resources, cannot be solved with conservation measures. But no matter how many facts we can throw at this issue, the discussions are shut down when the possible solutions appear to be worse than the problem. I assure you they are not.  

Here’s a compelling fact. “America lost 17,800 square miles of open space — an area the size of New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware combined — to urban sprawl between 2002 and 2017,” according to an environmental impact study co-authored by Leon Kolankiewicz. (Boston Herald, April 2022). Sprawl, he found out, is a direct result of population growth and our population is mostly growing by mass immigration, not our fertility rates. Kolankiewicz further states that,” about 1 million legal immigrants and 2 million illegal ones last year alone — is driving our population growth, which in turn is destroying our open spaces.”

It's high time to refocus of our country’s narrative if we want to do more than appear like we care about people and want to save wildlife. It’s high time to prioritize those whose lives are diminished when more come in seeking our limited resources. It’s high time to consider the wildlife who must give up their homes in the name of trying to house millions of newcomers.

It’s more than high time to consider what ignoring mass immigration is doing to a country which has grown exponentially since the poem by Emma Lazarus defined our responsibilities to the needy of the world. In 1883, this poet penned the words which were added to the base of our iconic Statue of Liberty. As Jerry Kammer said in his book, "Losing Control" (2020), her poem made so much more sense back when we had just over 50 million people counted in our census. Now that we are bursting at the seams with over 336,000,000, these words need to be viewed as outdated and undermining the very essence of democracy and our ability to protect wildlife.

Her words, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,” made so much more sense when much of America was undeveloped and climate change wasn’t as much of a threat.  

Roy Beck makes a remarkable case that the historical waves of immigration have hurt African American descendants of slaves as they were and are overlooked for jobs. ( Back of the Hiring Line A 200-Year History of Immigration Surges, Employer Bias, and Depression of Black Wealth  2021) The rock solid evidence provided in his book begs the question, what about justice for those who have been here and oppressed for hundreds of years?

We are creating our own problems by having a schizophrenic relationship with the environment. How is the Florida panther supposed to hang on when that state’s population has been allowed to double in 30 years? We can’t keep driving around in our electric vehicles with our “coexist “bumper stickers on them, with our organic produce-filled cloth bags and think that we are doing much to rectify the devastating impact of living in a country which is deep into overshoot. I offer up as evidence that there are now 1092 species on the US Fish and Wildlife’s endangered species list, and according to Audubon more than half of our bird species are in decline. We have to do more.

At some point we have to see the negative impact that continuing to turn the other cheek on massive immigration undermines everything we hold dear. We have to open our eyes to stopping the numerical madness and see that it is an act of compassion to do so. We may be suffering from living at a time of one of the most ecologically illiterate generations ever to populate our country. Many have also been coached to feel guilty for our relative privilege. This is a horrible reason for looking the other way while millions flood our borders with demands for a broken system to serve them. There are solutions which will allow us to not only hold on to our humanitarian ideals but to be proud that we stood up for Americans and wildlife at the same time.

E-Verify, was established in 1996. This web-based system authorized by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, allows employers electronically confirm the employment eligibility of their employees. We can also pass laws to change the numbers of legal immigrants allowed in our country and better enforce limits to visa permits. These are solutions which will prevent extreme traffic increases, deter worker exploitation, reduce carbon emissions, and improve our ability to help those already without housing and jobs. Last time I checked, all of these are all important American values touted by those who claim to care about justice.

Emma Lazarus, was a poet and a Sephardic Jewish woman of Portuguese descent who may not have minded that this Ashkenazi Jewish woman of Russian descent wishes to amend her poem, for the betterment of the United States.

 “In order to preserve the intent of this great nation to care for the masses no longer wishing to be huddled, or tired or poor, who wish to live in this great land with room to roam free, with unpolluted landscapes and a future of plenty, we need to be reminded that its resources are not unlimited and its doors must not be open forever in recognition of what too many will do to our liberty.”

With laws already on the books and leaders who are brave enough to help us recalibrate our mission to one of protection of our draining resources and those already here, we will be able to truly say we are putting our best efforts toward justice for all.