[Trevor]

Loving Nature with a Gun



Commentary on the Sierra Club?s Support of Hunters and Killers



By Captain Paul Watson



To what depths of immorality is the Sierra Club USA prepared to go to suck up to the hook and bullet redneck crowd.

The Sierra Club plainly and painfully embraces guns and the killing of sentient beings.

Last year the Club hosted a web page showing Club leaders posing with macho smiles of triumph with their slaughtered bleeding trophy victims. We saw them proudly gazing at the cameras with pitiful corpses of bighorn sheep, deer, ducks and fish. You could see the frigging bulges in their Eddie Bauer pants from getting off on the sick perversion of killing an animal for kicks and sexual thrills.

It was a goddamn embarrassment and even more embarrassing to discover that as a National Director of the Sierra Club, no one told me anything about the tens of thousands of dollars we had allocated for ?hunter outreach? programs.

Now not only were we posting their snuff snaps, we were actually spending money to promote the murder of wildlife and enticing more of the sadistic snuff deviants into joining the Club because Executive Director Carl Pope said the Sierra Club was a really big tent and hunters and anglers are welcome, as are butchers, trappers and loggers. The only people that Pope will not welcome into his big fading green tent are animal rights and welfare advocates and anyone who is concerned about the growing number of people in the world.

And now the Sierra Club Insider features an article about Why We Love the Marines?

It was bad enough that the Sierra Club allowed the U.S. Marine Corp to have a recruiting booth at the Sierra Summit in September of 2005, now we are lauding the jarheads for being ?conservationists.?

Yes sir, the cops of the world have been given the thumbs up by the Sierra Club. Again as a Director, I was not given any notice, didn?t get a postcard, a fax, an e-mail or a notice, just a headline explaining why I love the frigging Marines.

The article begins with:



When you think of the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Marine Corps probably isn't the first group that comes to mind.



No shit Sherlock. Carpet bombing and agent orange dispersal instantly come to mind. Gunning down elephants on the Ho Chi Minh trail comes to mind. Tank drivers chasing down coyotes and crushing them under their treads comes to mind. The Endangered Species Act is not even the last thing to come to mind, in fact it is does not come to mind at all.



The article continues:



But the Corps has proven to be an excellent caretaker for the native plants and animals on its bases. In Hawaii, it has helped raise the population of endangered Hawaiian stilts from 60 birds 22 years ago to 160 today. How'd that happen? Just before nesting season, the Corps conducts "mud ops" training exercises with amphibious assault vehicles on the Nu'upia Ponds wetlands. By churning up the ground, they kill invasive pickleweed and provide better nesting sites and feeding opportunities.



Wow, lets have more tank treads grinding up the beaches and the wetlands. I just bet that was what they are thinking when they hit those beaches with the assault vehicles. ?Sarge, I just can?t wait to hit the shore and waste that pickleweed so the little stilts can build their nest.?

I wonder how they waste the pickleweed without squashing nests and burrows, crabs and coral, and I just bet the oil from the machinery is organic.

Let me get this straight ? heavy artillery and assault vehicles with metal treads belching diesel fumes and firing off live ammunition into the bush is an activity endorsed by the Sierra Club?

I guess so because according to a spokesperson for the Sierra Club, not only is the Marine Corp caring for the environment, they are doing an ?excellent? job of caring for the environment.

I wonder if the Sierra Club would call the Navy an excellent caretaker for the marine environment? After all the Marines work in partnership with the swabs.

Let?s not let a little Low Frequency Sonar (LFA) killing of a few whales get in the way of some good PR.



But the article continues:



The Corps has also helped on the mainland with the desert tortoise in California and the red cockaded woodpecker in North Carolina.



Really, it?s not that they don?t run over a few desert tortoise and flatten them like crunchy pancakes, they just try not to do it often.

Now the point can be made that military installations keep out the gun-happy shoot everything thing off-road maniacs with their snow mobiles and all terrain mud bikes but that is not the reason these places are off limits.

I grudgingly acknowledge that some species are better off being isolated from the redneck civilians even at the price of losing some of their number to tanks, bombs, nerve gas and chemical weapons testing.

The point is that the jarheads are not consciously hiking the wetlands, assaulting the beaches and shelling offshore islands because they care for the species that live there.



Finally the article ends with:



The Department of Defense sponsors range tours of its installations, promoting interaction between the environmental community and the armed services to protect native habitats and species while balancing the military's demands for on-site training. The tours began in 2000, and Maribeth Oakes, the Sierra Club's Lands Program Director, believes that the program is becoming increasingly productive.



It?s called public relations Maribeth, and it looks like the Sierra Club Insider has fallen for the hype. What next? The Sierra Club realizes the benefits of clear cut logging, citing the biodiversity that flourishes in a clearcut.. Perhaps an article on how killing animals makes one appreciate nature more.



First we glorify trophy hunters and now we pay tribute to the Marines. This is of course the same Sierra Club that refused to criticize the Iraqi invasion and at the last Board meeting made a point of gifting each director with a Sierra Club published booklet about a soldier bird-watching in Iraq. I guess birding is a welcome break from murdering Arabs in their homeland.



Has anyone ever stopped to think about the incredible number of birds, frogs, snakes, small mammals, endangered plants, insects and animals and plants of all sorts that have been blasted and shredded into bloody oblivion by American artillery, bombs, missiles, mines, and rifle fire in Afghanistan and Iraq? Does anyone even care?



Because if the Sierra Clubbers did care, if they had given it some thought, they would not have published an article entitled Why we love the Marines?




IMPORTANT NOTE: This commentary is a criticism of a policy decision made by the Sierra Club USA by a Sierra Club USA Director. This criticism is not directed at the Sierra Club of Canada where there really is no gun culture or any evidence of pandering to the military by denying the environmental degradation caused by military exercises, training programs and warfare.