Gallatin Range, Greater Yellowstone. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
“A fish rots from the head down.” – Rumi
By now, we have all heard rumblings of Empire’s imminent collapse. Propaganda and government gaslighting can no longer hide the obvious fact that social, financial, cultural, and political systems have failed miserably. The advanced state of Empire’s decomposition (rotting from the head down) caused by malevolent and incompetent leadership is now self-evident.
The question I ponder today: Will Empire’s collapse happen before or after it has turned America’s last great sweep of native biological diversity and wildland refugia into human excrement and post-consumer land fill?
“Biodiversity hangs by a thread. Within this mountainous stronghold is sequestered the remnant terrestrial wilderness ecosystems, wildlife corridors and freshwater aquatic ecosystems of the Northern Rockies bioregion,” said Alliance for the Wild Rockies Director, Mike Garrity.These fragments of wild territory represent the last sanctuary for threatened species like bull trout, grizzly bears, lynx, wolverine and whitebark pine – all federally – protected under the provisions of the Endangered Species Act. Other free-roaming species like wild Yellowstone buffalo, wolves, bighorn sheep, mountain lions, elk and many, many others still manage to survive on publicly owned, undeveloped roadless areas, designated Wilderness areas and National Parks.
Today, more than 23 million acres of these undeveloped landscapes – in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Eastern Oregon and Washington – remain unprotected, imperiled and ever increasingly vulnerable to being exploited and destroyed by corporations in the resource extraction sector. Clearcuts and logging roads built to access clearcuts fragment the forest, degrade habitat effectiveness, permanently scar the landscape, and compact the fragile, thin forest soil with heavy machinery.
Mining and grazing leave permanent scars and inflict deep wounds on the fragile forest floor.
Fortunately, there is a legislative plan (S-1531) to protect the Northern Rockies ecosystems. The Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA), sponsored by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a holistic land-management Senate bill designed to halt and begin to reverse this troubling and destructive trend toward species extinction and industrial conversion from native public forest to failed government tree plantation, privatization, and settler neo-colonialism.
Once these ecosystems are covered by road networks that resemble spaghetti on a map and fractured into tiny, isolated patches it’s almost impossible to put it all back together.
Man’s attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.
– Rachel Carson (1907-1964)
Cognitive dissonance is a state of discomfort felt when two or more modes of thought contradict each other. Man’s mind isn’t just at war with wildlife and wilderness, in essence it’s at war with itself too. Our conditioned hive minds worry about what others may think rather than worry about all life being frog- marched into a dark cul-de-sac that ultimately leads to unspeakable violence, mass suicide and genocide.The global capitalist ruling classes openly demonstrate who really controls themmonopoly on violence. We now witness – in your face, and personal – the melting away of the façade of American democracy. every Man will remain unconscious as path to higher consciousness is blocked by big media/entertainment (capitalism’s guardian).
We need to act now to avoid the “Humpty-Dumpty” phenomenon. We’re all intimately interconnected and must re-unite as one community in harmony with nature.
Wilderness ecosystems are not domesticated plantations. Rather than view the natural world with fear as an enemy to be conquered and dominated, try instead to marvel at her divine powers. Embrace Mother Nature as our single life-support system.
Support S-1351 and the Alliance as they lead the charge to protect endangered Wild Rockies ecosystems.
The post The Alliance Fights to Protect Wild Rockies Ecosystems appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
