By KATHLEENE PARKERKudos to Karen Williams and Rep. Stephanie Garcia Richards for their effort (DAILY POST, July 14, 2016) to change New Mexico’s law requiring that bears who harm humans be killed, even when they acted only in self-defense. Can’t we also help these creatures—already confronted with the threats associated with living in the world’s 3rd most populated nation behind only China and India—survive the increasing pressures caused by an absolutely unacknowledged United States population explosion?
The July 7, 2016 DAILY POST ran a picture of a young bear “munching bird seed,” adorable but for the old adage, “A fed bear is a dead bear.”
Those who leave bird feeders, garbage and pet food where bears or other wildlife can reach them are signing the animals’ death warrants. That young bruin will soon view humans as a food source, then will get into mischief, then will be relocated a couple of times by wildlife officials and then will be destroyed as a “nuisance bear.”
Isn’t it enough that wildlife must try to survive in a nation—despite the ever pro-growth national news media actively (and falsely) depicting otherwise—that adds over 2.5 million people a year? Corporate media disingenuously focus on a “falling birth rate,” knowing full well that 88 percent of growth is immigration-driven with our nation one of eight nations fueling half of all growth on the planet. That happens absent acknowledgement—by an irresponsible president, congress and news media—of the environmental and other consequences.
Despite a media-created myth that we have always welcomed the world’s huddled masses that is not borne out by history. Founder Thomas Jefferson opposed any immigration, and George Washington and Ben Franklin wanted only low immigration. Only during the Great Wave from 1880 to 1918—before Americans demanded it end—did we have high immigration, an era of the appalling labor exploitation that inspired Upton Sinclair’s THE JUNGLE and cities hit by a virtual immigration tsunami, all to keep business and industry awash in cheap labor.
Tellingly, the low immigration from 1919 to 1965, despite the Depression, brought a thriving middle class, rising wages, labor empowerment and the dawning—as a direct result—of the civil rights movement. Today, media ignore the adage that high immigration is a counter attack on the War on Poverty. They also ignore that it wrecks our environment.
The staggering 300 million we became in 2006—in 2016 already 324 million—will be 400 million by 2050, meaning wildlife will more frequently come into conflict with humans in an increasingly urban West and in New Mexico mountains filled with ever-more cars, development and pressures from humans.
Elected officials should represent all interests, not just those eager for cheap labor, and consider the consequences of unfettered immigration—socially, economically and environmentally.
In a nation already overpopulated, with projected growth of hundreds of millions more this century if Wall Street continues to have its way, couldn’t we at least keep bird feeders out of the reach of young bears and in every way possible work to protect them from our increasing presence in the Jemez Mountains?
Editor’s note: Parker, who use to cover Los Alamos, the Jemez Mountain and timber and wildlife issues for the SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN, now blogs and writes nationally on water, population and immigration issues for the Center for Immigration Studies, Negative Population Growth, Progressives for Immigration Reform and Californian’s for Population Stabilization.
