Man Swarm: the slaughtering the America’s wildlife (updated)

By Frosty Wooldridge

A book review: Man Swarm and the Killing of Wildlife by Dave Foreman

Every week, I write relentless commentaries on America’s immigration-environmental predicament. I feel like most of my work falls on deaf ears after 40 years of writing and speaking on immigration-population issues. Not only that, open borders advocates call me various and vicious names. Our U.S. Congress allowed 100 million immigrants to settle into our country in the last 40 years. At current immigration rates, we expect another 100 million within 38 years.

My two books: Immigration’s Unarmed Invasion—Deadly Consequences (eight years ago) and America on the Brink: The Next Added 100 Million Americans, (three years ago) spelled out exactly what we face and how to stop it—but I am positive that our leaders and the majority of Americans do not possess a clue as to our portentous future as a civilization. They (we) don’t understand how an added 100 million immigrants will devastate our civilization. Immigration quite literally will destroy us and our American way of life! All the while, the American people rely on the intellectually arrogant meatheads in Congress and our presidents to serve us—but instead; they keep pouring 3.1 million immigrants into this country year in and year out. (Source: www.cis.org, Dr. Steven Camarata)

Ironically, no matter how many souls we bring to this country for a better life, they come from a line that grows by 80 million annually. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muw22wTePqQ

Today, at seven billion humans around the planet and accelerating, humanity needs more food and water to survive. In America, with 315 million hungry people, we use tractors, planters and combines to feed ourselves with vegetables, grains, beef and chickens.

At the same time, few people understand the ramifications of adding 100 million legal immigrants and their children to America by 2050—a scant 38 years from now. To feed their explosive numbers, we must destroy 25.4 acres per added American known as “ecological footprint.” Each added American utilizes 25.4 acres to support that person. (www.footprintnetwork.org). If you multiply 25 acres times 100 million, that equals 2.54 billion acres of arable wilderness must be destroyed.

What does that mean for our wildlife? What does it mean for our animal habitat? What does it mean for all the big wild ones that struggle to maintain their food sources for themselves and their families? Today, 250 species suffer extinction in the lower 48 states annually. That equals 2,500 species going extinct every decade. (Source: Dept of Interior, US gov)

Harvard University biologist Dr. E.O. Wilson said, “The worst thing that will probably happen—in fact is already well underway—is not energy depletion, economic collapse, conventional war, or the expansion of totalitarian governments. As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be repaired in a few generations. The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct is loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.”

Dave Foreman of www.rewilding.org wrote Man Swarm and the Killing of Wildlife to give us an idea of the death toll of animal life in America and worldwide. According to the High Country News road kill study, February 7, 2005, Americans kill 1 million vertebrates trying to cross our roads daily and 365 million annually. (http://www.hcn.org/issues/291/15268)

How many species suffer extinction daily around the planet? Dr. Norman Myers, Oxford University, United Kingdom, substantiates 80 to 100 species end their time on this planet every day via human habitat encroachment. Humans kill species at such a prolific rate that it is deemed the “Sixth Extinction Session.” The first five sessions arrived as ice ages, meteors and other deadly events.

Foreman’s book cannot be dismissed. It cannot be ignored. It cannot be put down once started. Foreman shows the unraveling the wild world at the hands of humanity. For anyone that thinks unlimited immigration can continue, this book knocks out all the myths perpetrated by economists, religious leaders and pro-immigration advocates.

In my own media battles on the population/immigration/environmental front, I have had to contend with big time radio talk show hosts who support unlimited immigration growth, i.e., Ernest Hancock of www.freedomphoenix.com . Top television news personalities such as Diane Sawyer, Brian Williams and Charlie Rose will not touch the subject, but they report about the consequences—failing to make connection—on purpose.

Newspapers like the Denver Post’s Vince Carroll remain convinced that unlimited growth is beneficial. The Los Angeles Times encourages as much immigration as possible even as California chokes on its toxic air, gridlocked highways and crumbling infrastructure. It adds 1,700 immigrants daily and 400 vehicles. Even small town newspaper editors like Jonathan Thompson of the High Country News advocate for unlimited growth. Bob Shieffer of “Face the Nation” and David Gregory of “Meet the Press” scamper away from the topic like gazelles. Every National Public Radio host avoids the topic at all costs. Only last year did Thomas Friedman finally write, “The Earth is full.”

But the slaughtering continues:

“Upwards of two hundred species, mostly of the large, slow-breeding variety, are becoming extinct here every day because more and more of the earth's carrying capacity is systematically being converted into human carrying capacity. These species are being burnt out, starved out, and squeezed out of existence—thanks to technologies that most people, I'm afraid, think of as technologies of peace. I hope it will not be too long before the technologies that support our population explosion begin to be perceived as no less hazardous to the future of life on this planet than the endless production of radioactive wastes.” Daniel Quinn

While you may hear a lot about “carrying capacity”, you never hear about carrying capacity for all the other creatures on our planet. It’s like they don’t exist or are unimportant. Foreman loves wild things and I love them, too.

Foreman writes, “We have come on like a swarm of locusts: a wide, thick, darkling cloud settling down like living snowflakes, smothering every stalk, every leaf, eating away every scrap of green down to raw, bare wasting earth. It’s painfully straightforward. There are too many men for Earth to harbor…we are crippling Earth’s life support system by such a flood of upright apes is bad news for us.”

Dave Foreman’s book will rock your senses. It will affect your children. It will change all life on this planet if humans continue their endless onslaught around the globe.

“We've poured our poisons into the world as though it were a bottomless pit and we go on gobbling land up. It's hard to imagine how the world could survive another century of this abuse, but nobody's really doing anything about it. It's a problem our children will have to solve, or their children.” Daniel Quinn

Fellow Americans, are we going to continue to be victims of this relentless immigration onslaught? Are we going to allow it to continue? You can stop mass immigration by joining 1.1 million members at www.NumbersUSA.org , www.capsweb.org , www.FAIRus.org , www.TheSocialContract.com , www.Alipac.com , www.FireCoalition.com.

PART 2-----

Part 2 of 5: 100 years of human progress caused massive animal extinction rates

Could you do without the grizzly bear, leopard, cougar, deer, elk, hummingbird, Canada goose, fox, prairie dog, bald eagle, trout, whale, sharks and a vast array of the animal kingdom? Would you like to see them completely disappear because they are not important?

If you do, you may get your wish in the 21^st century as humanity continues its onslaught of wilderness habitat around the world. As the human mob rockets past 7 billion people on its way to 10 billion, all plant and animal life on this planet stands in the cross hairs of extinction.

Long time environmental activist Dave Foreman wrote a penetrating and compelling book: Man Swarm and the Killing of Wildlife. This book cannot be dismissed. It cannot be ignored. It cannot be put down once started. Foreman shows the unraveling the wild world at the hands of humanity. But he also presents solutions to save the animals and ultimately, human beings.

The legendary environmentalist John Muir said, “When you pick up a rock, you realize that it is hitched to everything else in the universe.”

That means water, soil, air, wind, sun and fire hitch themselves to humans, plants and animals. Conversely, we hitch ourselves to all living creatures and non-living things on this planet. We cannot get away from it: we remain a part of the web of life.

Aldo Leopold said, “There are those who can live without wild things and there are those who cannot.”

You have to wonder if all those pill popping and booze guzzling city slickers suffering from concrete below their feet and glass and steel in their eyes daily—wouldn’t find a bit of wilderness a welcome respite to the un-natural settings of the cities where most Americans live in the 21^st century.

Muir added, “Tell me what you will of the benefactions of city civilization, of the sweet security of streets—all as part of the natural up-growth of man towards the high destiny we hear so much of. I know that our bodies were made to thrive only in pure air, and the scenes in which pure air is found. If the death exhalations that brood the broad towns in which we so fondly compact ourselves were made visible, we should flee as from a plague. All are more or less sick; there is not a perfectly sane man in all of San Francisco.” September 1874.

You can imagine the compounding of the emotional, spiritual and mental sicknesses going on in our major cities today where everyone suffers compacted living, projects, gridlock, overcrowded schools and highly stressed people in every sector of life?

Foreman exposes all the factors that humans face as we continue to grow our numbers. “More of our kind means fewer wild things…a stabilized human population means hope for wild things. A shrinking human population means a better world for wild things. And for men and women and children.”

He states that he will educate readers to the population explosion accelerating in the United States and worldwide. He wants you to understand that it is the main driver for current extinction rates off the charts. He exposes cornucopians who advocate for endless human population growth. Finally, he offers solutions.

But we better get to them fast! Eminent Harvard biologist Dr. E.O. Wilson said, “By the end of the century half of all species will be extinct. Does that matter?”

You better understand that it does. Wilson also said, “If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.”

The artist Schimmel said, “With a planet full of beings such as ourselves, even the stars aren’t safe.”

Foreman said, “Today’s “Six Extinction Session” has a living scythe with which to mow down life on Earth. One species. Homo sapiens. Us. Man.”

The human race broke out of the “Circle of Life” to become the most destructive species ever encountered on the planet. No other creature has created 80,000 chemical poisons that undermine all forms of life. No other species has changed the “ph” of the oceans in so short a time. No other creature has scavenged the resources in a blind lust for things.

Can the planet balance our poisons to continue supporting all life?

Foreman issues the famous I=PAT equation. “The impact of any human group on the environment can be usefully viewed as the product of three different factors. “P” is for population. “A” stands for affluence or usage of resources. “T” stands technologies disrupting the natural work of nature.

“Unlike most books that have warned of overpopulation,” said Foreman. “I will spend little time on tales about coming starvation, breakdown of civilization, running out of oil and wars over dwindling raw goods. I will center on the most dreadful and unforgivable outcome of Man’s population explosion and that is what we are doing to our fellow Earthlings.”

If you feel like taking action, you may forward this review to the following media outlets. Ask radio, TV and print people to address America’s overpopulation predicament. If thousands of readers take action over the Internet, we could drive this issue to the front of the presidential debates:

charlierose@pbs.org ; oreilly@foxnews.com ; Williams at nightly@nbc.com ; today@nbc.com ; letters@newsweek.com ; letters@time.com ; letters@usnews.com; editor@usatoday.com ; late.edition@cnn.com Bob Schieffer ftn@cbsnews.com ; David Gregory at MTP@nbc.com ; Mathews at cmatthews@msnbc.com