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PYoungbaer wrote:Action Alert: Please sign an on-line "We The People" petition to help get research funding for White Nose Syndrome in the federal budget.
We need 25,000 names by November 25 to pass the established benchmark for the staff to recognize the issue and evaluate it for the President.
Pippin wrote:Brian, the research just published in Nature everyone's been talking about was funded in large part by the USGS and FWS (tax dollars). We need to do everything we can to get additional funding for that kind of good research. More research is the fastest way to make gov't agencies 'get off their mighty butts' and move towards more reasonable management policies. I'm not crazy about how much of our money goes towards writing WNS plans (especially since FWS evidently can't be bothered to update the horribly outdated caving advisory), but I want more money directed towards research. I'm about to create an account and sign it.
BrianC wrote:Pippin wrote:Brian, the research just published in Nature everyone's been talking about was funded in large part by the USGS and FWS (tax dollars). We need to do everything we can to get additional funding for that kind of good research. More research is the fastest way to make gov't agencies 'get off their mighty butts' and move towards more reasonable management policies. I'm not crazy about how much of our money goes towards writing WNS plans (especially since FWS evidently can't be bothered to update the horribly outdated caving advisory), but I want more money directed towards research. I'm about to create an account and sign it.
Pippin, you know that in most any case that gives the environment real help I will be all in. The problem with funding WNS comes at me with the reality that more than $24 million dollars have been thrown at the name WNS research, and we have a few bats and a few cages where test show Kooks Postulate? That is a lot of money for what I have seen realized. There is absolutely no human transmission research needed (nothing provides any evidence to necessitate this research) There is evidence that shows bats have been spreading a horrible disease killing many of the species and understanding this tragedy does warrant some capital for this understanding. I am not one that believes we the people have any responsibility ( or even the ability ) to control mother nature. A scientific understanding would be good to have, but not at the expense already thrown at the issue.The NSS may as well join the CBD in their efforts as that is exactly where the NSS has arrived. If cavers don't see this, then their blindness is no excuse. I do however feel the responsibility to point out this blindness and fallacy of using ( "the Human encroachment") as an excuse to fund researchers habits. There are many wealthy people that would be willing to fund bat research, and they certainly do, but they want to see results for their investments. The federal funding can provide no definitive results because that would be an end of funding ( we all know that that will not happen. So in a nutshell, The NSS should support private funding only because they will actually get some bang for their buck. Any federal funding just means that we as cavers will not see the dark of caves for a long, long. long. time.
SAY NO! to this or be a supporter of the CBD!
1oldbuzzard wrote:
I can't believe that the NSS would appeal to the very Federal Government that has shown its intentions of closing all caves and mines on private property. I would quickly sign a petition to tell the Feds to get their bureaucratic controlling hands off the caves that belong to the American taxpayers. Millions of money our bankrupt government doesn't have to keep the fat grants coming to a privileged few, doesn't seem to me to be in the interests of Joe and Jane average caver and their kids. I have yet to see any progress that throwing money at the WNS has done to stop the spread. Again, we are threatened with an ecological disaster of cataclysmic proportions which will befall us if the Academics, the Bureaucrats, and the grant farmers don't act soon. I declare that the bats will survive the epidemic. There are plenty of bats, "rare and endangered" species included, that roost in hollow trees, attics, old warehouses, under bridges, in barns, in crevices in bluffs and even in the government buildings that bureaucrats frequent. A high school level review of fungi and how they reproduce might give some thinkers a little fuel for thought as to how ridiculous some of the control measures really are. Wail and cry for the bats! They will survive! Government intervention into such problems rarely brings about a satisfactory solution. When the smoke of the issue clears, we see a pile of new federal restrictions, which always have a nasty habit of remaining on the books. A few academics will have fared well on the grants, and the focus moves on to another threat, real or imagined. The real issue that the NSS ought to be addressing is the freedom to continue sport caving in America. I recently saw a warning sign placed on a private cave by a State Game and Fish Commission working in collusion with a private "conservation group" which threatened prosecution and a $100,000 fine for each instance of entry. This of course exempts the "experts" who are there to protect a miniscule cave snail which in the words of the protectorate experts, would be "trampled underfoot" by cavers. These exempted experts are now the only ones allowed access and the only ones who can report the status and health of the cave snail populations. Pretty elite little caving group, huh. WNS experts can play the same game.
innermostphoto wrote:Um..no but thanks for playing. Still not signing.
bob biddix
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