People are so greedy and evil.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service announced to residents of the Boiling Spring Lakes area in North Carolina that rapid development was pushing to the brink of extinction the already endangered red-cockaded woodpecker.  The federal agency “issued a map marking 15 active woodpecker ‘clusters,’ and announced it was working on a new one that could potentially designate whole neighborhoods of this town in southeastern North Carolina as protected habitat, subject to more-stringent building restrictions.”

Sounds reasonable thus far, does it not?  We are talking about saving an entire species of bird here, so the expectation that we might restrict some activities on private property with reasonable guidelines should not come as a surprise.  Even more important, anyone with the slightest bit of common sense should understand that such restrictions have historically come with caveats that enabled development to some degree when appropriate measures are taken to ensure the animal(s) in question are not negatively impacted.

In response to the announcement that a new map was in the works that likely would expand the protected area for this species, residents of North Carolina took it upon themselves to get ahead of the government so there would be no restrictions on the use of their property.  How are they doing this?  They’re clear-cutting an entire forest before anything can be said about protecting the trees and, therefore, the birds.

Thousands of trees have already been felled by citizens eager to practice their chainsaw skills and further guarantee the dwindling woodpecker population will indeed die.  And it’s the last such population on the planet.

The cutting frenzy has converted the lakes from a lush forest to a sandy wasteland, all so they could beat the new map and not have any restrictions for building on their property.  It took the city only six months to issue 368 logging permits, almost all of them without an accompanying building permit (meaning the trees were being felled for no reason).

It’s disgusting.  It’s horrific.  It’s typical.  And it’s unnecessary because the restrictions would not mean a total ban on building.  They would place a wee bit of inconvenience on development insomuch as trees with woodpecker nests could not be cut down until the nesting birds were successfully relocated.

Yes, that’s right: you could relocate the birds before cutting the tree down, so it’s not even a total ban on felling trees if woodpeckers are present.  Instead of waiting to see if they’re impacted and acting accordingly, these idiots instead have ruined a near-paradise and further endangered a species teetering on the edge of extinction.  The loss of so many trees will ultimately and negatively impact a far greater number of species as well as the entire ecosystem, so the loss of that habitat will have far-reaching consequences outside of this single extinction.

Why don’t we empower the Endangered Species Act so that the same approach can be used when areas are placed under restrictions to protect animals?  That is, allow the government to go in and bulldoze human structures en masse.  What’s good for the goose…

It seems to me North Carolina wants to be associated with red-cockaded woodpeckers the same way hunters from 1896 are associated with the intentional culling of the last wild flock of passenger pigeons, a move that guaranteed the extinction of that species.

Broken record time: I hate people.