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The Truth About Sea Otters / Evolution of Otter Exploiting
To reintroduce otters in California was right in line with the trend of conservation and securing sustainable practices. In fact, California boasts one of the best management and conservation models of the world. This sound management would soon be polluted by passionate idealism and self righteous tunnel vision.
Most of us are aware of the early exploitation in the North Pacific of sea otters in the fur trade of the 1800′s. Some estimates count ten thousand furs taken each year just in, what would become, California. This was far more than the local indigenous people took, who had a thousands year old place in the eco-system. California was a much different place just a couple of hundred years ago.
-*Sea Otter Video...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH1J0aP7nz0&list=FLGGOpKKxogdTH2QYt0g9gMg&index=8&feature=plpp_video
To reintroduce otters in California was right in line with the trend of conservation and securing sustainable practices. In fact, California boasts one of the best management and conservation models of the world. This sound management would soon be polluted by passionate idealism and self righteous tunnel vision.
Most things can be understood by tracing them to their origins. The current plethora of immensely rich and powerful eco groups who pass legislation based not on science, fact or need but in pie in the sky ideology can trace their roots Margaret Owings. Owings was the first woman to get legislation passed and untruthful propaganda spread to make people think that her pet laws where somehow needed and morally just.
<table style="width:auto;"><tr><td><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-DrnaAKCJomE/TxMm5pvE0mI/AAAAAAAAAko/iLcg7V3PXYE/s144/margaret%252520owings.jpg" height="83" width="144" alt="margaret%252520owings.jpg" /></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:11px;text-align:right;">From Margaret Owings</td></tr></table>
Mrs. Owings was married to Nathaniel Owings, a partner in the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, designers of some of the most famous buildings in our country: Chase Manhattan Bank, U.S. Air Force Academy, John Hancock Building, Sears Tower, Lever House, Equitable Life Building, Harford Insurance Building, Union Carbide Building, etc. While Margaret was waving the banner of environmentalism, her husband was, at the same time, building over 70 skyscrapers that would create the synthetic horizon over the very thing she professed to protect.
During the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, Mr. Owings served as chairman of the Pennsylvania Avenue Committee in Washington DC. The task was to redesign the Capitol area and mall. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall oversaw the project for the federal government.
Mrs. Owing was instrumental in passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 and the Endangered Species Act of 1976. Moving to Carmel in 1955, Mrs. Owings claimed to be alarmed when she learned that her property had allegedly been used to skin sea otters. She would found Friends of the Sea Otter in 1968 following hearings on abalone fishing. Mrs. Owings chartered Greyhound buses to take otter lovers to Sacramento to oppose fishermen in their efforts to control sea otters.
“The most remarkable thing about it is that I knew nothing. When I started, I knew nothing,” she said in an oral history recorded by the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley. “I wasn’t trained in environmental things. They weren’t much in the news or in conversation at the time, and I didn’t think a great deal about them.I was always alarmed at the felling of any tree, but that just my own special thing. I really suffered as a tree fell, I really felt a life had been taken. I felt that within myself. It just grew into all of this.” (San Jose Mercury News, November 21, 1993).
In 1976, Mrs. Owings began promoting a “translocation” of sea otters to San Nicolas Island, Ventura County, California. The proposal was to create a second colony to protect the population from total loss should a large scale oil spill occur. By 1979, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and agency of Interior, began “baseline” studies at SNI in preparation for a translocation of sea otters.
Abalone fishermen of the region, familiar with the collapse of the abalone fishery between Monterey and Morro Bay due to range expansion and population increase of sea otters. were rightfully alarmed and formed an organization, the Save Our Shellfish Committee to represent divers. By 1983, SOS was represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation who advised the USFWS a translocation would violate taking provisions of the MMPA.
Reporting back that the fishermen and PLF were correct, in order to move forward with their translocation plan, Interior would have to devise a special law. So anxious was Interior, they agreed to a “containment” of sea otters to a “No-Otter/Management Zone.” The special Law, Public Law 99-625 was passed by congress and signed by President Reagan. Final Rules were published in the Federal Register.
But, in less than two years later, FSO was lobbying congress to eliminate the Management Zone. Soon after, USFWS terminated their containment program. Now, 25 years later, coastal economies continue to lose valuable shellfish fisheries to sea otters and their lobby.
In addition to FSO, other organizations now lobby for more sea otters: The Otter Project, run by Steve Shimeck, a former science direct for FSO, Defenders of Wildlife. Shimeck’s sea otter lobbyist is James Curland, another former FSO science director. The Sierra Club and Ocean Conservancy also have sea otter staff. These organizations take in hundreds of thousands of dollars each, annually, to play God with our resources.
“Reporting in the San Jose Mercury, writer Tracie Cone reported, “Owings went straight for the heart. She kept up a constant writing campaign to newspapers and wildlife magazines.” “I hate to write scientific facts,” says Owings. “But, I like using metaphors and let the mind work. I’ve often said, thank God I’m not a scientist so I can do things more loosely.” (San Jose Mercury News, Nov. 21 1993).
Despite her lack of scientific integrity, Mrs. Owings received many awards for her scientific misrepresentations. Mrs. Owings wildlife legacy is best described by Congressman Sam Farr:
“I like to joke with Margaret that she’s done more for business on the Central Coast than anyone else,” says Rep. Sam Farr, D-Carmel, who is Fred Farr’s son. “Look at all the T-shirts and charms with otters on them. Those didn’t exist before she came along.” (San Jose Mercury News, Nov. 21, 1993)
Margaret Wentworth Owings has transformed our living marine resources into coffee cups, T-shirts and trinkets.
-*Sea Otter Video...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH1J0aP7nz0&list=FLGGOpKKxogdTH2QYt0g9gMg&index=8&feature=plpp_video
To reintroduce otters in California was right in line with the trend of conservation and securing sustainable practices. In fact, California boasts one of the best management and conservation models of the world. This sound management would soon be polluted by passionate idealism and self righteous tunnel vision.
Most things can be understood by tracing them to their origins. The current plethora of immensely rich and powerful eco groups who pass legislation based not on science, fact or need but in pie in the sky ideology can trace their roots Margaret Owings. Owings was the first woman to get legislation passed and untruthful propaganda spread to make people think that her pet laws where somehow needed and morally just.
<table style="width:auto;"><tr><td><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-DrnaAKCJomE/TxMm5pvE0mI/AAAAAAAAAko/iLcg7V3PXYE/s144/margaret%252520owings.jpg" height="83" width="144" alt="margaret%252520owings.jpg" /></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:11px;text-align:right;">From Margaret Owings</td></tr></table>
Mrs. Owings was married to Nathaniel Owings, a partner in the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, designers of some of the most famous buildings in our country: Chase Manhattan Bank, U.S. Air Force Academy, John Hancock Building, Sears Tower, Lever House, Equitable Life Building, Harford Insurance Building, Union Carbide Building, etc. While Margaret was waving the banner of environmentalism, her husband was, at the same time, building over 70 skyscrapers that would create the synthetic horizon over the very thing she professed to protect.
During the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, Mr. Owings served as chairman of the Pennsylvania Avenue Committee in Washington DC. The task was to redesign the Capitol area and mall. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall oversaw the project for the federal government.
Mrs. Owing was instrumental in passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 and the Endangered Species Act of 1976. Moving to Carmel in 1955, Mrs. Owings claimed to be alarmed when she learned that her property had allegedly been used to skin sea otters. She would found Friends of the Sea Otter in 1968 following hearings on abalone fishing. Mrs. Owings chartered Greyhound buses to take otter lovers to Sacramento to oppose fishermen in their efforts to control sea otters.
“The most remarkable thing about it is that I knew nothing. When I started, I knew nothing,” she said in an oral history recorded by the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley. “I wasn’t trained in environmental things. They weren’t much in the news or in conversation at the time, and I didn’t think a great deal about them.I was always alarmed at the felling of any tree, but that just my own special thing. I really suffered as a tree fell, I really felt a life had been taken. I felt that within myself. It just grew into all of this.” (San Jose Mercury News, November 21, 1993).
In 1976, Mrs. Owings began promoting a “translocation” of sea otters to San Nicolas Island, Ventura County, California. The proposal was to create a second colony to protect the population from total loss should a large scale oil spill occur. By 1979, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and agency of Interior, began “baseline” studies at SNI in preparation for a translocation of sea otters.
Abalone fishermen of the region, familiar with the collapse of the abalone fishery between Monterey and Morro Bay due to range expansion and population increase of sea otters. were rightfully alarmed and formed an organization, the Save Our Shellfish Committee to represent divers. By 1983, SOS was represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation who advised the USFWS a translocation would violate taking provisions of the MMPA.
Reporting back that the fishermen and PLF were correct, in order to move forward with their translocation plan, Interior would have to devise a special law. So anxious was Interior, they agreed to a “containment” of sea otters to a “No-Otter/Management Zone.” The special Law, Public Law 99-625 was passed by congress and signed by President Reagan. Final Rules were published in the Federal Register.
But, in less than two years later, FSO was lobbying congress to eliminate the Management Zone. Soon after, USFWS terminated their containment program. Now, 25 years later, coastal economies continue to lose valuable shellfish fisheries to sea otters and their lobby.
In addition to FSO, other organizations now lobby for more sea otters: The Otter Project, run by Steve Shimeck, a former science direct for FSO, Defenders of Wildlife. Shimeck’s sea otter lobbyist is James Curland, another former FSO science director. The Sierra Club and Ocean Conservancy also have sea otter staff. These organizations take in hundreds of thousands of dollars each, annually, to play God with our resources.
“Reporting in the San Jose Mercury, writer Tracie Cone reported, “Owings went straight for the heart. She kept up a constant writing campaign to newspapers and wildlife magazines.” “I hate to write scientific facts,” says Owings. “But, I like using metaphors and let the mind work. I’ve often said, thank God I’m not a scientist so I can do things more loosely.” (San Jose Mercury News, Nov. 21 1993).
Despite her lack of scientific integrity, Mrs. Owings received many awards for her scientific misrepresentations. Mrs. Owings wildlife legacy is best described by Congressman Sam Farr:
“I like to joke with Margaret that she’s done more for business on the Central Coast than anyone else,” says Rep. Sam Farr, D-Carmel, who is Fred Farr’s son. “Look at all the T-shirts and charms with otters on them. Those didn’t exist before she came along.” (San Jose Mercury News, Nov. 21, 1993)
Margaret Wentworth Owings has transformed our living marine resources into coffee cups, T-shirts and trinkets.
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As far as otters go; they have 'cute' factor. In another example, wild horses and burros are extremely hard on public range lands. They muddy and foul water holes, clip the vegetation closer than native wildlife, bring in exotic diseases and have no predators but they have 'cute' factor so they get protection. People at large relate to that better than science. After all real ecological science is forbidden over national news. Candidates won't talk about it for fear of losing votes. The last thirty years of anti environmental propaganda has done a real number on the minds of US citizens. I'd say we are heading into an era where sea otters will be the least of our problems.