Just when you think you’ve seen people drop to their lowest level, they’ll prove that the bottom is limitless. Today’s highlighted article made even me shake my head in disbelief.
Afghanistan protects newly rediscovered rare bird is the title of this story and it starts like this:
Afghanistan’s fledging conservation agency moved Sunday to protect one of the world’s rarest birds after the species was rediscovered in the war-ravaged country’s northeast.
The remote Pamir Mountains are the only known breeding area of the large-billed reed warbler, a species so elusive that it had been documented only twice before in more than a century.
No stretch of the imagination could label me as naive, nonetheless I find it incredible that a country ravaged by warfare and with citizens plagued by a lack of basic services could spend time and resources on “endangered species”.
Excerpt:
The Afghan environmental agency also added 14 other species to the protected list on Sunday. It now includes 48 species including the rare snow leopard, the Asiatic cheetah and the markhor, a type of wild goat with large spiral horns.
While conservation efforts are in their infancy in Afghanistan, there have been some recent successes. Authorities in Badakhshan last week seized a snow leopard from villagers who had trapped it and planned to sell it. The snow leopard — one of an estimated 150 left in the wild — will be freed once its injuries from the trap are healed, Zahir said.
In my not-so-humble opinion this simply reaffirms what I’ve said in the past, environmentalists suffer from one of two afflictions. Either they are out of touch with reality or they honestly believe that animals are more important than people.
While time, effort and resources are being spent on critters, the people in this country are going without. Additionally, our military service members are fighting and dying in that region and our tax dollars are being spent to provide for those same people.
Here is an excerpt from another article about that region:
The American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, has made the rapid delivery of governmental services, including education, health care and job programs, a central part of his strategy in Marja, referring to plans to rapidly deploy what he has referred to as “a government in a box” once Marja is pacified.
Back to the original article.
Excerpt:
Mustafa Zahir, the agency’s director-general, acknowledged the difficulties of trying to protect wildlife in a country preoccupied with the Taliban insurgency. On Friday, suicide attackers killed 16 people in Kabul, the capital, and thousands of Afghan and NATO forces are fighting to root out the hard-line Islamists from their southern stronghold.
Yup, that’s right, while we are preoccupied on the efforts to provide a government in a box the Afghan environmentalists look to other, more important, issues.
I cannot help but wonder if environmentalism isn’t simply an outward symptom of an inward pathological disorder…
