Too many environmentalists don’t know anything about the environment.
The latest example of this is in Huntington Beach, where environmentalists recently claimed a major legal victory. They were happy that the so-called Bolsa Chica decision prevented a landowner from removing several dying eucalyptus trees from a degraded swamp and replacing these noxious, non-native trees with native fauna nearby.
A court found these trees could not be touched because hawks perched there. Not nested, perched. Not endangered hawks. Just regular, old and, it turns out, hungry hawks, who just happened to live a few blocks away from a recently completed, state-built nesting site for endangered least terns.
A Sierra Club attorney defended the decision, saying he “wanted what the raptors wanted.” This environmental lawyer probably expected the hawks and least terns to live in peace and harmony like earth-shoe-clad yuppies at a Sierra Club singles mixer.
But raptors are not vegetarians. They want something else entirely. Something to eat. So they choose the least terns. And for the last two years, the hawks have feasted on least terns, decimating this carefully cultivated colony of endangered birds in Huntington Beach.
The so-called environmentalists in this case are really just a law firm that collects fees for suing landowners, not biologists who know about habitats.
These so-called environmental attorneys also have used this same decision to stop the completion of a large regional park. Parks are not good for the environment, either.
Examples are as numerous as the number of environmental organizations themselves. Another “environmental” group, called the Environmental Health Coalition, likes suing government agencies to stop pollution. One of their bigger cases involves pollution at San Diego Bay, where they claimed the city of San Diego’s convention center was pumping polluted water into the bay. Yes, there were lots of news conferences and faux outrage, followed, of course, by lawsuits.
But here’s the rest of the story. The water that the city was pumping out of its convention center had just come out of the bay, and had seeped into the center’s basement.
In fact, because the water went through all this sand and other natural filters, the water the city pumped into the bay was actually cleaner than bay water itself. Cleaner than it was just a few hours before. And so, environmental lawyers actually sued the city of San Diego for cleaning up dirty water.
So if you are in San Diego, and you dip a cup full of water from the bay, then pour it back in, don’t do it in front of any contingency-fee law firms masquerading as environmentalists. Because they will accuse you of breaking the law. And reporters will write it that way, uncritically accepting questionable political statements as sound biological facts.
This list goes on and on: These enviros have turned tire tracks into vernal pools; oil wells into pristine wetlands; worthless isolated plants into valuable habitat systems. Not in reality, of course. Unless you count the notebook of a gullible reporter as reality.
And don’t forget the mountain lion that had the misfortune to wander by a Sierra Club campsite; within hours it was dead, shot after campers panicked.
The body politic has survived this bogus environmentalism, albeit at enormous cost. But a bigger cost has yet to be paid. What will happen if we do experience a legitimate environmental crisis? One that actually threatens our air or water or food supplies?
Too many people won’t listen because environmentalists, aided and abetted by a news media that accepts their wildest claims with uncritical glee, have cried wolf in Huntington Beach, San Diego and all over California thousands of times too often.
And as we know, environmentalists don’t know anything about wolves.
Yarbrough is a councilman in Perris and a member of the Western Riverside Council of Government’s endangered species advisory committee.
