Hi All,
In the last couple of weeks Delia and I had come to realize we had a pair of two-year-old Red Legged Frogs here in our little complex of butyl ponds in our tiny backyard on Beacon Hill. This morning with a Wilson?s Warbler singing in the background, Delia opened the back door to find the morning sun suddenly blocked by huge flapping wings. We?re saddened to no longer have red legged frogs, or near as many goldfish, but on the bright side maybe if we keep stocking the pond with more goldfish we?ll have a pet Great Blue Heron.
An afternoon walk in Discovery Park produced two singing Olive Sided Flycatchers, a Willow Flycatcher, Rough Winged Swallows, a Warbling Vireo, Wilsons and Olive Sided Warblers, Swainson Thrush, a Savannah Sparrow, a Kingfisher and (only) one Band Tailed Pigeon.
But the reason I?m posting is I can?t bear to read Deborah Wisti Peterson?s rather poignant posts without commenting on ecoterrorism. On the radio I heard an environmentalist quoted as saying something along the lines of ?Their methods are bad but they are right in raising questions on this issue.?
I completely disagree. This is a challenge for us to condemn eco-terrorism without contaminating the condemnation with any mealy-mouthed caveats about how they might be right on the issues they perceive themselves to be fighting.

Aside from its obvious morality problems, ecoterrorism is a strategy designed to lose, not win. It?s a way for people who do not have enough courage in their convictions to allow themselves to look their opponents in the eye to become ?heroes? in their own mind while driving good people away from their cause.

Ecoterrorists hurt all of us who have pro-ecological views and do have the courage to identify ourselves in public and stand up for those views.

It?s a sad commentary on America, where we have nothing to fear from open political activism, that people choose to romanticize themselves in this way as though they faced the dangers that Chico Mendez, Ken Saro Wiwa, or the two recent Guatemalan environmental officials who were killed (among many others) for fighting to save the environment in the third world.

--Ed Newbold, Tweeter by Digest, urban residential Beacon Hill, Seattle, newboldwildlife at netscape.net
PS. Horrifying news about the terns and Dept. of Wildlife. After the obfuscation about the swan die-off, are we seeing a pattern?


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