Posted on 05/19/2008 8:19:32 AM PDT by SmithL
Residents of the Southeastern United States know what to expect from the Atlantic hurricane season, but in 2004 it arrived with particular ferocity.
Hurricane Charley hit Florida, causing more than $14 billion in damage. Hurricane Frances prompted a record Florida evacuation.
But Hurricane Ivan proved the champ. At peak power Ivan ripped up nearly every house on the island nation of Grenada. After causing 60 deaths and massive destruction across the Caribbean, Ivan reserved a devastating punch for Florida's panhandle, striking with 130 mph winds.
That spelled trouble for Paul and Gail Fisher and other residents of Perdido Key, a barrier island near Pensacola. Ivan struck Perdido Key with a fury, leaving a destructive path a few hundred yards wide and 16 miles long. The Fishers survived, but Ivan destroyed their home and many of their neighbors' homes.
The Fishers and their neighbors sought to rebuild and return their lives to normal. But unlike victims on Grenada who quickly rebuilt their homes, the Fishers were barred from doing so by the U.S. government – the same government that sends in emergency workers to help.
Instead of supporting the human victims, the government went to bat for the Perdido Key beach mouse.
In 1985 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had listed the mouse as an endangered species, designating 60 percent of the island that was public land as its critical habitat. Three months after Ivan struck, and as these homeless property owners were trying to get their lives back together, the agency said it was extending the mouse's critical habitat to the lots where their homes once stood.
The agency threatened to sue the local government if it granted any permits to rebuild.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
Good to see that Bush and his appointees are fully in control of the liberal moles that infest the government.
But I suppose we can be grateful that it took 4 years for the liberal press to report this, and not even to blame Bush for it, since most of them likely approved of this solicitude to the endangered beach mouse at the time. And of course it took 14 years to report the case of the K-rat incident, which took place under clinton.
Heavens forbid that the press should do anything to endanger endangered species.
If we could’ve gotten the government to declare nutria and mosquitoes as endangered species, maybe they could’ve barred New Orleans as offlimits for rebuilding after Katrina and saved the taxpayers billions of dollars in fraud and FEMA trailers.
}:-)4
Just d@mn.
Our goobermint is out of control. We are no longer citizens; we’re subjects.
I smell lynx hair here, other conservative pundits have weighed in over the years with suspicion on all the bizarrely named, newly declared, endangered sub-sub-species the usual suspects keep “discovering.”
I recall one article where the author stated that by the criteria often used, the squirrels of Lafayette Square Park across from the White House could be declared a sub-species.
Didn’t know that the congresscritters were hanging out in Lafayette Park. Don’t they know that National/State Parks are dangerous areas for political types...just look what happened to Vince Foster.
BTTT
no way
complete freaking nut-whackos
what in the crap is wrong with the ignorant greenies?
I guess that is a rhetorical question
Can’t the residents just get together and kill all the mice?
I doubt there is any means short of ... ah, er, well, really serious means to regain control. It has simply become “them and us.” Government and citizenry. I live in the middle of a 21 square mile Superfund site. We have been found by the gubmint workers, and they are not leaving soon nor willingly.
“what in the crap is wrong with the ignorant greenies?”
Well, at least they can’t possibly be stupid enough to declare the polar bear “threatened”...oh, wait...
I’ve felt like I’ve been catapulted to a bizarre parallel universe a lot lately....
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