How the EU saves, and kills, the lynx
So maybe Europe is giving money for preserving the lynx – it’s given 26m euros (£18m) – but the agricultural funds give money that helps destroy the lynx’s habitat.
The same institution is protecting and destroying habitat at the same time.
Fuck golf courses and fuck fake-tasting strawberries … there isn’t enough water here. And how awful it would be to see such a gorgeous creature become extinct. Yes, the dunes are spreading, but the water that exists at the moment could be put to better use.
Doñana Park is about an hour’s drive from where I live. I know a couple of people who work there – biologists mostly working with rabbits, birds and bats. But the lynx is the symbol of Doñana and I guess, being a cat person myself, their plight moves me. But not just me. A few years ago a student of mine (mid-twenties, well-educated) came up for his class and could barely speak when he came into the room. His face was all red, he was actually sputtering! I asked him what was wrong and after he sat down and had a drink of water he told me … “You know your neighbour on the first floor? Her door was open when I walked past just now and I saw she had a lynx pelt nailed to the entrance wall!”
It was actually a traumatic experience for him. I’ve since seen it myself. But these neighbours are disgusting people on so many levels that nailing the skin of an endangered species to their wall is actually not terribly surprising to me.
I’m certainly no big-time environmental activist, but fuck man – golf courses in Andalucía??? One golf course uses more water in a day than a village of 10,000 people. And tasteless strawberries that are sold for export … huh? Nice to see the world has its priorities straight, as usual.
The mind reels . . .
casa azahar 
Oh, don’t get me started. Here, constant expansion of cities and destruction of habitat is creating havoc with our wildlife. That’s one of the reasons I’m so passionate about the bear issue we have going on where I live right now. The Rossland golf course is expanding from 9 to 18 holes. There are new neighbourhoods springing up necessitating the clearing of land. It’s bad, bad, bad. But the almighty dollar always wins out, doesn’t it?
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Are the bears an endangered species where you are, WC? I don’t know.
Not to say their plight isn’t important if they aren’t, but with the Iberian lynx we’re talking about this species being wiped off the planet because of the intrusion of golf courses and badly placed allocations of where the water goes here in Andalucia in terms of certain farmers.
Does the world really need a huge supply of totally tasteless strawberries?
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Black bears are not endangered as far as I know, but grizzlies are. Other animals, like the Vancouver Island marmot are very close to extinction because of logging practices.
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