Preservation of America's Wildlife

Tag: education

  • All the Facts, Please, All Data Needed – Not Cherry-Picked Data to Appease Your Ignorance and Needs Financially

    Written by
    John Cox, M.A. C/M

    “The truth is in the details — In the field of communication, we separate misinformation from disinformation (campaigns of misinformation), or propaganda (motivated toward an end result by disinformation), or, simply leaving particular cumbersome information out from a subject area, in order to achieve, also, a wanted result, rather than a true result.  This discussion centers around result-oriented situations, and hopefully explains the challenges common-folks, such as you and I experience daily, within today’s rat-race of greed, ignorance, and self-proclaimed experts. .  i.e. controversies.  Diversions that suspend truth into a confusing quagmire of endless different results, most destructive to our environment, as well as our personal well-being.

    We have history that shows us, the inconsistency of science, for example.  More often than not, on our planet, we cannot use a “one-size fits all science” within our Wildlife Environments, across the United States, as well as internationally.  Going back to Ben Franklin and flying his kite, that generated Static Electricity, and he was sheltered from the storm while flying the kite.  Later, a Russian Scientist reviewing Franklin’s discovery, flew his kite into an electrical storm, and was hit, directly, with lightening – the bolt transcended down the kite line, hit the scientist’s head, and blew his shoes off.  He sacrificed his life, unknowingly, due to lack of information, or ignored the truth of the information.  So much for Peer Reviews. 

    Psychologist Catharin Morris Cox deducted, through extensive profiles and Scientific Deductive Reasoning (formula’s et al.) Franklins IQ was around 160 (IQ tests were not done at that time of his life span).  Through Deductive Reasoning, with all of evidence available, nothing set-side due to being an Uncomfortable Truth, or, not equitable within a disinformation context, left out, we see a truth developed into what we refer to as “Fact”.  We find today the term “Fact” is not necessarily a truth to depend upon, when used by itself, and left non-referenced.  The confusion we see today, not just in politics, but within science, as well, and many folks confused.

    Many American wildlife “facts” are distorted by bad science, outdated studies, or myths, often influencing management policies negatively. Common misconceptions include the myth that opossums consume large amounts of ticks (proven false by diet studies in some habitats when stomach contents examined) and that porcupines can shoot their quills. Misinformation extends to policy, where wolf delisting or animal control actions sometimes rely on flawed or non-peer-reviewed data.

    Notable Circumstances of Misinformation / Disinformation

    Wolf Management: Wolf delisting in some areas was based on 2012 research that many wolf biologists did not consider accurate or conclusive.  Yet still referenced, often, by many who do not understand, nor can really tell the difference between poor-science, accomplished by lack of experience in data gathering, and again, a lot of information left out of the data, as well as relied upon myth, or information from those whose finances may be lowered, by Factual-Truth.

    Wild Horse Impact: Evidence tells us that BLM studies have overstated, continuously, the impact of Wild Horses on grazing land while understating the impact of cattle, all the while noticeable, a lot of data not gathered, or ignored, or manipulated, should have not passed Peer Review, due to so many flaws within the data collected.  Severity of sending Wild Horses to Slaughter developed, and still exists to current situations we see today.

    Bad Science in Management

    Misguided Management: A study of 667 wildlife management systems found that many lack clear objectives and evidence, suggesting management is often not truly science-based.

    Wildlife Services: The USDA’s Wildlife Services program has been criticized for killing over a million native animals annually, sometimes based on broad, indiscriminate policies rather than specific, effective science.

    Survivorship Bias: Studies on falling cats (a common “fact”) often only include those taken to a vet, ignoring cats that died at the scene, resulting in skewed survival data. 

    Common Misinformation Sources

    False Narratives: The idea that hunting is entirely necessary for population control is frequently pushed, while studies, with complete details rather than conveniently left out details, show it can disrupt natural self-regulation in ecosystems.  The evidence of destruction within Wilderness Areas, as well as many Forest Habitats and Wildfires attest, equate to results showing us this to be true.  Limited attention given to regulated-permit hunting (as a priority over environmental health) and chosen Wildlife, remains non-scientific, as much as reflects the greed, ignorance, and avarice of hunting and bad science combined into their complex of misinformation – disinformation campaigns . . .

    AI and Social Media: Artificial intelligence and viral videos can create false portrayals of animal behavior, misinforming the public about wildlife needs, and attribute their science as necessary (as incorrect and cumbersomely void of facts)

    We can Conclude

    We see, you and I, many questionable situations today that require our attention, and knowledge, on how to distinguish between truth, and ignorant ranting, yet calling it science.  At the advent of AI becoming much better than over the past couple of decades, we find their truth, notably to be fiction, often developing into what some assume to be reality – or truth.  The more we know about Aristotle’s Dramatic Structure Paradigm, within storytelling, we can assimilate these fictional AI creations, and identify them as what they are, fictional-story-telling – that has indeed overlapped into complete fiction re-mastered as science. 

    But many do not, nor have not, studied story-structure, or Physics, or Biology, but rather learned it through life – as incomplete as that may be.  Cherry-picking, so to speak, what we understand, compared to taking the time to learn the things that are a little more difficult to understand, remains the status-quo; whether, directly or indirectly (social media a good example.  Then derive our own conclusion – once again, facts left out that can be critical.  Destruction does follow, make no doubt.  Perhaps not as dramatic as taking a lightening bolt to the head, and your shoes being blown off, but the results for our Wildlife, our nation’s forests, as well as our entire Terrestrial environment, suffers greatly.  And none of the above, I mention, can defend themselves – So it is up to us, to step up and defend it all.  The priority must develop into all life on this planet to coexist – ignorance picks and chooses life of their choice, yet we see through history, that these types of bigotry are very destructive,” — John Cox M.A. C/M

  • Wild Horse Management on Public Lands — Options Exist for Cheaper & Better Mgmt!

    Written by John Cox, M.A. C/M

    “We find the explanation troubling, or the governments terminology of Wild Horses being inferior.  Their terminology, awkward at best, remains not just superficial, but lacks qualification, and ignores evidence from the Natural Selection Process of the evolution of The Horse (i.e. Equidae Equinae (Equines), and the domesticated category of Equus Caballus / Equus Ferus Caballus . . .

    Discussed here is the definition the Bureau of Lands Management / Department of the Interior, uphold, as explanation toward America’s Wild Horses:  “Wild Horses such as the Mustang of North America are feral, rather than truly wild, as they are descended from domesticated horses.”

    We directly challenge the categorical reference, as being non-supported, lacks evidence, as well as defined from opinion, with no scientific accuracy within research completed.  The foremost explanation is quite simplistic, as their categorical reference is the Wild Horses going “Extinct” 10,000 to 30,000 years ago, i.e. around the Pleistocene Era.  Ironically, the same evidence they use to promote this paradigm, is the same evidence used to promote the paradigm of the Wild Horses surviving the Pleistocene, and never ceased evolving, via Natural Selection Evolution of their physical attributes of survival.

    It is either one or the other, and the rightful explanation is not the governments explanation, of the Wild Horses mysteriously going extinct, and just as mysterious, magically showing up again, a few centuries later — Our universe also has something to say about their science, as well as their over-population counts, that are universally impossible, as well . . .

    Carl Sagan, at least within this portion of this discussion, said it best when discussing the aspects of why we are finding, more and more, “bone piles” as well as wildlife roaming remote areas today, that we assumed went extinct, or did not know existed, at all — “. . . absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

    Rather than debate vast amounts of details, and cloned-references that are not back by evidence yet accepted by the Horse Community (i.e. a lie becomes a truth when repeated over decades of time, certainly serves us well in this case as a truth) we can assimilate, within summation-form, the aspects of why we challenge these government agencies.  It develops, simply, into “politics”, and as usual, we find “financial attachments” when we discuss manipulative politics . . . 

    This is where we find the parameters of research, placed within the questionable, and certainly unethical realm, of persuasion, more like advertising, rather than science; in another words, the outcome is developed, and the research is designed to meet the outcome.  This could be true enough, when we have a disease, and the research designed to stop the disease.  Here we are more concerned with the history of the Horse, in particular Wild Horses, to actually preserve their “Indigenous Nature” of the Wild Horses in America.  Wild Horses are not part of the American Myth, as many would like to place them, categorically; whereas, they stand-alone in their stature, their survivability complex, and beneficial to several types of environmental habitats, that can develop into Environmental Health.  This exceeds, by far, what we term as the Domestic Horse, and their attributes. 

    We separated (via genetic reference) known Wild Horse Bands, 18 Family Groups, from the Domestic Bands roaming the same wilderness area, 12 Family Groups, and observed a vast amount of difference between the two overall groups.

    Through “long-term research” we find overwhelming evidence, or, what we term “capacity of survivability skills” passed on from generation to generation among the Wild Horses – which exceeds the level of knowledge we see within Domestic Horses that have been released, or survived within wilderness areas over a few generations, but “phased-out” and disappear over time.  The “physiology” as well as the “survivability range of skill-sets” shown us, over years of observation of 18 Bands of Wild Horses and 12 Bands of Domestic Horses, in the wilderness, becomes a recognizable fact. 

    The reality of a long-term study, over 15 years, (i.e. consistently, and “not” just every Spring to Summer Event of research, as government and most organizations do – financial considerations, et al., then call it long-term research if they do it a couple or three years in a row within those seasons) gives us the opportunity to not just observe the Bands daily occurrence of survivability, but rather, combined with the daily interactions of the bands within not only their structure, but the environmental structures surrounding them.  This becomes conducive to the precise details of not just “why” they do the things they do, and their motivation to do so, but use of their actual “skill-sets” within the survivability circumstance, and how it evolved – without interruption.  What we have found, supports the elements of Natural Selection, when uninterrupted throughout centuries.

    There is so much more to discuss.  But here I will end this discussion with one conclusion we all agree upon here . . . “There exists so much we are losing, by assuming the trivial.”  

    Conclusively, within the current form of Wild Horse Management by government, as well as the dichotomy of what we pretend to be “long-term research” situations; as well as, special-interest generated “genetics” (by colleges that receive $-millions from the DOI/BLM in taxpayer money to develop their “special interest driven” conclusions of genetics) combined with over-population lie after lie, and the lack of so much information, and incomplete data sets, we have a big problem with so much misinformation about Wild Horses.  

    We merely accept their arrangement, with the current Wild Horse Management Paradigms — noted to be from their “false-premise” = Wild Horses being a “non-indigenous” species, or being incognito Domestic Horses.  We observe, daily, within our scope of research, the Wild Horses are a species upon themselves, with their own attributes, and their own survival skill-sets.  They are not simply Domesticated Horses turned out onto the range, and then considered Feral, and should not be treated as Excess . . . We are watching this circumstance evolve. We are here, on site, Over years of observation, and research, and data collection. we know what we see and experience. With this experience we have knowledgeable facts and data, which conflicts with much of what we see first hand and within the DOI/BLM complex of Managing America’s Wild Horses, at taxpayer expense, that. Much better options exist, and not as expensive, nor abusive.“  — John Cox, M.A. C/M