Loggerhead turtles are one of the most majestic creatures on Earth. The giant turtles swim the oceans almost unceasingly, in little understood patterns of feeding and breeding. Yet, in order to lay their eggs, these reptiles still need to return to the land. It is thus at the moment of nesting that we come to the best understanding of the health of loggerhead turtle populations.
It doesn’t look good. After years of decline, the number of loggerhead turtles nesting rose during the 1990s. Since the year 2001, however, the number of loggerhead turtles nesting has been declining once again.
One suspected culprit: Lack of government oversight of commercial fishing operations by the Bush Administration. Those right wing theorists who say that we all ought to live purely according to market forces obviously aren’t taking into account the impact that human demand has on the health of the oceans, as indicated by the health of the loggerhead turtle. When the oceans turn so toxic to life that the loggerhead turtles fail to return to nest at all, our civilization may not be able to survive the resulting market correction.
(Source: New York Times, September 22, 2007)
This administration has done more harm than good by first disabling the EPA (or at least rendering it useless) and going downhill from there through the No-Kyoto accords through all the other corporate sponsored legislation (“let’s log the old growth forests, add more arsenic to the water and make roads for ATV’s in the national parks”) to where we are now.