Revolution Watch---Shrimps and Prairie Chickens

Well, the old Sustainable Revolution is still going on, or trying to go on but it would seem the sustainable part is not doing too well today. Now, I say that, not so much for myself, even though I am affected, but for a couple of species I have always liked. It seems that the East Coast Shrimp is having a hard go of it, as are the various species of Grouse.

 Recently, the shrimp population has declined at unprecedented rates due to unknown factors. As a result, they have had to call off part of the fishing season. Of course, everybody is in a dither, most importantly the fisherman who net this delicacy in the winter months when lobsters are off limits. Oh, they still want to go out not realizing that over-fishing is probably one of the problems, or maybe warming seas, or pollution or maybe submarines that make odd noises (I made that up) but one can bet the decline has something to do with human activity. I might say, activity of the teaming masses for if our population was 150 million instead of 320 million it would only be half as bad---maybe we would have eaten twice as much. Who knows?

There are no mentions of the causes but sure as hell all the people clamoring for the this crustacean are the actual cause. Do we care? Not much I suspect, but might complain about the high price.One has to hope that holding back the catch will give the bottom feeders a chance to recover. Cod fish have not recovered well and that practice is now outlawed in hopes of finding a sustainable catch----many years from now, I suspect.

Then, we have the Prairie Chicken and the Sage Grouse. Wouldn't ya know they like the same habitat as the drilling rigs of the northern great plains. We have this habit of drilling the piss out of every hint of shale oil we can find, which by the way is not a sustainable practice as they only live a couple of years and cost some 8 million dollars. They will just die out and hopefully go away, but seeing they live in the same habitat as the birds, which could be sustained indefinitely, the birds may have to loose their protected status to make way for the pump jacks ( a dinosaur of sorts). What we get is a living bird that is forever sustainable, and living on the prairie for thousands of years being replaced by one of man's inventions, one that will last for only a couple of years.

Then again, we have to have the oil and gas to sustain us for a little while longer---until it runs out. Until it runs out. Then what? Something about this arrangement that doesn't make sense. Seems like in the long run we might be better off with the Prairie Chickens.