Posts Tagged ‘overrun’
Australia’s capitol city under siege – by kangaroos
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission
They bounce across the roof of Parliament House. They collide with cars. They come in through the bedroom window. Canberra, Australia’s capital, has a problem – too many kangaroos.
Authorities have tried giving them vasectomies and oral contraceptives, to no avail. They say trucking them to new and distant pastures is too expensive. Now they’re proposing a cull. But many people are aghast at the idea of their best-known marsupial being shot en masse in the national capital.
A government survey has found that more than 80 percent of Canberra residents think the wild kangaroos should stay. On the other hand, in a different survey, 17 percent of drivers in the district reported colliding with a kangaroo at least once.
Maxine Cooper, environment commissioner for the government of the Australian Capital Territory, says humans aren’t the only ones at risk – the kangaroos are destroying the grassy native habitat of endangered species such as a 15-centimeter-long lizard known as the earless dragon.
But “compare that to anything furry with big eyes – the human emotions generally respond to furriness and big eyes,” Cooper said.
Wild animals overrunning the portion of their natural range that, in turn, has been overrun by humans and artificial habitat – are not an unusual quandary. There are counties a few hours drive from my home that have deer and elk populations that are naturally unsustainable.
In the U.S., we try to kill and eat them – before Mother Nature inflicts more traditional solutions.
Presidential helicopter project is example of procurement “gone amok”
President Barack Obama has vowed to crack down on costly military programs, citing a project to build a new presidential helicopter fleet as an example of the procurement process “gone amok.”
Lockheed Martin Corp’s helicopter program is now more expensive than Air Force One, the high-tech Boeing 747 that ferries the president…
“This is going to be one of our highest priorities,” Obama assured Senator McCain when the senator told him at the summit that the government had to act to curb the “excesses of procurement.”
Obama has pledged to review major defense programs. As a result of the cost growth, the Defense Department must either end programs or certify them essential for national security and meet other tests established by law.
“I have already talked to (Defense Secretary Robert) Gates about a thorough review of the helicopter situation. The helicopter I have now seems perfectly adequate to me,” Obama told about 130 lawmakers, academics and business leaders gathered at the White House.
“It is an example of the procurement process gone amok and we are going to have to fix it…”
We’ve had the opportunity since the end of the Cold War to redefine our military forces, redefine roles, confine the essential expenditures to defense – instead of the quasi-imperial expeditionary forces we have stationed all over the world.
Even the concept of a volunteer force is pretty much crap when taxpayers have to foot the bill for troops garrisoned in dozens of countries, entire infrastructures to support those foreign legions.
The new generation of engagement with terrorists has nothing to do with models and cadres still based on World War One functionality.
