History of Fur: a new appraisal needed

[Guest]

What is clearly emerging in the Timeline, more than I had ever anticipated, is that because of fur trade, with a few exceptions, furbearers continued existence has been assured. In many cases certain animals may actually have been saved from oblivion, like the Caribou, or certain species we regard as native like the rabbit and cheetah, introduced. The cheetahs gene pool was down to seven. It was almosts certainly saved by man thousands of years ago.

 

Now recently the idea of Clovic man and the overkill theory has been ridiculed as the result of christian socialist thinking over the last 150 years.

Quite clearly a few thousand people could not hunt millions of mammoth, sabre toothed cats etc to extinction, and then nobody notices that actually clovic man cops it at the same time. It was the ending of the ice age, and massive climate change, that caused the extinctions. It suited christian theolgians and socialist influenced darwinians (Marxism cites an "evolutionary" notion of human economic development...ridiculous and clearly proven so in the Timeline) to agree to blame a godless, uncivilized, savage.

 

What we are seeing instead, is that the cultures that hunt and valued and traded furs were the MOST advanced; and often left the smallest footprint ecologically. Indeed the Sami for eample look like they have been hugely important in the fur trade since at least 400AD; and were respected so much by the Vikings for their trade and skills, that the Vikings revered them. In turn the Vikings, often represented as thugs, had fur trade links with the Arabs, and exploration routes which took them to Greenland for fur trade. Advanced peoples, not the way they are painted by conventional history at all.

 

Similarly, we realise that while every "pop" history cites the fur trade as the reason for the demise of the Beaver in canada, we find, as the cree always said, that the Beaver are plentiful where they have always trapped and hunted and traded them for meat and fur. Deveopment and logging were the reason for their demise NOT fur trade.

 

So. When I have time I am going to start looking at ALL these overkill theories. Because when you scratch them they don't hold water.

 

Fur is an incentive for guarding furbearers and their habitats; and its about time the whole thing was rejudged WITHOUT the prejudices of christianity and the politik of envy.

 

We now know without doubt for xample that the wild chinchilla was not driven to extinction by fur trade but by coffee and other agricultural change. The West african leopard the same story. With the Jaguar it has been soya.

 

Yes the passenger pigeon and others were destroyed by relentless hunting...but not for value...they were sold cheaply for diners in eastern seaboard cities. This was not an animal valued by traditional hunting.

 

The sea otter, massively valued for its fur, is unlikely to have been hunted to near extinction either. Far more likely, pollution caused which appears to have drastically limited its food sources after 100 years of naval battles between china russian japan and the USA in the area, and oil spillages.

 

A lot of these things need careful analysis. The prolification on the planet of mink and fox and sable and caribou ....and ONLY in areas where they are hunted or herded or farmed, should tell us something.

 

Of course there have been eco disasters too...fox in Australia, opposum, muskrat , coypu and American mink have a dterimental effect on local wildlife. BUT these could NOT have been anticipated by people of the time, any more than it could have been known that the dog would wipe out Tasmanina wolf with distemper. These have been accidents...and in some cases it is emerging that the effects are not always as damaging as is sometimes claimed. Mink for example , either negligently released by fur farmers or purposely released by antis, it now appears, were NOT responsible for the otter's demise. PESTICIDES in fish were the problem from intensive arable agriculture. Similarly, the grey squirrel and the red squirrel seem to co exist in areas of natural habitat maintained bu hunts and shoots....again its habitat change (though disease may have had a role) and not competition.

 

One thing that really makes me sick is that many "alternative" energy sources for example do things like this:

http://www.iberica2000.org/Es/Articulo.asp?Id=1875

I have seen it with my own eyes. magnificent birds of prey and swans mangled by these blights on the landscape advocated as "eco" friendly.

 

And goodness knows what the wave turbines will do off the coast of Scotland to marine mammals.

 

We need to think much more carefully about the effect we have on animals and habitats. Blaming "hunting" and Fur trade" is blame which neaither deserves, and allows the real cuplrits off the hook.