Marmots. No wonder Mother Nature's phasing them out. They look like a cross between a squirrel and a gopher, only apparently they are fatter and more useless, spending most of their time lounging around on rocks and only bothering to get up and look for food when they get really really really hungry. Hmm.... must be some marmot genes somewhere in our family background, sounds a lot like my brother.
Anyway, what's the big obsession with saving these guys? What's the likelihood of the average person ever running into one? Don't get me wrong, I personally have nothing against them. In fact, I've never even seen a real live specimen but I'm pretty sure if I did, I'd like it. Preferably on a plate. Fried, stewed, breaded, broiled . . . perhaps roasted with some nice mashed potatoes and gravy. Mmmm . . . marmot. I bet they're even tastier than spotted owl. First Nations people used to hunt them for food so they must be at least palatable, if not downright delicious.
As you can see I'm definitely not anti-marmot, at least from a culinary standpoint. But I do object to subsidizing the bucktoothed little bastards. Not content with throwing money around like drunken sailors on shore leave to finance stupid crap like the Olympic Games and carbon persecution, last year our government forked over $233,000 in rodent welfare payments.
This isn't just housing subsidy, maternity benefits, free food and day care for the kiddies, this is also relocation funds, an expensive clothing allowance (radio transmitters don't come from WalMart) and their very own personal militia to ward off pesky predators. And here's where it gets ugly.
The marmot advocates, exhibiting typical eco-loon tunnel vision, don't have a problem interfering with other forms of wildlife in order to pursue their own goals. It's fine for them to put up nets and fences, play tape recordings of annoying noises and in general disturb every living thing in the area because they happen to think marmots are cool. It's okay to capture, traumatize, and tranquilize cougars and make them wear radio collars so their dedicated crews of marmot shepherds ( I'm not kidding, this is what they call themselves) can be alerted and put the run on those bad nasty kitties when they come looking for lunch. They don't even mind using a cougar hound to chase and harass the poor cats because marmot-saving is very ecologically correct.
But the eagles had it worse. In Green Mountain near Nanaimo in 2003, seven golden eagles felt the wrath of the marmot-lovers. In a misguided attempt to reduce marmot predation, employees of the provincial government killed these federally and internationally protected birds by baiting them with a deer carcass and then shooting them. How low can you go - you can bet the general public wasn't in on that one. Coincidentally, the guy in charge at the time just happened to be the chairman of the provincial marmot recovery team. Your tax dollars at work, killing eagles. Disgusting.
And is this kind of one-sided disregard for other species going to help the marmot? Not if Mother Nature decides that Vancouver Island marmots just aren't working out. New species are constantly being discovered and other ones are disappearing - it's just how nature works, get over it. If we saved every type of life form on earth there wouldn't be any room for the new ones. Complicated schemes involving human interference won't save a species that is slated for the cosmic dumpster any more than buying carbon credits will affect the temperature of the planet. In fact, well-meaning intervention by humans has historically only made things worse. If marmots aren't going to make it on their own, we won't change that by giving them life support until the funding runs out. If they are meant to survive they will.
I suspect we don't really know how many there are in the wild anyway. After all, they are reclusive creatures - they aren't going to show up and fill out census forms. They also tend to pop up in unexpected places: earlier this year, a female showed up in a gravel pit in Port Alberni. Two days later a male was found in a backyard in Nanoose. In a display of mind-numbing stupidity, these poor things were trapped and relocated on Mount Hooper in hopes that they would mate. Good grief, did it not occur to anyone that these two might not find each other attractive? That one of them may have been the marmot version of a double-bagger? Or that they already had friends and family in the neighborhood and had no desire to be transported elsewhere? God Almighty, even glorified gophers can't escape from government interference in their lives these days.
If they disappeared completely, would anyone even notice that this creature they had never seen wasn't there anymore? I don't see anyone whining and crying about the demise of the dodo. This year the government has cut funds for the marmot program, to the great chagrin of the would-be marmot saviors. I guess the powers that be have realized that people who can't even get decent health care aren't exactly thrilled to waste what little money they have on a marmot dating service. How fitting that Mukmuk the marmot should be a mascot for the Olympic games - both represent our government's amazing ability to blow money on feel-good projects while our real priorities go unaddressed.
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