It’s the Pitts: Save People, Not Flies

According to bureaucrats “an endangered species is any fish, plant or wildlife which is in danger of extinction throughout all or part of its range.”

If this is the standard necessary to be protected by our government, I can think of a lot of people who are far more endangered than the Miccosukee gooseberry or the persistent trillium, which sounds like a neutron bomb that won’t disperse.

The feds say there are 1,300 species either threatened or endangered, and there’s not a machinist, independent truck driver or saddlemaker on the list. So, here’s my list of the most endangered species in America today.

1. The sheep operator – The greenies say we must save “historical populations,” but if they didn’t have their heads glued to TikTok, maybe they’d know sheep thrived on public lands, and the landscape did too, long before the Endangered Species Act.

Sheep fertilized meadows and broke up the soil, while, at the same time, producing two wonderful commodities – lamb and wool.

Now, we’re told by urban dwellers who’ve never been west of Kansas City we must remove sheep and the people who care for them. So today, 74 percent of the lamb we eat is imported.

And, because the feds say only a dozen or so of a particular species remain on their range – only 4,000 of which have been sighted – the American lamb producer could soon be deader than the dodo.

2. The solider – The bird that started this whole endangered species joke was the spotted owl, and when the dust settled, we’d spent $9 million per owl to save them, just so their cousin the Bard owl could wipe them out.

Instead, we should have spent the money on returning soldiers who we sent to Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, only to come home to a substandard Veterans Affairs hospital and a citizenry who hated them.

We should be ashamed that while many of our soldiers were committing suicide in record numbers due to post-traumatic stress disorder, we were spending tax dollars trying to “save” fairy shrimp, winter gnats, Gooding’s onion and Townsend’s aster.

I wonder, were any of them willing to die for their country?

3. The journalist – The weekly or daily newspaper used to be a staple of American life, and their content was written by real journalists, not CHAT GPT. The writing was so good it could inspire a worthless kid like me to one day become a writer.

Now, what we have left is a cacophony of clowns doing podcasts or idiots on Facebook blogging away. And this is what we call news.

 4. The student – If I had kids, I’d be worried sick every morning while sending them off to a shooting gallery for freaks. A country that can’t protect its children has no future.

5. The fisherman – I live near a fishing village which once had a thriving fishing industry.

Now, the town is trying to exist by selling whale watching tours and postcards of quaint fishing boats that rarely leave their berths, while huge foreign floating factory ships rape our oceans.

6. The small businessman – If you’ve taken a walk down main street lately, you know the small businessperson is far more endangered than gnatcatchers and bearded vultures, which, I assure you, there are plenty of on Wall Street.

The small businessperson is being put out of business by Amazon, with help from the U.S. Post Office.

7. The forester – We used the aforementioned spotted owl and lots of bad science to destroy our forests, which now burn out of control for months on end.

The greens got rid of clear cuts, which acted as firebreaks and the roads firefighters used to fight the fires. We kicked off cows and sheep and silenced chainsaws, which previously reduced dry vegetation and bark beetle-infested kindling. 

If the greens really were really serious about saving endangered species before they burn to a crisp, the best thing they could do is bring back the forester, the sheep and the cow. 

8. The cowboy – I don’t know why so many urbanites hate the cowboy, but I think it’s because it contains the word “boy.”

Maybe instead of trying to save a turtle that can breathe through its butt, we ought to be more worried about saving the sexes – both of them.