Japanese Whale Hunting, Origin of Chocolate, Tongass Forest Conservation, Exporting Alaska Fish Etc.

Federal efforts to move its Tongass National forest management policy in S.E. Alaska toward one of conservation and restoration rather than subsidizing plundering of old growth forest for loggers made progress. The bottoms 20% of Americans-those underemployed or unemployed need work and prosperity so life in the U.S.A. isn’t like living on a prison planet. If one gets a good job-maybe cooking- it’s necessary in these lean times to keep it until they need to pry one’s cold dead fingers off the spatula. The U.S. Government hasn’t had the same tenacity on border security and keeping foreign labor import supply down.

A productive river for salmon devastated from messy logging in the 1970s is being restored while the 2nd growth forests instead of old growth forests will increasingly be sacrificed to the logging industry for cellulose building materials. The old growth forest remaining in the Tongass is just a rump at about 10% of the original.

S.E. Alaska is also the summer home to many migratory whales. Some wonder if exports of Alaska fish to Japan processed in Japanese owned seafood processing facilities in Alaska should be allowed to continue while the Japanese continue to hunt world whales for ‘research’ dining (To answer the question; does tabasco or soy go better with whale?). The Japanese government values Alaska fish and if it wants to continue to snag vast numbers of high-quality protein from Alaska it should make peace with whales and vacate pursuit of the Antarctic and world whale population. Peace should not translate into Japanese as 'piece'.

Wanton destruction of the environment and whales is a consequence of primitive human characteristics inherited from the beginning of mankind’s development of society. It was just 4000 years ago that chocolate was first developed from fermented seeds in Meso-America eventually to become a royal beverage. Chaco Canyon’s Pueblo Bonito imported a chocolate drink in containers from Mexico about 1100 a.d. Royalty dominating quality food supply is not limited to chocolate in the savage era of human culture (no not The Second World War).

Human beings first arrived at Crete by boats or rafts between 130,000 and 700,000 years ago. It is reasonable to believe that if Homo erectus could make it to Crete across the Mediterranean Sea a few souls might have reached America by boat four or five thousand years ago. Whales have lived in the world’s oceans far longer obviously, yet the primitive urge to eat everything that is edible still drives mankind as much as fight or flight and the rituals of war. While the morality of eating creatures with the largest brains on the planet is debatable, the need to conserve a healthy world biodiversity is not. Genetic diversity is a requirement for non-inbred bio-diversity in populations of whales, snow leopards, North American wolves and countless other unique forms of biological creation. Mediterranean Sea