Perhaps it’s BSE
Dear Ms. Poindexter, I’m not sure, but the Waipio Valley horses may have bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or Creutzfeldt-Jakob. Cows get similar symptoms and die when eating feed containing central nervous system (CNS — brain and spinal cord) parts from recycled dead cattle.
Please inform the horse caretakers to change the feed immediately and use Purina Horse Chow or some other nutritionally complete and safe food. Have them eat the same food the neighboring trail company horses are eating as they are disease free.
Amy Brown
Honolulu
Missile alert paid political ad?
Just wondering, was the false missile alert a paid political ad? The button pusher did not cooperate with authorities. Could he have been paid?
That was my first thought.
Dickson Devine
Hilo
Use science in arguments about fish collecting
Recently WHT featured a My Turn column by Suzanne Case in regards to aquarium fish collecting and just today published another news article about it, so thank WHT for keeping this in the light.
Ms. Case talks about court procedures brought on by the Humane Society of the United States — an organization that is against all fishing, hunting, ranches, zoos, aquariums, riding horses or anything that impinges on an animals free will and would give all animals the same status and rights as people. This alone should have us all worried. And while ignoring the science (and there is long-term studies independent of the industry) that finds this industry is sustainable and has negligible impacts, her goal is to eliminate the industry by phasing it out versus the immediate shut down as we now have.
And now today an article about how to manage, yes, manage, this resource as we should all our resources. It’s about putting limits on a take of our resources to manage properly and use science to do so. And when Case talks about herbivores and that she has evidence of severe population declines, begs wonder if is this clearly an aquarium fisheries problem? Or is it large takes by recreational spear fisherman that has been mentioned over and over again in letters to WHT?
Or is it the loss of habitat from sewage entering our waters, which has devastated the environment off Puako, as an example, that has been given the status of another study?
This is when we already know that in some areas, flush to the ocean takes as little as three hours and areas regularly exceed fecal coliform counts by 10 times Department of Health standards. Or the new information coming out of Kauai, where the lack of tourists in the flooded areas have had a positive impact on restoring fish to areas where snorkeling and diving has been heavily used.
So is this really about our environment or the idea that a small group of people don’t want to see fish in tanks? Because, if it’s really about the environment, let’s use science to address all the issues and aggressively pursue all avenues and not single out a single industry not supported by science.
And if it’s a moral issue, let’s stop denying science and ignoring real issues to prove a point as that’s akin to being an environmental racist, not an environmental advocate.
Steve Kaiser
Hawi