SAVING LARSENS

Oh my dear readers, I need your help. My favorite place in the entire world is threatened with being altered in a horrific way. Please send all the love you can possibly muster to a wilderness on Kauai. Here is what is unfolding:

Look at the picture of the beach at the top of this page. That is Larsens on the N.E. side of the island of Kauai. My favorite place in the world. Now imagine it with no forest any more and cows wandering down to the edge of the sand. Ayah! The reef has been protected a long time because there is no development above the beach, so it is still relatively ALIVE, and gorgeous! The man who runs a cattle ranch on the lands above has just applied for a permit to cut the forest and run his cattle pasture to 110 feet from the sand!!!!!!!! WOW. Who thinks this is a good idea? Maybe Burger King does. It will be unthinkable how this will change the place if it is allowed to happen. All the run-off from the forest gone, and the cow feces covering the sand and the reef. BLEAGH!

There have been lots of phone calls and emails flying around from those of us wanting to protect it, and the other day an actual meeting with the cattle rancher. Guess how that went? People were SO upset and he was SO uncaring. The county and state who would issue the permits are being silent. There was a county guy at the meeting. When a question was asked about the native Hawaiian trees that were already illegally cut before the rancher applied for a permit, the rancher simply lied and said he had not cut any trees! The county guy who had taken pictures of the cut tree stumps simply stood there and said nothing. So something is going on. Maybe he is paid off. Who knows. But we need a miracle now to save this place because it looks like those in government who could save it are going to just stand by. Unbelievable.

So here is the other thing you can do, besides sending love to save this place. Look at your meat consumption. If you think eating a hamburger thousands of miles away does not contribute to this destruction, think again. Meat is shipped all over the world now, so nothing is local any more, unless you buy it right from the farm. We do not need more cattle land in this world, we need more forest. But people think they need so much meat every single day and the demand continues to grow as the population grows, so more and more forests are cut to farm cattle, and pigs and chickens and sheep, and grow the grain to feed them. And if you think free range doesn't do damage, it does. That is what they are cutting down the forest above Larsens for, free range cattle.

Here are some statistics to "chew" on: Animal waste is 130 times the waste of humans in this country each year! Yikes. The Environmental Protection Agency states that animal agriculture runoff is the single largest source of water pollution in rivers and streams in the U.S., and all of that goes to the ocean. Seventy percent of the grain grown in the U.S. goes to feed livestock. SEVENTY! Do you know how many hungry people we could feed with all that land to grow things? It takes 16 pounds of grain to produce ONE pound of meat. So do you give somebody one steak or a 2 month supply of grain or other food? From the same land. Forested land is being cleared every single day to "grow" more meat. In Central America ranching has destroyed more rainforest than any other activity. It's madness. Have you heard enough yet??? We have got to LOOK at how our eating habits are changing this world. It's not just a slab in saran wrap at the store, or in a bun at a drive through. There are HUGE consequences to get that slab there. And now this cutting of forests for animal pasture is no longer something I have just read about happening somewhere else. It is happening right here in my little microcosm on this magnificent island.

So as ever, I beg you to please be one of the people who cares enough to DO something. Make different choices that are not going to harm another place. Start connecting the dots from your own life to what is happening in other parts of the world. It really is all connected. And I look forward to telling you Larsens has been SAVED!!!!!! Hold that thought.
Thanks for listening.