re: #128 HappyWarrior

What I love about our country is just how diverse the landscape is. Not too many countries have places like Hawaii and Alaska within them.

This. It chokes me up when I look at how beautiful it all is. We took it from the Native Americans, but at least some of our leaders had the good sense to preserve & protect what can never be replaced. It makes me spitting mad when someone claims it belongs exclusively to his/her group, or when they just want to profit from it finacially.

Hell, if we’d stuck with that mentality…. left to their own devices people will do shit like hunt species to extinction, as we almost did with our bison.

Human impact

The extinction of four species of bison (B. antiquus, B. latifrons, B. occidentalis, and B. priscus) is linked to natural selection.[citation needed] Humans were almost exclusively accountable for the near-extinction of the American bison in the 1800s. At the beginning of the century, tens of millions of bison roamed North America. Humans slaughtered an estimated 50 million bison, generally for their meat or hides. This practice of overhunting the bison reduced their population to hundreds. Attempts to revive the American bison, however, have been highly successful. Farming of bison has increased their population to nearly 150,000. The American bison is, therefore, no longer considered an endangered species.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bison#Human_impact

So yeah, greedy humans turned this:

Into this:

To hell with the Ayn Rands, Donald Trumps, Ted Cruzes and Bundys of the world. *spit*