Previous post
Rural America wallows in economic suffering
Several years ago, Mandy and I took a road trip across the length of Canada to Jasper, Alberta, then a turn south to return through the US. We avoided the well-traveled routes to see the countryside of the two nations. The grand landscapes of the Canadian and US Rockies and the vast grasslands of the Midwest awed this author. But the human aspect amazed as well.
Specifically, It’s hard not to miss the widespread poverty and ruin. Small towns in both countries appeared to struggle to maintain themselves, but in the US, the struggle seemed lost. Riding along Route 2 in northern Montana and North Dakota through towns like Williston ND, road signs promoting a virtuous life or suffer the wrath of Jesus while the towns reeked of Casinos and bars. Most small communities seemed as though someone called for an evacuation, leaving only dollar stores and fast food attendants behind.
It’s similar to a journey I took from Corpus Christi, Texas, to Harbor Island, South Carolina. I detoured to visit Nashville Ga, where two of our sons were born, and I spent five years as a regional game biologist for Georgia Fish and Game. I was stunned to see the town center virtually empty.
Boarded and mostly empty storefronts surrounded the once robust and active county courthouse that anchored the square. It was like in Back to the Future when Michael J Fox sees an alternate future where his hometown fell into ruin. He and Christopher Lloyd corrected with a few trips through time. But in Nashville GA there could be no easy fix. The future burned out long ago.
Investors take natural wealth, leaving little for rural communities
So why do I start a blog about Delaware Bay shorebirds and horseshoe crabs with scenes of rural poverty? Merely this, they all have two things in common. All are rural communities struggling to exist while surrounded by exceptional natural wealth. Agriculture, forestry, mining, and fisheries produce enormous amounts of money in each place, and yet most of the people gain no higher status than working poor.
Secondly, people, wildlife, and the land find themselves at the mercy of corporate America. From John Deere to Georgia Pacific, investor-driven corporations take much of the wealth from those doing the actual farming, fishing, cutting or mining. Paying only low wages with minimal benefits the companies leave communities in tatters. Investors take everything they want and in the process, scrape most natural resources to the bone.
This is what the fishing industry did to Delaware Bay. It started reasonably enough as a contest between the people taking crabs to earn a living and those who wanted to protect crabs and birds. Soon however the harvest of crabs left the hands of small fishermen. Instead, it shifted to boats owned by docks owned by companies. In the end, working fishermen had to buy crab bait from the docks.
Natural resource carpet baggers
But of all the corporate natural resource carpet baggers, the internationally owned biomedical bleeding companies take the prize for greed. The industry uses regulatory trickery to hide all harvest and income data from the public. Consequently, few know the actual value of horseshoe crabs blood. But we can estimate it.
And it’s a golden goose if you keep the beasts alive. All told it adds up to an industry estimate of value at $400-$600 million. The companies report at least 600,000 horseshoe crabs to lose blood in industry labs every year. Our crude estimate of per/crab value comes in much lower at less than $250 million — either way, a crab commands a value much higher than most people realize.
Big money, and where does it go? To investors, foreign and domestic in three international conglomerates and two domestic companies. How much do the people of Delaware Bay get? Very little. Horesecrabs get 0
Crabs laying golden eggs
How has this industry taken care of the horseshoe crabs laying golden eggs? Not at all. The companies bleed crabs in complete secrecy. Peer-reviewed publications report more animals dying than the blood industry allows, yet the companies still allow no access to settle the issue. Worse still, these investor driven corporations won’t respond to clear evidence proving bleeding causes lasting impacts on survival and breeding.
In reality, these profitable well-endowed companies take no interest in the welfare of crabs. Keep in mind that restoration back to full productivity would mean three times the current number of crabs. More crabs mean more blood and more money. Ignoring restoration acts against the corporation’s interest. Instead, they greenwash with compliant non-profits who support them.
The companies could argue that the fraction of profit going to ending the killing of crabs with a verified commitment to better practices would be too long a commitment. The ASMFC makes no predictions of the future of horseshoe crabs except vague commitments laced with references to climate change or other uncontrollable threats. Yet clear evidence exists that horseshoe crabs could recover in about ten years if the killing stopped. Below I’ve excised a complicated graphic from a paper by two economists arguing that recovery would come in less than 12 years if the killing stopped.
Why change a system that works for you?
So why would an investor-driven resource industry keep the population struggling to survive when more is better? The answer could be as simple as why change a system that works for you? As it stands, the biomedical companies need only report whatever they choose to take. No agency restricts or monitors their activities. Why change the system when the most likely outcome is a higher cost.
And so the obvious next question: why do public agencies allow multinational corporations to take crabs without regard to their ecological importance or the crab’s recovery? Why indeed.
Take a hard look around our country, and the answer is obvious. Corporate America now owns the agencies protecting our public trust resources, and they are giving away the future to the highest bidder.
