EU: Save the hamsters, f^k the economy...

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_theenvoy/20110610/ts_yblog_theenvoy/of-mice-and-men-european-court-raps-france-over-hamster-plight

Europe's highest court warned France Thursday that it needs to do more to protect the hamster: the Great Hamster of Alsace, to be precise, which is western Europe's last remaining species of hamster in the wild.

The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg ruled Thursday that France needs to modify its agriculture and urban growth policies to preserve the Great Hamster or face fines of $25 million, the New York Times Steve Erlanger reports, with a tone suggesting tongue firmly in chipmunk cheek.

The Great Hamster "can grow up to 10 inches long, has a brown-and-white face, white paws and a black belly," Erlanger notes. There are thought to be about 800 of the creatures left in France.

The problem?

The Great Hamster likes to eat things like alfalfa and grass. And French farmers have gradually replaced those crops with corn, "which is not ripe in the spring when the hamster awakens from six months of hibernation," hungry and ready to mate, Erlanger writes.

The hamster must therefore "make longer and more hazardous journeys as its grazing area shrinks because of new highways and housing developments," he writes.

"Protection measures for the Great Hamster put in place by France were insufficient ... to ensure the strict protection of the species," the court of Justice decided. France's Ecology Ministry had no immediate comment on the ruling, Erlanger wrote.

God, it's a HAMSTER! They have short lives and drop dead(assuming they weren't fed to something). It would be best for France's economy to just pay the $25 million fine and develop the area. If they want, they can develop a captive breeding program. It's not like they have to get pandas or desert tortoises to breed or artificially inseminate them, just get a bunch of those hamsters and let them f^k their brains out in the lab, and in a year the government will be giving away hunting licenses for them for population control!

Chessblinded and de-prioritized.

You have a really good point!
I think that would be a great compromise...sell them in the pet stores too

It worries me greatly to see so many of the world's arable land going into planting corn. Reliance on a monocrop is a very,very bad idea.

people are overpopulating the planet, but to fix that, would result in choosing who lives or dies...or just do a one baby for each couple like China.

The overpopulation thing is a long standing myth are plenty of resourses for the world population it is just the uneven distribution of those resouses and how thay are used.There is easily enough food to feed the worlds populationt. Famine and disease are not caused by overpopulation but greed and corruption leading to war and conflict and the mismanegment of countrys.

Why are the French growing corn? Grapes! White wines!

Mismanagement is the highest human art. The usual result is famine.

The other cure for overpopulation is recession/depression, the current American birth rate is the lowest in a hundred years, even lower than the great depression. That demographic will go forward just as baby booms do, Less people produce less babies.

Longer lives have put more people on the planet. Those born a hundred years ago lived to 55, Now it is twenty years more.

Clean drinking water and Public Health are the cause the coming crash.

I am sure there are 800 because they have become protected, from the French eating them. So why should they care?

I remember, the French grow corn to force feed geese, feet nailed to the floor, a funnel down the throat, to produce fat livers. We feed ours to cars.

If obese hamsters were on the menu, there would never be a shortage. They would be bottle fed fine ground grass and wine till they were one kilo furballs.

In Europe, this could lead to The Hamster War. France will be a better place once they surrender, and the Hamster Overlords put in a real government.

The money spent on hamsters could be better spent bridging the gap between traditional French citizens and the ever growing Muslim population.

I kinda agree with the ruling. I don't really want to see another creature go extinct because of human stupidity or neglect. In a few years, will extinct animals exist only on tapes, dvds and books? -.-

If you put the money into propaganda and bringing the communities into closer proximity, that would probably be a waste. From an outside point of view it looks like they are already either "tolerant" (or trying to convince themselves they are to conform to politically correct peer pressure) or they have already come to really dislike them. If you did something that ended up putting that money in Muslims' pockets, they'd gladly take your money but you'd have nothing to show for it but a lighter wallet of your own.

It seems like Muslim immigrants in Europe cause most of the same problems that illegal immigration does in the US, but the biggest difference is that in Europe, it's either very politically incorrect or illegal to say anything about it!

i never could understand why anyone would expect that putting the people of two wildly different culture in the same area under the same system of laws would be a good idea. it's like expecting nazi's and jews to live peacefully together under some sort of arbitrary objective legal system. it wouldn't work.

it always amazes me how these animal nuts want respect but are willing to toss people's lives down the drain for 800 over sized rats... or blue colored flies etc.

you'd think they'd get a clue at some point.