Animal rights extremism and various United Nations “conservation” schemes represent a major threat to genuine conservation efforts aimed at protecting biodiversity, wildlife, and nature, warned leading conservationist and former Secretary-General of the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) Eugène Lapointe in this episode of Conversations That Matter with The New American magazine’s Alex Newman. Private property rights are perhaps the best way to protect nature and animals he said. Lapointe, a lawyer who founded and leads the International Wildlife Management Consortium (IWMC) World Conservation Trust, ridiculed efforts to grant “human rights” to rivers and other natural formations. He has been a conservationist since he was homeschooled in the forests of Canada, but notes that conservation must be for the benefit of human beings—not simply for the sake of animals or nature itself. Also concerning is the intrusion into human rights by the ongoing expansion of “animal rights” and so on, said Lapointe, who was recently awarded the Order of the Rising Sun by the Emperor of Japan. In fact, the sort of extremism seen in “Animal Lives Matter” inspired by Black Lives Matter and “wackos” such as PETA turn regular people into enemies of conservation, he added. The UN’s grandiose schemes to lock up vast amounts of land and resources will exclude human beings completely.
Alex Newman is a senior editor for The New American. He can be reached at [email protected] or through Liberty Sentinel Media. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU or on Facebook.
