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SAVE THE BIRDS
The federal government has outlawed nude sunbathing on beaches inhabited by endangered species of wildlife because a recent survey says that they are offended by the presence of naked humans. "We have found that certain species of birds won't even stay on the same beach where people are walking around naked," Mike Wahoo, spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said. "They will leave the area which has been their home for generations as soon as people start showing up nude. And once they leave their normal habitat, they may or may not find another one which is conducive to their survival." "The problem is that birds find public nudity offensive. Most of them will do anything they can to get away from it, and those that do stay around often become depressed or lose their natural morality and start acting like people. They begin drinking, swearing, and running around nude themselves, which destroys the normal family structure of the bird population," Wahoo said. According to a recent study done by Professor A. R. Gravits of the Brooklyn Ornithological Institute and Duck Sanctuary (BOIDS), young birds are the ones affected the most. "It has been shown that birds exposed to an atmosphere of public nudity are more likely to become dysfunctional adults than those reared in conventional nests," Gravits says. "The nestlings which have been exposed to human nudity show a markedly greater tendency toward falling out of the nest, get much lower grades, and frequently drop out of school before learning to fly properly," the BOIDS study says. "The result is that they can't function properly when they become adults because they don't know how to select the proper food for a healthy diet, find the appropriate breeding grounds, or even build a proper nest. Under these conditions, each generation becomes smaller, weaker, and dumber than the previous one, and eventually the species will die out completely." Environmental groups and Animal Rights Lobbyists, who have been calling for this type of legislation for several years, are generally pleased with the new law. But some of them don't think the government has gone far enough by just banning nudity. "It's true that the sight of a fat human waddling down the beach naked is enough to gag a buzzard," Evelyn Green of the Coalition of Concerned Citizens said in a recent interview, "but we have to realize that public nudity isn't the only thing that birds and other wildlife find offensive." She cited a joint study by the CCC and BOIDS which found that "displays of public drunkenness, the use of obscene language, and lewd human conduct do as much to promote the deterioration of modern wildlife society as environmental pollution, the indiscriminate killing of animals for their fur and feathers, or uncontrolled public nudity." "It is for this reason that we support additional laws to outlaw drunkenness, lewd conduct, and the use of obscene language in national parks and forests, or on public beaches," Green said. "The thing we have to remember is that the animals look up to humans because we are the dominant species on this planet. If we can't learn to behave properly, what can we expect from the animals?" |