Saving Fish Before Firefighters.(placing more value on the life of animals than that of humans)

During a recent forest fire, help for trapped firefighters was delayed out of fear that it might harm the "endangered" bull trout. Result: The fish were saved; four firefighters died.

A crew battling a wildfire makes a radio request for a helicopter water drop. Fighting forest fires is always hot, exhausting, dangerous work, and in the tinderboxes which are our grossly mismanaged national forests, a momentary delay can be deadly. If you're the radio dispatcher who receives the request, what do you do?

A) Immediately order the water drop.

B) Deny the request because the drop may risk harming an "endangered" fish.

C) Relay the request to "higher authorities" who will dither for hours trying to determine whether departmental policy allows suspension of the fish rules in order help the firefighters.

For any normal, rational person, the decision is a no-brainer. But today, when the supposed interests of "endangered" dung beetles, snail darters, suckers, and gnatcatchers regularly trump those of mere humans, federal employees are not allowed the luxury of normalcy and rationality.

On July 10th, four firefighters battling a blaze in Washington state's Okanogan National Forest were killed by the fire, after waiting more than nine hours for a requested water drop. Trapped by flames, Tom Craven, 30, Devin Weaver, 21, Jessica Johnson, 19, and Karen Fitzpatrick, 18, tried to survive by huddling in their fire-resistant survival tents. The tents merely served as their death shrouds. A co-worker, Jason Emhoff, survived but was severely burned.