In a message dated 3/4/00 6:50:03 AM, [log in to unmask] writes:

<< On Turner Broadcasting Wildlife Adventures this March....

"Pollinators in Peril"
 Host: Peter Fonda
   The show airs (Eastern times):
Wednesday, March 21, 2000 10:05pm-11:05pm>>

   According to my calendar March 21st is a Tuesday, not a Wednesday. I
called the station and checked that it would indeed be airing on Tuesday.
   The show should be a bellwether for whether billion-dollar Ted (see below)
has been duped by native pollinator advocates into believing honey bees are a
threat to native pollinating insects. As a conservationist, environmentalist
and beekeeper, I'm bothered by this.
   Turner seems to equate 'saving the natural world' with making the
ecosystem "as natural as possible." My hope that this show will treat
immigrant honey bees fairly and impartially is going down.
   I wonder if Ted knows about all those non-native bumble bees, alfalfa
leaf-cutter bees and Orchard Masons that are being shipped around the
country? Or how about that new pollinator, the Japanese horn-faced beetle
(Osmia cornifrons), that was introduced by a USDA scientist (Suzanne Batra)
in  the early1990s? Sure didn't hear about it from "The Forgotten Pollinator"
crowd, who have arbitrarily and selectively chosen to villify honey bees.
Omaha World-Herald, December 27, 1998, Sunday SUNRISE EDITION
SECTION: ;NEWS; Pg. 5b
HEADLINE: Turner Conservation Work Spans Nation
BYLINE: Julie Anderson
SOURCE: World-Herald Staff Writer
    Many Nebraskans are familiar with Ted Turner's efforts to return American
bison to the Nebraska Sand Hills - of which he owns a little more than
100,000 acres - and on some of the other Western land he has acquired.
   But an article in the January-February issue of Audubon magazine tells
just how broad his conservation interests have become. They range from
establishing a captive breeding program for Mexican wolves on his New Mexico
property and restoring endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers on his Florida
plantation to trying to eradicate invasive, non-native weeds and addressing
declines in pollinators such as bees, bats and butterflies.
   In Nebraska, Turner is helping the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission
re-establish blowout penstemon, a native plant on the state's endangered
species list.
   Many of Turner's efforts are controversial. But there is no doubt that a
man who can afford to give $ 1 billion to the United Nations can try pretty
much anything he wants.
   "All we're doing is allowing the ecosystem to be as natural as possible,"
Turner said in the article.
   "We're trying to replace as many missing pieces to the environment as we
can: plants or animals now missing because of overhunting or habitat
destruction or whatever. We're trying to save what we can of the natural
world."