Environmental issues are always agenda-driven, rightly and wrongly. As Larry noted, votes count and legislators in democratic societies mostly do what the people want and allow a test of their performance at election time--- where there are more anti-killing votes than there are us.
I was a principal protagonist in Canada's biggest environmental story of the 70's. Publics were made to believe that protecting forests by spraying against the spruce budworm was killing children, later proved to be surpassingly bad science. I announced that finding at an international forestry conference.
By then budworm created the biggest clearcut on the continent, observable by astronauts in space. The forest community was devastated. The misled greens had the numbers. Elizabeth May was principal protagonist on the other side. We are friends. (She now federal leader Green Party, I still in the woods.)
