Steve posted today on the shameless deception which is Save the Falcons. This whole "Arabs are stealing our raptors" delusion has been cropping up periodically for decades now, often doing real damage to the lives and livelihoods of honest American falconers. Perhaps Steve can write on the travesty of Operation Falcon, in which numerous falconers were framed by federal agents. The unnerving thing about this disinformation is that it does show an ability to inspire a very peculiar hysteria in well-meaning people, mostly people who know little about birds and nothing about the Middle-East or falconry. Certainly anyone who as ever witnessed actual falconry, in all its glorious inefficiency, must doubt claims that falcon-hunts could possibly devestate entire Central Asian ecosystems, as Save the Falcons repeatedly asserts. These are not credible people. For instance, here is an article mainly about information technology used one of S.T.F.'s leaders business; it is not a falconry article, nor an environmental article. Note the proud assertions: "He has supplied falcons to the royal families of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Sixty percent of Khalsa's clients live in the Middle East"
Why should this man be trusted to fight falcon smuggling?
