I appreciate where the author of this article is coming from, but I think they’re being a bit too one-sided.
For example, they make the point that zoos don’t contribute enough to conservation, donating only around 5% of their spending, as if the millions of dollars given doesn’t justify their existence. But if zoos didn’t exist, that’s a big chunk of money that wouldn’t be going towards conservation at all.
They also talk about the education aspect, that visitors don’t necessarily read the information about the animals and instead go for the spectacle. But a child isn’t going to read those plaques regardless, but seeing animals up close might ignite an interest in conservation later in life.
And one thing that the article doesn’t really go into is the fact that humans are still actively hunting animals in the wild, and destroying habitats for profit. And while I think zoos are a bit of a band-aid fix when it comes to endangered species, I’d much rather see an animal in captivity surrounded by zookeepers that care about it rather than extinction.
In an ideal world, zoos wouldn’t exist. In a slightly less ideal world, only open-plain zoos would exist. But we are a very long way from that, and I personally believe that reputable zoos are a positive in the world we currently live in.
Hunting also needs to be looked at objectively. Many people hunt, and for many different reasons.
Poor people will hunt because it’s is free food. Some risk they’re lives to do it. Some places like Tanzania will kill poachers. We need to look into removing that incentive, as in, we need to reduce global poverty.
I hunt because one deer will be most of my meat for a year. The price to have someone else cut it up makes it cost the same as cheap grocery store ground beef, but it tastes better and is much more eco friendly than that cute would have been.
Rich people BS hunting like I imagine you’re referring to is BS, but they pay big money to do it. The money they spend on that one animal funds the preservation of many times more animals, and by having a legal process to do it, there is less incentive to do it illegally, where accurate counts of animals taken can’t be done.
The first example I can think of showing the success of this is the American Alligator. They were almost wiped out, but now they flourish because people want to hunt and/or eat them. I think it’s something like 10 are raised fire every one that is allowed to be hunted. I’ll admit, it’s a bit like strange logic at first, but there are success stories to show it works.
I love animals. I even take care of the spiders at my house the best I can. But I hunt ethically as possible, just one legal deer a year. That deer lived a better life than a feed lot cow, didn’t need to clear cut or pollute land to live, and it was appreciated for it’s sacrifice every day by me, and I do my best to not waste a scrap of that meat, because I had to do the hard part myself.
I’ve met unethical hunters, and I won’t associate with them. They’re trash like any other cruel person. But most are regular people.
We drop them off at a beef farm for processing. They pack it up all nice like you’d get it from a butcher shop, mainly in pound size packaging. We get from 60 to 80 pounds typically. Then it goes in the freezer.
You can also donate them to the poor through the Game Commission I think. It’s our family’s primary source of meat though. I just empty my freezer by Thanksgiving and it have room for it all. I occasionally find some that’s from the last season and it’s still always been fine.
Here’s one pack of ground meat from last year I still have. We also got jerky sticks, sausage, and stew cubes and loins. They’re just wrapped in butchers paper.
I don’t totally disagree with you. Many animals from bugs to mice and birds are killed in the process of farming and the delivery of those goods to market.
If I hunt a deer, I can tell you exactly what my environmental cost was, exactly one deer. It’s not something I’m proud of, it’s just getting food for my home. I’m very grateful to it, and appropriate the sacrifice I asked of it.
You don’t have to agree with me on that. If you don’t use any animal products, I appreciate your decision. But no supply chain is free of environmental cost, and I think it’s fair to ask you to keep that in mind too.
Because humans are powerful enough that we are a bit like gods, and we have to make these choices between which lives we keep and which lives we kill.
Is it ethical to allow the hunting of African game if that money funds the conservation of many more animals? We have to make that trade off. Ethics are subjective, and I’m firmly on the side of allowing hunting as are many other people.
In New Zealand, as with other isolated islands, there’s a unique population of indigenous birds that are now being massacred by introduced mammals. Is it ethical to hunt and trap and poison the introduced pests to save the indigenous birds. We have to make that choice.
A runaway trolley is going to kill 5 humans unless you switch it to another track where it will only kill 1 human. Is that ethical?
A politician could choose to lower the speed limit of a road to 10 km/h, saving lives but costing the economy, quality of life, and future election wins. Is that ethical?
I see only humans as sentient so no question of ethics there. Though sentience by itself isn’t sufficient unless you have a very shallow sense of ethics. For example self-defense can involve taking a being’s life against it’s will. But that in no way suggests the action was unethical.
I don’t totally disagree with you, if that means anything. I don’t get any personal satisfaction from it, but I don’t feel bad about it either. Animals eat animals.
People can choose to not eat animal products, and I can admire that. I try to progressively reduce my use of them too. But we’re both doing things to actively try to do something better for the world and ourselves, which is more than many will bother to do. Even if we don’t agree on some things, we’re both doing what we feel is making a better and informed choice. You don’t have to agree with me, but I don’t feel there’s either side that can claim a moral superiority based solely on what’s on our plates. I’m sure you could find someone who’d claim they’re “more vegan” then you or some other gatekeeping nonsense like that.
I disagree. There is a morally correct choice here. Animals feel pain, experience grief, play and form bonds. They don’t exist as some sort of resource, but people think of them as such. To willingly inflict suffering and pain on these creatures is wrong. Full stop.
Again, I don’t disagree with you. But no food supply chain has zero cost to animals. Land is cleared to farm. “Pest animals” and insects are killed to protect yields. Animals are killed or burned by pesticides, rodenticides, and fertilizers. More animals and insects killed at storage facilities. Pollution from transport. Waste from scrapping “ugly” produce. There is still a cost, and you can’t quantify what it is.
I get about 2/3 of my annual meat from a single deer, with no waste, no pollution, and no further cost to the environment and it leaves more food through the winter for the other deer. During the rest of the year, I supply them with essential mineral supplements so they stay healthy.
If you want to judge my decisions, you’re free to. But to think you still don’t require any sacrifice from animals is a bit naive, and if you have a pet, I find that mildly hypocritical. But you do you. We’re allowed to be different and have different values and beliefs. I’m not here to force mine on you or anyone else.
But we should probably leave this chat here. We’re kinda off topic, and I dont want us to get mad with each other. Keep doing your best.
But that single deer didn’t need to die. That’s my point. You don’t have to eat meat. That deer has just as much right to live as any human. You keep using mass suffering as justification to kill that one deer as “better” but it isn’t.
No attempt at justification, it’s accepting my biological footprint and having a personal understanding and a decision on what e cost of it is. We both have one. But you can’t say for sure the cost in animal lives of your choices.
You can downvote this like the other respectful comments I’ve given you, but it doesn’t change the blind eye you’re turning on the fact that your food still has a cost of life, you just hand those responsibilities off to someone else. I don’t feel like you’re open for discourse on this, so I’m going to politely disengage with you now. I’m sorry we couldn’t find any common ground, because we both spend more time thinking about these things than the majority of people ever will.
I get the whole ‘respect’ schtick probably gives you an easy out for arguments like this. It also probably makes you feel like your opinions have the same importance or weight as anyone else’s, but you hunt. You hunt and don’t need to. Any kind of explanation or discussion of balance etc is negated by the fact you hunt.
You are right though. I’m not open to discussion because you’re objectively wrong.
For one it realy is something that depends on the global and local region. There are multiple studies that point to a lack of evidence towards a clear answer. I’m not invested enoth to hunt down to many examples, so I’ll just quote this 2016 Australien study:
Public lands in Australia are increasingly being made available to recreational hunters to take introduced mammals such as wild pigs, goats, deer and canids. These species can cause substantial damage to environmental or agricultural assets, and it has often been argued that recreational hunting contributes to the amelioration of these impacts by reducing pest population densities. This position has been vigorously disputed by some parties. However, there is little locally-relevant evidence to support either side of the debate, and hence little evidence on which to base useful policy.
Even clearly pro hunting websites have liste of pros and cons to hunting as pest control, like this one
Obviously it depends on region. It also depends on the species in question. No one thinks hunting rhinos is pest control.
That doesnt change the fact that in areas where we have removed or reduced predator populations, replacement hunting does show to help fill the gap and keep prey populations within healthy limits.
Look at the american deer conundrum as your prime example. When we stop hunting them in areas low in predation, they start destroying their already fragile ecosystems with overgrazing.
You are shifting the goalposts here. I argued against hunting beeing, and I quote:
Its pretty proven at a 5th grade reading level of study, and even more proven with every grade up.
Its actually kind if hard to find a more proven aspect of biology.
You are the one who claimed that it’s 1000 % proven that hunting is good pest control. Which is not true.
I didn’t argue against it beeing efficient in some locations. I argued against it beeing “hard to find a more proven aspect of biology” that it is so.
So either show me some scientific backup or admit that you might have been a bit of there (it happens to the best of us, no big deal).
That doesnt change the fact that in areas where we have removed or reduced predator populations, replacement hunting does show to help fill the gap and keep prey populations within healthy limits.
Please read the study I posted earlier, which shows how this is not universaly true, or, as I have said before, at the very least controversal.
Look at the american deer conundrum as your prime example. When we stop hunting them in areas low in predation, they start destroying their already fragile ecosystems with overgrazing.
Regarding this i would like to direct you to this study:
Specifically, recreational hunting was unable to decrease deer densities sufficiently to protect growth of the majority of Q. rubra seedlings, as reported elsewhere (Bengsen & Sparkes, 2016; Blossey et al., 2017; Simard, Dussault, Huot, & Cote, 2013; Williams et al., 2013). This inability of woody species to transition from seedlings to saplings over much of the eastern US, and not just of palatable species (Kelly, 2019; Miller & McGill, 2019), occurs in a region where recreational hunting is widespread, ubiquitous, and accepted by the vast majority of citizens (Brown, Decker, & Kelley, 1984; Decker, Stedman, Larson, & Siemer, 2015). Some authors claim that hunting can reduce deer browse pressure on herbaceous and woody species, but browse reductions were either small (Hothorn & Müller, 2010), or we lack information about differences in hunting pressure in reference areas that also saw improvements in woody and herbaceous plant performance (Jenkins, Jenkins, Webster, Zollner, & Shields, 2014; Jenkins, Murray, Jenkins, & Webster, 2015). We therefore need to reject claims by wildlife management agencies that recreational hunting is sufficient to allow forest regeneration and can protect biodiversity (NYSDEC, 2011; Rogerson, 2010).
To be fair, they are talking about hunting beeing the only method used here and also can’t find prove, that other measures (like only protecting the plants) and no hunting are enoth. There just is not enoth clear data to support either side right now. Hence its controversal.
The example I’m thinking of is New Zealand, where there’s endless studies into causes of erosion most of which mention the introduction of grazing game animals(e.g. deer) as a contributing factor.
deforestation and overgrazing by livestock and
introduced game animal
By the 1930’s the deer population in New Zealand was out of control and causing serious environmental damage through grazing, severe soil erosion and slips from the thousands of hooves ripping up the ground
No it isn’t. This is the noble excuse hunters came up with to justify murder.
Nature has this funny way of balancing itself out. Humans are unique in that we somehow view ourselves as above that rule. But as you’ll see in the coming years we’re at the mercy of that equilibrium.
I mean, if there has been a forest somewhere for the last 100 years, chances are there are enough carnivores anyways. Nature finds its balance, hunting only adds chaos to the equation.
Wolves had been extinct in western Europe for hundreds of years, only slowly spreading again after the fall of the Iron Curtain 30-something years ago. And, consequently, the hunting quotas for deer are being lowered.
The chaos caused by eliminating wolves is slowly getting back to balance.
By the way: a 100 year old forest is in its early childhood. Hasn’t even reached puberty yet.
I don’t think we’re beyond nature, but as it stands we certainly aren’t acting within it. We aren’t cavemen. We don’t have to hunt our food. We know the impact we have on nature, and more importantly how to lessen that impact.
I appreciate where the author of this article is coming from, but I think they’re being a bit too one-sided.
For example, they make the point that zoos don’t contribute enough to conservation, donating only around 5% of their spending, as if the millions of dollars given doesn’t justify their existence. But if zoos didn’t exist, that’s a big chunk of money that wouldn’t be going towards conservation at all.
They also talk about the education aspect, that visitors don’t necessarily read the information about the animals and instead go for the spectacle. But a child isn’t going to read those plaques regardless, but seeing animals up close might ignite an interest in conservation later in life.
And one thing that the article doesn’t really go into is the fact that humans are still actively hunting animals in the wild, and destroying habitats for profit. And while I think zoos are a bit of a band-aid fix when it comes to endangered species, I’d much rather see an animal in captivity surrounded by zookeepers that care about it rather than extinction.
In an ideal world, zoos wouldn’t exist. In a slightly less ideal world, only open-plain zoos would exist. But we are a very long way from that, and I personally believe that reputable zoos are a positive in the world we currently live in.
Hunting also needs to be looked at objectively. Many people hunt, and for many different reasons.
Poor people will hunt because it’s is free food. Some risk they’re lives to do it. Some places like Tanzania will kill poachers. We need to look into removing that incentive, as in, we need to reduce global poverty.
I hunt because one deer will be most of my meat for a year. The price to have someone else cut it up makes it cost the same as cheap grocery store ground beef, but it tastes better and is much more eco friendly than that cute would have been.
Rich people BS hunting like I imagine you’re referring to is BS, but they pay big money to do it. The money they spend on that one animal funds the preservation of many times more animals, and by having a legal process to do it, there is less incentive to do it illegally, where accurate counts of animals taken can’t be done.
The first example I can think of showing the success of this is the American Alligator. They were almost wiped out, but now they flourish because people want to hunt and/or eat them. I think it’s something like 10 are raised fire every one that is allowed to be hunted. I’ll admit, it’s a bit like strange logic at first, but there are success stories to show it works.
I love animals. I even take care of the spiders at my house the best I can. But I hunt ethically as possible, just one legal deer a year. That deer lived a better life than a feed lot cow, didn’t need to clear cut or pollute land to live, and it was appreciated for it’s sacrifice every day by me, and I do my best to not waste a scrap of that meat, because I had to do the hard part myself.
I’ve met unethical hunters, and I won’t associate with them. They’re trash like any other cruel person. But most are regular people.
Unrelated: How do you conserve a whole deer for an entire year? You freeze the crap out of it? lol
We drop them off at a beef farm for processing. They pack it up all nice like you’d get it from a butcher shop, mainly in pound size packaging. We get from 60 to 80 pounds typically. Then it goes in the freezer.
You can also donate them to the poor through the Game Commission I think. It’s our family’s primary source of meat though. I just empty my freezer by Thanksgiving and it have room for it all. I occasionally find some that’s from the last season and it’s still always been fine.
Here’s one pack of ground meat from last year I still have. We also got jerky sticks, sausage, and stew cubes and loins. They’re just wrapped in butchers paper.
Found a tenderloin piece hidden away too.
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How can it be ethical to take a sentient being’s life against its will? If it lived a good life it is even worse to end it.
I don’t totally disagree with you. Many animals from bugs to mice and birds are killed in the process of farming and the delivery of those goods to market.
If I hunt a deer, I can tell you exactly what my environmental cost was, exactly one deer. It’s not something I’m proud of, it’s just getting food for my home. I’m very grateful to it, and appropriate the sacrifice I asked of it.
You don’t have to agree with me on that. If you don’t use any animal products, I appreciate your decision. But no supply chain is free of environmental cost, and I think it’s fair to ask you to keep that in mind too.
Because humans are powerful enough that we are a bit like gods, and we have to make these choices between which lives we keep and which lives we kill.
Is it ethical to allow the hunting of African game if that money funds the conservation of many more animals? We have to make that trade off. Ethics are subjective, and I’m firmly on the side of allowing hunting as are many other people.
In New Zealand, as with other isolated islands, there’s a unique population of indigenous birds that are now being massacred by introduced mammals. Is it ethical to hunt and trap and poison the introduced pests to save the indigenous birds. We have to make that choice.
A runaway trolley is going to kill 5 humans unless you switch it to another track where it will only kill 1 human. Is that ethical?
A politician could choose to lower the speed limit of a road to 10 km/h, saving lives but costing the economy, quality of life, and future election wins. Is that ethical?
Ethics are subjective, but we have to choose.
I see only humans as sentient so no question of ethics there. Though sentience by itself isn’t sufficient unless you have a very shallow sense of ethics. For example self-defense can involve taking a being’s life against it’s will. But that in no way suggests the action was unethical.
Hunting has no place in a modern society. When you can choose and choose to hunt and eat meat, you’re the problem.
I don’t totally disagree with you, if that means anything. I don’t get any personal satisfaction from it, but I don’t feel bad about it either. Animals eat animals.
People can choose to not eat animal products, and I can admire that. I try to progressively reduce my use of them too. But we’re both doing things to actively try to do something better for the world and ourselves, which is more than many will bother to do. Even if we don’t agree on some things, we’re both doing what we feel is making a better and informed choice. You don’t have to agree with me, but I don’t feel there’s either side that can claim a moral superiority based solely on what’s on our plates. I’m sure you could find someone who’d claim they’re “more vegan” then you or some other gatekeeping nonsense like that.
I disagree. There is a morally correct choice here. Animals feel pain, experience grief, play and form bonds. They don’t exist as some sort of resource, but people think of them as such. To willingly inflict suffering and pain on these creatures is wrong. Full stop.
Again, I don’t disagree with you. But no food supply chain has zero cost to animals. Land is cleared to farm. “Pest animals” and insects are killed to protect yields. Animals are killed or burned by pesticides, rodenticides, and fertilizers. More animals and insects killed at storage facilities. Pollution from transport. Waste from scrapping “ugly” produce. There is still a cost, and you can’t quantify what it is.
I get about 2/3 of my annual meat from a single deer, with no waste, no pollution, and no further cost to the environment and it leaves more food through the winter for the other deer. During the rest of the year, I supply them with essential mineral supplements so they stay healthy.
If you want to judge my decisions, you’re free to. But to think you still don’t require any sacrifice from animals is a bit naive, and if you have a pet, I find that mildly hypocritical. But you do you. We’re allowed to be different and have different values and beliefs. I’m not here to force mine on you or anyone else.
But we should probably leave this chat here. We’re kinda off topic, and I dont want us to get mad with each other. Keep doing your best.
But that single deer didn’t need to die. That’s my point. You don’t have to eat meat. That deer has just as much right to live as any human. You keep using mass suffering as justification to kill that one deer as “better” but it isn’t.
No attempt at justification, it’s accepting my biological footprint and having a personal understanding and a decision on what e cost of it is. We both have one. But you can’t say for sure the cost in animal lives of your choices.
You can downvote this like the other respectful comments I’ve given you, but it doesn’t change the blind eye you’re turning on the fact that your food still has a cost of life, you just hand those responsibilities off to someone else. I don’t feel like you’re open for discourse on this, so I’m going to politely disengage with you now. I’m sorry we couldn’t find any common ground, because we both spend more time thinking about these things than the majority of people ever will.
I get the whole ‘respect’ schtick probably gives you an easy out for arguments like this. It also probably makes you feel like your opinions have the same importance or weight as anyone else’s, but you hunt. You hunt and don’t need to. Any kind of explanation or discussion of balance etc is negated by the fact you hunt.
You are right though. I’m not open to discussion because you’re objectively wrong.
That’s only true if there are enough carnivores like wolves and bears around. If not: goodbye forests. Hunting is pest control.
This is not proven at all. It’s at best controversal.
Its pretty proven at a 5th grade reading level of study, and even more proven with every grade up.
Its actually kind if hard to find a more proven aspect of biology.
You are confidentaly wrong here, my friend.
For one it realy is something that depends on the global and local region. There are multiple studies that point to a lack of evidence towards a clear answer. I’m not invested enoth to hunt down to many examples, so I’ll just quote this 2016 Australien study:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305655680_Can_recreational_hunting_control_pests_on_public_lands
Even clearly pro hunting websites have liste of pros and cons to hunting as pest control, like this one
https://huntingandnature.com/index.php/2023/09/04/hunting-as-a-form-of-pest-control-pros-and-cons/
So no. It is not a clear cut matter, nor is it proven beyond any doubt.
Obviously it depends on region. It also depends on the species in question. No one thinks hunting rhinos is pest control.
That doesnt change the fact that in areas where we have removed or reduced predator populations, replacement hunting does show to help fill the gap and keep prey populations within healthy limits.
Look at the american deer conundrum as your prime example. When we stop hunting them in areas low in predation, they start destroying their already fragile ecosystems with overgrazing.
You are shifting the goalposts here. I argued against hunting beeing, and I quote:
You are the one who claimed that it’s 1000 % proven that hunting is good pest control. Which is not true.
I didn’t argue against it beeing efficient in some locations. I argued against it beeing “hard to find a more proven aspect of biology” that it is so.
So either show me some scientific backup or admit that you might have been a bit of there (it happens to the best of us, no big deal).
Please read the study I posted earlier, which shows how this is not universaly true, or, as I have said before, at the very least controversal.
Regarding this i would like to direct you to this study:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ece3.5729
To be fair, they are talking about hunting beeing the only method used here and also can’t find prove, that other measures (like only protecting the plants) and no hunting are enoth. There just is not enoth clear data to support either side right now. Hence its controversal.
It’s very much proven in some ecosystems where humans introduced new animals, which ate all the plants and caused tons of new erosion.
Show me a study tust proves it then please.
The example I’m thinking of is New Zealand, where there’s endless studies into causes of erosion most of which mention the introduction of grazing game animals(e.g. deer) as a contributing factor.
https://doi.org/10.1002/ldr.3400060202
https://www.mpi.govt.nz/dmsdocument/81/direct
https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/deer-wars/story/2018906408/e01-the-last-great-adventure
No it isn’t. This is the noble excuse hunters came up with to justify murder.
Nature has this funny way of balancing itself out. Humans are unique in that we somehow view ourselves as above that rule. But as you’ll see in the coming years we’re at the mercy of that equilibrium.
Right, all those noble ecologists who spent decades studying this just decided to fake their results cause they get so horny over killing.
Nature balances out over a couple thousand years. What you are asking for is to speed up the current extinction event.
Do you hunt?
No, I just have spent my whole career studying ecology.
How long of a career is that again?
I mean, if there has been a forest somewhere for the last 100 years, chances are there are enough carnivores anyways. Nature finds its balance, hunting only adds chaos to the equation.
Wolves had been extinct in western Europe for hundreds of years, only slowly spreading again after the fall of the Iron Curtain 30-something years ago. And, consequently, the hunting quotas for deer are being lowered.
The chaos caused by eliminating wolves is slowly getting back to balance.
By the way: a 100 year old forest is in its early childhood. Hasn’t even reached puberty yet.
You really need to go outside more. Modern society isnt some state of transcendance beyond nature.
I don’t think we’re beyond nature, but as it stands we certainly aren’t acting within it. We aren’t cavemen. We don’t have to hunt our food. We know the impact we have on nature, and more importantly how to lessen that impact.
We are nature. You need to stop pretending we are magically no longer living things just because you realized other living things are also alive.
What? Is reading comprehension a struggle for you? I know we’re naturally occurring. I’m not even sure what you’re getting at.
You claim you know, and then immediately contradict yourself. Not something someone does when they actually understand what theyre saying.