We have to kill them to save them.

[Vanadium 50]

I remember an issue a decade or more ago when deer were eating an endangered plant to extinction. The choice of letting a species go extinct or shooting Bambi pretty much evenly divided people.

 

[russ_watters]

Empathy for other organisms brings us to feel an obligation for other animals. So which one should we have more empathy for: the spotted owl or the barred owl.

Don't forget the logger who lost his job while we were debating which of those two animals is more important than him! (By omitting him from the discussion.)

 

[russ_watters]

I remember an issue a decade or more ago when deer were eating an endangered plant to extinction. The choice of letting a species go extinct or shooting Bambi pretty much evenly divided people.

I used the example of killing the lion to save its prey, but we've done that in the US, causing a population explosion in deer. Now we shoot them to save them from starvation and getting hit by cars. :uhh:

 

[nsaspook]

I used the example of killing the lion to save its prey, but we've done that in the US, causing a population explosion in deer. Now we shoot them to save them from starvation and getting hit by cars. :uhh:

Your comment about 'lions' reminded me we are also shooting California Sea Lions to save fish here.

http://wdfw.wa.gov/conservation/sealions/
http://seattletimes.com/html/opinion/2004183016_sealions15.html

 

[I_am_learning]

Why do we kill cows? Because they will never go extinct and we love beefs. If the government valued right to life for animals, meat would have been banned. So, it's clear that we value our own comfort more than the life of animals or birds. Now, the government (advised by scientists) thinks its not desirable for us to let one type of owl species to go extinct (because perhaps we don't want do deprive our grandchildren the pleasure of seeing them), it is about to do the needful.

Anyone who wants to argue that we don't have right to kill animals, should begin with cows. But if you want to argue that killing the owls will be harmful for ourselves, you can proceed.

 

[turbo]

I attended a pulp-and-paper themed symposium many years ago and a pretend "improv" group took the stage, and took "suggestions" from the audience, and in seconds they came up with "No more tissue. No more towel. Wipe your *ss with a spotted owl" Some morons who where probably drunk on their employers' bill thought that was clever, though it was transparent that the "improv" was scripted to appeal to the morons.

I won't hesitate to kill a deer for food, but I draw the line at slaughtering innocent inedible creatures to "save" other innocent inedible creatures. We have tons of barred owls in this area and there is no way that you could get me to shoot any of them. Their calls are nice, and they eat a lot of pests.

 

[256bits]

I attended a pulp-and-paper themed symposium many years ago and a pretend "improv" group took the stage, and took "suggestions" from the audience, and in seconds they came up with "No more tissue. No more towel. Wipe your *ss with a spotted owl" Some morons who where probably drunk on their employers' bill thought that was clever, though it was transparent that the "improv" was scripted to appeal to the morons.

I won't hesitate to kill a deer for food, but I draw the line at slaughtering innocent inedible creatures to "save" other innocent inedible creatures. We have tons of barred owls in this area and there is no way that you could get me to shoot any of them. Their calls are nice, and they eat a lot of pests.

Clever by half (or not ). That little click group and the chant did more to lose non partisan support through disgust and no doubt switched to spotted owl. And the exclusivity it brings about. Is it a studied and published public relations method to inspire confrontation to win your cause. I guess it is because outfits like Peta seem to like using it.

 

[256bits]

Well, the environment provides us with a lot of useful things, and historically when we've gone and "altered away" this has had some significant, negative, unforeseen consequences for us. There's some arguments and evidence out there that the destruction of wetlands in Louisiana has caused hurricanes in the area to be much more devastating. The excess production of CO2 has begun to cause acidification in the oceans. It's not known what effect that might have, if any, but many salt water organisms are not known for their tolerance of changing water parameters.

Our own ability to foresee the consequences of our actions is pretty limited, so one could argue that just from a self-preservation standpoint we should be cautious about making significant changes unless we're really sure about what the impact is going to be.

I am not sure when the environmentalist movement started to gain momentum. Somewhere around the time of eagles, eggshells, and DDT or was it the smog thing in Los Angeles, the hippy movement and tree huggers, Lake erie catching on fire, or perhaps the phospate froth and more and more people began to speak about humans and nature. There was even a song with the lines "pave paradise, put up another parking lot", from Melanie I think.

Before that it was rape, pillage and plunder. As an example, cod was so plentiful off the east coast of North America a few hundreds of years ago and where are they now and the fisheries and the jobs. As a result of decreased prime fish stocks, including others than cod for whatever reason, you can now buy fish in the store were once considered crap and throw away. If human overfishing activity actually was the main cause of fish stock depletion, then maintaining a viable food source was not on their agenda, even if that actually meant less resouces for the offspring.

Self preservation is a good argument, but it does come with two viewpoints, which may not be mutually exclusive, since there is some overlap. One is the preservation of the human species; the other would be the preservation of the human individual. At times these may be in conflict.

 

[I_am_learning]

I won't hesitate to kill a deer for food, but I draw the line at slaughtering innocent inedible creatures to "save" other innocent inedible creatures. We have tons of barred owls in this area and there is no way that you could get me to shoot any of them. Their calls are nice, and they eat a lot of pests.

The deer is innocent too. But killing the deer gives you food (and pleasure), so you think you are justified. Killing inedible Owls won't give you food, so you think it's not justified to kill them. But I think you are missing a point. Killing the Owls is being done for a purpose: to save a another species of Owls. If you want to argue, killing the barred owl won't help protect spotted owls or that we don't need to protect the spotted owl, I may agree.
But, acting like we are too caring and loving for those poor sweet innocent animals/birds, and acting as if its morally corrupt thing to kill thousands of birds is what I disagree.

 

[BobG]

This is the hypotheses, that the Spotted Owl is in decline because of the logging. According to this mornings paper logging was cut back by 90% in the 90's hence the terrible economics times the PNW has been having. In spite of the cut back in logging the Spotted owl has not recovered. So now the Barred Owl is the problem.

Maybe they are missing something? Perhaps they (the wild life biologists) are just guessing? It has always amazed me that on one hand they say how elusive and hard to find the Spotted Owl is yet on the other they know exactly how many there are? Whats wrong with this pic?

I think what's wrong with this pic is you might be drawing conclusions without having all the information. I don't think there's much doubt that logging played a major role in the decline of the spotted owl in the first place. But that doesn't mean that recovery is simply a matter of stopping the logging. It's quite possible that the previous destruction of their habitat has had long term consequences that aren't reversed simply by ceasing the actions that continue to destroy the habitat.

Don't know whether killing Barred Owl's is a good idea or not, but I agree it's at least feasible.

Once the environment has irrevocably changed (over logging), you now have a new problem and need new solutions.

Just like the recent forest fire here. The fire was put out in a couple of weeks. That doesn't solve the problem - it just kept it from getting worse (from burning more forest). The damage has been done and last year's forest fire has been followed by this year's flash floods and mudslides raging through town.

And there's no guarantee the trees will grow back. With open ground, other species of plant life can move in before the trees grow back, creating an entirely different environment than the one that existed prior to last year's fire.

I would imagine a similar situation could happen with the owls. Once the spotted owl population had been depleted, it was open competition for which species repopulated the the area post-logging, with the first species in having a decided advantage.

Maybe they're right and maybe they're not, but it's not fair to compare the pre-logging environment to the post-logging environment.