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Endangered is Just Another Word for Tasty
So I'm going through my mail today and I find this little email from Defenders of the Wildlife (yeah, I know, they have both their +'s and their -'s). Apparently our great and wonderful president has decided to try to push through some changes to the Endangered Species Act. Among some of the points are:
- Make it harder to add at-risk wildlife to the list of protected animals
- Eliminate or de-emphasize the goal of recovering animals already on the list
- Cut back on the oversight of federal actions and those pesky little experts trying to enforce the Act
- Weaken the emphasis on habitat protection
- Give individual states the right to veto plans to reintroduce animals to their original ranges.
- Make it harder to add at-risk wildlife to the list of protected animals
- Eliminate or de-emphasize the goal of recovering animals already on the list
- Cut back on the oversight of federal actions and those pesky little experts trying to enforce the Act
- Weaken the emphasis on habitat protection
- Give individual states the right to veto plans to reintroduce animals to their original ranges.
The reason we care about any of this? Well, there's the whole thing that as soon as some of the animals were taken off the list, they were hunted (because they are rare and therefore a prize to be caught) and, oops, endangered again. There's the thing about animals needing to be added to the list because they have already been hunted to near extinction for their pretty little furs and pretty decapitated heads to put on the walls. There's the thing about big businesses trying to develop federally protected lands currently being used as housing by some of these animals (which would throw off the local ecosystem, not to mention the world-wide version). I'm sure it's just a coincidence the federal government would be getting that kick-back, er, donation from those businesses once the pesky wildlife is out of the way. Come on, there's so much land out there left undeveloped and relatively unpolluted and it's all going to waste because of those annoying tree-huggers and their propensity for spouting off those useless fact about ecosystems and conservation and circles of life and crap like that.
I'm not against hunting. I am against wasteful hunting. You kill an animal, you need to actually use it: eat the meat, use the skin, etc. Often times, nothing of the animal is actually being used (well, aside from a photo op). There are pictures of piles of slaughtered animals, rotting in the sun. The argument is that hunting is a sport, it's a skill. What the hell kind of skill allows you to use a plane to locate and chase down to exhaustion wolves that are supposed to be a "recovering species", leaving the bodies of the killed and the maimed laying out in the open until you might remember to get around to them? The skill was a survival skill - catch enough for you and your family to survive as well as make sure there were enough left to propagate, but not too many to cause population control issues.
I've eaten venison as caught by my own cousin and as caught by a local tribe that my partner's mother knows. They shoot what they can eat, then stop. If they have extra, they share. I'm actually okay with that as it is not wasteful. There's a culture and tradition behind it, as well as an actual intelligence. It serves a purpose. It is a separate issue from both what is going on right now, and what the administration is proposing to do.
To me, it's the aerial gunning in Alaska that's an issue. The "population control" of deer in Wisconsin is also an issue. Minnesota wanting to lift some of the restrictions on wolves because the population looks like it's coming back but no we haven't done any studies to look in to this, is an issue. It's the lack of planning and foresight and thinking of only the here and now and the immediate profits that can be obtained instead of the long-term effects that's an issue. Then again, I also questioned why they wanted to take the Bald Eagle, you know, the supposed symbol of our country, off of the Endangered List. Don't you think that would be one of those things you would want to protect, at least for appearance's sake? Or do they taste really good lightly breaded with a nice BBQ dipping sauce on the side?
I'm not against hunting. I am against wasteful hunting. You kill an animal, you need to actually use it: eat the meat, use the skin, etc. Often times, nothing of the animal is actually being used (well, aside from a photo op). There are pictures of piles of slaughtered animals, rotting in the sun. The argument is that hunting is a sport, it's a skill. What the hell kind of skill allows you to use a plane to locate and chase down to exhaustion wolves that are supposed to be a "recovering species", leaving the bodies of the killed and the maimed laying out in the open until you might remember to get around to them? The skill was a survival skill - catch enough for you and your family to survive as well as make sure there were enough left to propagate, but not too many to cause population control issues.
I've eaten venison as caught by my own cousin and as caught by a local tribe that my partner's mother knows. They shoot what they can eat, then stop. If they have extra, they share. I'm actually okay with that as it is not wasteful. There's a culture and tradition behind it, as well as an actual intelligence. It serves a purpose. It is a separate issue from both what is going on right now, and what the administration is proposing to do.
To me, it's the aerial gunning in Alaska that's an issue. The "population control" of deer in Wisconsin is also an issue. Minnesota wanting to lift some of the restrictions on wolves because the population looks like it's coming back but no we haven't done any studies to look in to this, is an issue. It's the lack of planning and foresight and thinking of only the here and now and the immediate profits that can be obtained instead of the long-term effects that's an issue. Then again, I also questioned why they wanted to take the Bald Eagle, you know, the supposed symbol of our country, off of the Endangered List. Don't you think that would be one of those things you would want to protect, at least for appearance's sake? Or do they taste really good lightly breaded with a nice BBQ dipping sauce on the side?