roseembolism (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
roseembolism) wrote2005-04-11 02:00 pm
roseembolism) wrote2005-04-11 02:00 pm
(no subject)
Pigs Pigs Pigs!
I’m annoyed by pigs today.
Why?
Some background: around a hundred years ago, domestic pigs were introduced to Santa Cruz island. Since then, feral pigs have been slowly disrupting the local ecology, and indirectly contributing to the extinction of the Island Foxes, and so the National Park service has decreed that they have to go, by the simple expedient of killing them off. You can read more here, and here.
Naturally this set off an intense local brew-haha, as the animal rights supporters, led by the News Press- our lackluster excuse for a news organ- protested wildly at the thought of killing off the trotters. As for me, I made the mistake of reading the News Press today, and so saw in the letters to the editor two letters on the pigs
The first one was by a man who thought that the proper thing to do would be to move the pigs to their native environment, followed up by incoherent statements to the effect that humans weren’t native to the area. I suppose it would be too much to hope that he was thinking their native environment would be in a slaughterhouse.
And then there was an earnest plea from a woman who urged us to abandon the idea of killing pigs, because evidently killing nature’s creatures is wrong. She undoubtedly would be shocked, SHOCKED I say to learn that golden eagles have been eating the pigs, and thus killing them. And these have been someof the more reasonable letters on the issue.
This fracas illustrates two things: for the most part, modern man is completely isolated from the cycles of life and death that govern the natural world- hence the thought of killing some cloven-hoofed vermin causing alarm people whose only exposure to pigs is “Babe”.
Secondly, the conservation movement has taken a back seat to the “animal rights” movement- people who have no care for the general ecology of a land, as long as the cute critters aren’t harmed. The fact that native species unique to the entire world is going to go extinct because of common pigs is irrelevant. The fact that we have a slow-moving equivalent to rats in Hawaii, or rabbits in Australia, is irrelevant- such subtleties are useless to those people who have only encountered pigs in a cleaned-up, form in the movies.
I know better. I have actually seen, touched, and most importantly smelled the things. If it wasn’t for the risk of disease, I’d say kill ‘em, butcher ‘em, and turn them into pork chops. As it is, if they have to die so that an island's ecology will live, I say Charlotte gets shot. But that would be shocking to people who think that pork comes from the meat aisle.
The really sad thing is that I remember the Boy Scout oath to always leave an area better than it was found. Now good management and cleaning up one’s mess is taking a second place to false sentimentality.
I shudder to think what would happen if influenza germs were actually cute.
I’m annoyed by pigs today.
Why?
Some background: around a hundred years ago, domestic pigs were introduced to Santa Cruz island. Since then, feral pigs have been slowly disrupting the local ecology, and indirectly contributing to the extinction of the Island Foxes, and so the National Park service has decreed that they have to go, by the simple expedient of killing them off. You can read more here, and here.
Naturally this set off an intense local brew-haha, as the animal rights supporters, led by the News Press- our lackluster excuse for a news organ- protested wildly at the thought of killing off the trotters. As for me, I made the mistake of reading the News Press today, and so saw in the letters to the editor two letters on the pigs
The first one was by a man who thought that the proper thing to do would be to move the pigs to their native environment, followed up by incoherent statements to the effect that humans weren’t native to the area. I suppose it would be too much to hope that he was thinking their native environment would be in a slaughterhouse.
And then there was an earnest plea from a woman who urged us to abandon the idea of killing pigs, because evidently killing nature’s creatures is wrong. She undoubtedly would be shocked, SHOCKED I say to learn that golden eagles have been eating the pigs, and thus killing them. And these have been someof the more reasonable letters on the issue.
This fracas illustrates two things: for the most part, modern man is completely isolated from the cycles of life and death that govern the natural world- hence the thought of killing some cloven-hoofed vermin causing alarm people whose only exposure to pigs is “Babe”.
Secondly, the conservation movement has taken a back seat to the “animal rights” movement- people who have no care for the general ecology of a land, as long as the cute critters aren’t harmed. The fact that native species unique to the entire world is going to go extinct because of common pigs is irrelevant. The fact that we have a slow-moving equivalent to rats in Hawaii, or rabbits in Australia, is irrelevant- such subtleties are useless to those people who have only encountered pigs in a cleaned-up, form in the movies.
I know better. I have actually seen, touched, and most importantly smelled the things. If it wasn’t for the risk of disease, I’d say kill ‘em, butcher ‘em, and turn them into pork chops. As it is, if they have to die so that an island's ecology will live, I say Charlotte gets shot. But that would be shocking to people who think that pork comes from the meat aisle.
The really sad thing is that I remember the Boy Scout oath to always leave an area better than it was found. Now good management and cleaning up one’s mess is taking a second place to false sentimentality.
I shudder to think what would happen if influenza germs were actually cute.