Urban so-declared environmentalists are a disaster for any species they declare they are going to protect. From their concrete world they decide to live in that devoid of wildlife they form dumb-headed platitudes and personify animals. Deer become Bambi. Manatees become lovable. Whales become the most noble of all creatures. The manatee has FINALLY come off the endangered species list to now on the protected species list. This is GOOD NEWS for the future of the manatee. Listening to debates between urban self-declared saviors of manatees and government officials whose job depends upon manatees being endangered - versus actual educated scientists was very interesting. At the heart of it? The question of should ALL manatees saved at all costs - the urban environmentalist & government employee view - OR should all manatees who do actions causing their injury or death not be saved to not artificially evolve manatees to being fully dependent on humans - the scientists' view. Thus, if a manatee leaves the Northern waters too late and is trapped in cold water (they must have at least 67 degree water), should tens of thousands of dollars be spent to fly it to Florida - OR should you just let nature run it's course and let it die? Urban environmentalists and government people say save it whatever it takes. Scientists say don't, let it die. For decades, the true scientists have lost that question. The same for if a manatee is hit by a boat with a serious injury. Should you try to treat and save it? Or let it die? Again, urban environmentalists and government people say save it at all costs - and true scientists say let it die of it's injuries. The result of the scientists losing? Increasing numbers of manatees dying in cold water and hit by boats. The reason is by saving such manatees - ones that do not have the instinct to head south early enough or instinct to avoid boats - to instead save them and use them a breeding stock evolves manatees towards not having survival instincts, but instead deadly instincts. Thus, you would increasingly read of a herd of 300 manatees all dying in cold water and of increasing boat strikes, despite more and more slow and no-boat zones. Those manatees were artificially evolved to be unable to survive due to lack of survival instincts - and it was worsening quickly. Try hitting a dolphin, another mammal, with a boat - fastest boat you want. Chase them day after week, aim right for them. You won't hit one. Manatees also are fast swimmers who can dive deeply. But instead increasingly there were attracted to boats. Hearing a boat increasing numbers of manatees would swim towards the boat or not move if one coming at them? Why? Many have been evolved by "environmentalists" to no longer have the instinct to avoid large objects coming at them. Same on heading South early enough. By saving those who did not and they becoming breeding stock, entire groups of manatees that don't know to head South before winter were bred, as were manatees that lacked the instinct to move away from big things coming at them. Urban environmentalists & most government (federal) wildlife people have no concept that given humans are in nearly all species reality, that management of animals includes letting animals die or even killing them to reduce numbers or eliminate some of the males for food supply and to not artificially evolve them towards lacking survival skills - including in relation to humans. It is as simple - but beyond the comprehension of most urban environmentalists - that if an area has enough food for 1000 deer over the winter, if you do not reduce 2000 deer to 1000 deer then all 2000 will starve to death. All 2000 will eat until all food is gone, and then all 2000 starve. Of course, you could spend huge amounts of money to drop hay and feed to them, meaning next year you have 6000 deer in a region that only supports 1000 etc. It is not city-environmentalists that save animals. More than anyone else, it is people who hunt animals and who actually have animals, who also maintain those animals including time to time eliminating one or some of them. Most notably, old males generally are only a negative towards the population growth of a mammal species, minimally by depleting food supply while not in any manner increasing population.
Those brave hunters ask guides to lead them to the strongest lion because everyone knows that shooting the strongest of a species with your massive powerful weapon from so far away that the lion cannot even see you makes you more of a man. Where do you get the idea that old lions are the aim?
I agree. Drift nets and long line nets should be outlawed. They are massive kill-everything gear despite claims of safeguards. Rather than spending millions chasing Japanese whaling boats hoping maybe to save 1 of 1,700,000 whales, if a person really cared they would hunt drift nets and destroy them and run over long-line nets with boats with chopper props. "Oops, didn't see it."
Generally, in expensive trophy hunts, the target animal is not picked by the hunter, but by the owners of that land, or by the local authorities. So they have the incentive to sell off animals that are no longer valuable to the herd, like old male lions past their breeding age, or to prevent inbreeding. It's not a bunch of rednecks going in their trucks shooting at anything that moves, while shouting "yeehaw!". It's a considerable conservation effort going behind these hunts.
That is 100% false and not how it works anymore. The EXACT animal is specified and a price quoted. Large African preserves put out a list of what they want eliminated - rarely a lion. Usually it is a hippo or something like a water buffalo. Even for those the price usually is well over $10,000. Leopards can go for tens of thousands. It has been decades since a person could pay to just go shoot any one of a species they want. The preserve wants that animal gone for various reasons any way. It might be a nuisance animal attacking others of the herb or is just that the number has become so large their preserve no longer has the food to support them. Since the preserve it going to kill it anyway, why not get $5,000, $15,000, $50,000 to help pay for the preserve? Without this, the preserve would be unviable and become agricultural or ranching land. Do you know anyone who has gone on this hunting trips? I do. A very wealthy fella and his living room is full of "trophies." Adding the taxidermy and trip costs, he probably has at least $50,000 in most of them, He does have one lion. Big old male. He figures that cost him all in all around $80,000. He never is allowed to pick the animal or even species. Rather, various preserves put out a short list of what animals they want terminated - always males - and the price of each. He would watch for a species he does not yet have. About the cheapest is an old male water buffalo from around $5 - 6,000. These are not really considered hunting expeditions as the location of the specific animal is known. Any hunting on the trip will be other game animals all hunters hunt. Basically, it is for the vacation.
Rogue males young and old often group together to hunt. In this way younger males can go on to survive and take over prides of their own later.
Without the money from that, few preserves would remain and would have been converted to ranch grazing land or cropland. I am confident not one person whining about those "hunts" on this thread has ever contributed $1 to any wildlife preserve.
That's BS. Young adult male lions join together and drive off old male lions, literally will try to hunt the old male down to kill it. Male lions do not teach the young how to hunt. For the most part, it is the females who are the hunters. The fate of that old lion is to either be killed by those younger males or to starve to death. In the meantime, that old male is an increasingly dangerous animal. Most lion attacks on humans have been by old males driven away and desperate for food and/or sick.
I watched a video of that a few years ago. Two young male lions relentlessly following an old male who had to keep on the move, unable to even have time to try to get food. The two young males didn't run after it, just steadily keep coming hour after hour, day after day. Finally, the old lion, exhausted and starved unable to go any further, laid down under a tree waiting for death to come. Good thing someone didn't give the preserve $50,000 to shoot it for taxidermy as that would reduce lion population, huh? Old male lions don't say to young lions, "hey kids, let's go have some fun, I'll show you how to hunt." That's not how lions work and certainly not male lions. Generally, the greatest challenge a female lion has is protecting its young from the males. Species survival and growth is dependent upon the females, not the males.
Hmmm, is this rant aimed at me? Are you wrongly assuming that I am an urbanite for some reason. I've been accused of this before, you could almost call it a pattern. I'll have a little chuckle about it tomorrow when I'm helping with the old style threshing to produce thatching straw on the rural farm I live on. Check your prejudices oh assumptuous one.........
So, does the OP have any actual, objective evidence that Japan will be stupid enough to hunt those whales to extinction, thus putting themselves out of business? I find that very hard to believe. I have lots of problems with a lot of things Japan does(and doesn't do), including some aspects of their whaling; but while I think the Japanese are real jerks in a lot of ways, what I don't think they are is stupid, or that they don't understand math. Sorry, but the left is constantly screaming "THE SKY IS FALLING" about all sorts of their pet political issues; with little or no actual objective evidence that the supposedly dire, irreversible results they claim to be imminent are dire at all, much less imminent.
In the old days, we rarely witnessed a Gray Whale off the southern California coast. And we never witnessed Today several whale species are commonly viewed, including humpback, blue, fin and minke from the Southern California coast competing for small fish and squid. And the Sea Lion pups suffer <weep> Sometimes, an ID'ed Sea Lion pup is rehabilitated several times. Previously, I have suggested California hire the Japanese to cull the whale population to save the sea lion pups. Imagine how well that was received by those who know no science and would rather welfare all nature. ttfn Darwin. Save the Whales, and suffer poor Sea Lion pups? Cull the Whales, and save more ocean food for the Sea Lions? Welfare Nature? No More competition and survival of the fittest! What should "we" do? Moi r > g Across an immense, unguarded, ethereal border, Canadians, cool and unsympathetic, regard our America with envious eyes and slowly and surely draw their plans against us.
Only they are not endangered at all. Rather, it is the bizarre species bigotries involved. It is ok to kill ten million cows and a billion chickens, but OMG not a whale?! Same with cows versus horses. Kill and eat cows, but only the most evil people would do that to a horse, even if the horse is old and going to otherwise be put down. Every election season in Texas the two horse slaughterhouses are closed to avoid the issue. So for the next few months tens of thousands of old horses starve to death. After the election, they are opened back up. I've attended a couple horse auctions. Some will be old horses exactly no one wants. Bidding on them is by the pound. Horse meat is illegal in the USA, but legal other places in the world.
Japan is not the only country that hunts whales and Iceland and Norway also engage in commercial whaling. Iceland catches up to 80 fin whales, 40 sei whales and 80 minkes annually. Indigenous Russians in Chukotka Autonomous Okrug in the Russian Far East are permitted under IWC regulation to take up to 140 gray whales each year. I think all whaling nations have common indigenous roots that can be traced back to Eurasian hunter-gatherers in Russia and Japan shares a common culture with Viking nations.
Whales do not do well in captivity as they are highly social and it not really possible to give them enough room. Nor does it make sense to farm them, when the entire oceans are a farm. What is the ethical difference between killing a whale inside a fence versus outside a fence anyway. I'll repeat, there are 1,700,000 whales and the Japanese kill a little over 300 a year.
