Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Discussion post: Article fallacies
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/19/opinion/why-bambi-must-go.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
The article’s presumption that the deer must be excluded from what can be considered it’s natural habitat in order to make room for other species that share the habitat is utterly idiotic.
The author cataloged the history of the near fall and concurrent rise of the White Tail deer as part of the article and from that draws ways to help the birds that are disappearing from the areas they normally inhabited. At no point does the author bring forth the point of view that perhaps the birds migratory pattern has shifted in the time frame they presented, but I’ll suspend disbelief for now.
The way the White Tail made it’s meteoric rise was that wildlife agencies encouraged federal lands and private land owners who controlled large plots of land to disburse tasty foliage, such as clover, to draw the deer into the area. So already they’re tampering with habitats to accommodate the attraction of an animal without have contingency plans for, say, a population explosion.
Fast forward, there was a population explosion. Now, the deer are a pest as they eat the ground foliage where some migratory birds build their nests. This isn’t good as it disturbs the ecosystem that was already in place, but don’t worry, the author says we can fix they problem by further disturbing the ecosystem. Seems legit.
The author brings up actions by researchers in Virginia and Pennsylvania where they fenced areas of forests to make a deer-free zone, in these areas the migratory bird population has increased where the deer are absent. This was to be expected, what’s also to be expected(if history is looked to) is another population explosion that needs to be dealt with.
The most sane plan is the one presented at the very end of the article, “stop managing our forests for deer.” Why they didn’t just throw this out at the beginning is baffling to me.
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The problem there is mankind's obsessive need to manipulate the animal kingdom; a place they have no business interfering in the first place. They did the same thing a few decades ago when they allowed people to hunt wolves to near-extinction in North America. They did, and gray wolves nearly vanished. And what happened? The farmlands had good, healthy livestock but the deer and other prey-animal populations exploded, thus throwing the entire ecosystem out of balance. The prey-type animals that would normally be kept in check by the top-tier predator wolves ran amok and overpopulated, spreading out farther and farther in search of food and territory. Now they have tried to bring the wolves back through painstaking conservation efforts only to have ignorant farmers and other hicks shoot the wolves because "those wolves killed 3 of my sheep last month". Boo-hoo. The wolves were just trying to feed themselves and the rest of their pack. So stupid humans kill the wolves again, and the wolves retreat. Fortunately, the federal government has wised up a bit since the days of "the big, bad wolf" and fear of these animals being "evil and destructive", so laws are in place and their are wildlife officials out trying to prevent the slaughter. But still, if humans don't learn and adapt themselves, they will lose animals to the wolves, they will continue to try and kill the wolves, and at some point, someone will be killed by wolves. It is as simple as that. And when that happens and someone's remains turn up, they will have no one to blame but themselves. Yet they will try to blame the wolves; animals that only know to follow their instincts to hunt, survive, and defend themselves. It seems like an unfortunately endless cycle until someone makes people actually stop and listen. Until then, mankind will go on in it's ignorance and all of nature will suffer for it until their are no more wolves, no more deer, no more birds or whales. No more tigers, no more elephants. And then where will that leave the earth? The end of the road.
ReplyDeleteMankind has always been the cause of destruction and the extinction of many of our valued wildlife. Wildlife that played a big part in keeping the balance of our ecosystem, nevertheless, it is also mankind that place blame on wildlife in its normalcy for conducting that which sustain its way of life as being a nascence to the society of mankind.
ReplyDeleteWildlife did not come to mankind, “mankind came to wildlife”, and in doing so destroyed all that was needed in the substances of wildlife survival needs. In the need to survive, wildlife has had to adapt to other ways of survival. Along with that adaptation for survival, mankind has also come up with ways of limiting and controlling that which was not meant to be controlled.
Our ecosystem is being destroyed not by destruction of wildlife need for survival but by mankind need to control the survival of wildlife.
Well, looks like mankind is going to cause more destruction to affect the ecosystem. Try and fix one problem, just turn around and create two more problems. Wildlife had to adapt to living in the wildlife because mankind interupting their homes. Mankind as caused the out of balance of the ecosystem by trying to control population of the wildlife. There is an ecosystem and it has worked for many years controlling of population of wildlife. So, in other words maybe mankind needs to butt out of the wildlife.
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