Ohio vandals release 10k carnivorous mink into the wild | Hacker News Reader

Ohio vandals release 10k carnivorous mink into the wild

nypost.com

35 pointstotalZero55 comments

> Meanwhile, reports state that many of the animals who fled were killed shortly after being found, while so many minks died crossing a nearby road that a plow was enlisted to help remove the carcasses, WFMZ reported.

What an awful outcome. Obviously I have no love to share for the fur industry, but I can't imagine how the vandals thought this would ultimately end up saving animal lives.

If I were to guess, i'd suggest their view would be if a single animal survived, that's one more than would make it if left in the cages.

From a purely ethical standpoint, that's not bad logic. It's like the story of the kid throwing the starfish back into the sea, saying "It matters to that one."

Of course, whether it was well-thought-out in regards to the local ecosystem is a different matter entirely.

It's also shortsighted and inconsistent as it disregards the countless prey animals that will be taken by introducing 10,000 predators into a new ecosystem.

Most ecosystems actually need more predators, not fewer. One of the negative effects humans have on ecosystems is killing predators like wolves, which wrecks the rest of the ecosystem.

But again, as I said above the effects of these predators on this ecosystem is not necessary someone that was well-thought-out by these people.

How do you weigh death by being partially crushed under the wheel of a car against death by carbon monoxide poisoning?

This will probably only save animal lives in the distant future, when farms like this are no longer allowed to operate.

It's one thing to hold quiet animosity for the fur industry operating silently and invisibly. But this is now front page news in sleepy northwest Ohio, people from Findlay (where I've done some consulting) to Fort Wayne are now aware there's a newly built mink fur farm in their backyards. And even after the news fades, when your koi pond is suddenly empty, when you hear a rabbit scream at night, when you see a dead squirrel in your yard with its face chewed off, or when you just see an unusual white animal swimming in a pond, residents will think "Oh hey, that's probably one of those mink that were liberated from the farm in Van Wert." That kind of public opinion will eventually get the farm shut down.

I don't think the ALF/the vandals were confused into believing that a likely outcome was 40,000 people adopting those minks to live happy, long lives as family pets.

But every minute that farm is operating, 40,000 mink are suffering in small cages: https://www.farmtransparency.org/facilities/zx0hb-lion-farms... That farm might still continue to operate for another 50 years or more, with each of 20,000 breeding pairs of mink having 8 kits per year. If 10,000 dead today is enough to make it unprofitable and shut down, it's easy to justify sacrificing 10,000 mink today for the sake of 8 MILLION mink over the next 50 years.

This sort of activism, if it was that, is really not a good thing. Not because animals don't deserve to be free but because usually these animals can destroy the local ecosystems.

I remember one time people tried to free rat labs from the immunology lab at my university, not only these rats are not capable of surviving in the wild but also they actually carry lots of dangerous genes and diseases that should absolutely not be out there in the wild, because, well that's exactly what is being researched.

There's definitely space for bigger conversations but we should be much more careful with the way we do activism.

In the 1980s something a bit similar happened here in the same suburb where Microsoft is headquartered. Mink breeding was a hobby farming fad that didn’t pay off, so the farmers just released them. Now they’re a predator that can wriggle expertly through chicken wire and take out your hens. Heartbreaking when it happens.

chickens are profoundly stupid, basically dirty habits, and there are endless numbers of them, mostly in ugly captivity. Yet humans are so competitive to any other meat eaters that 'zero tolerance use of deadly force' is accepted at face-value in a thousand casual conversations. Is it any wonder that more than half of all other large mammals are now gone forever?

I think you’re largely right. Except somehow many of us fall in love with chickens once we care for them. And mine sure aren’t in ugly captivity.

I say these things mostly in support of your point, because my attitude is profoundly irrational. OTOH I have no problem with farming animals humanely.

I had happy chickens myself for years; they had a great time in their dirty chicken way, and I ate some eggs too. I distinctly recall thinking about predators at the time, and I totally stand by my comment..

Is it more heartbreaking when a couple thousand minks kill a couple thousand chicken so that they can survive or when a couple million chickens get slaughtered industrially to make nuggets so industrial nobody should deserve to eat? In the same kind of line: is it more heartbreaking that cats (that we feed and reproduce) kill 500 bird a year each or that suburban expansion, car noise and dangerous highways kills and displaces whole populations? Once again: is it more heartbreaking that poor black people put their tens of kilo of trash out in the street or in a random freestyle dump or that rich white dudes release literal tons of co2 and high-tech trash around the world by flying all the time and buying/discarding useless stuff all the time?

Widen your lens and check the context. You'll see the pollution/exploitation/.. is always in fine done in the name of the people that matter. (the flip side of this being: you can be a zero-waste green-everything aficionado all you want, if you live in the western world, you will have a negative impact globally just because you're living off of stuff that is done in this way) Malcom Ferdinand has popped off mainstream recently writing about these subjects.

People living outside of the Western world also have a negative impact globally. In many cases a much worse one.

> People living outside of the Western world also have a negative impact globally.

Yes we live in a globalized society, everything is linked. Now what?

> In many cases a much worse one.

This is wrong. You seem pretty shallowly convinced so i will just negate you and provide just as much evidence. As far as i'm concerned, i will be happy if this conversation made you actually look up some evidence (to support your point). I'd bet a lot that you will be surprised by what you will find, but hey, everybody deserves to believe what they want when they don't know. Respect (honest). Now i'm out of this thread, it's starting to get out of hand.

Idk if you've ever been to a third world country, but turns out no one outside of the first world gives a ruling fuck about the environment. Trash cans in public aren't a thing. Chemicals are dumped into drinking water sources. Smoke is pumped into the air at staggering rates. First world countries are objectively way more environmentally friendly. Not saying that makes anyone better or worse ( lord knows I've contributed nothing on this front) just stating facts

Sorry I didn't provide any references but they're only a google search away.

https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/air-pollution-hu...

https://www.cgdev.org/media/developing-countries-are-respons...

https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/one-thre...

I'm sure you could argue that their pollution is worse due to all of the trade with wealthier countries, fair enough, but currently the only solution to that would deprive them of the vast majority of their income and would set those countries back decades if not centuries given that trade is a major driver of development within any country.

That’s why it helps to have a guard dog close to where the hens spend the night. Of course, that would mean for the dog to spend the night outside, not inside, as a pet.

> There's definitely space for bigger conversations but we should be much more careful with the way we do activism.

Where is that space and who is occupying it? What conversation do you think belongs there? I’m just not sure what this last paragraph is intended to convey.

At the heart of all this I feel sorry for the minks, and sorry even more for the psychological damage that humans, usually poor, have to endure to feed an absolutely horrific industry.

Having said that, if the perpetrators of this vandalism are caught, I’ll contribute to their legal fund. Love me some ALF chaos.

If we're going to start slinging blame, let's start where it's most appropriate: these farms should never have existed in the first place. Other countries have banned them, and the US should as well.

> I remember one time people tried to free rat labs from the immunology lab at my university, not only these rats are not capable of surviving in the wild but also they actually carry lots of dangerous genes and diseases that should absolutely not be out there in the wild, because, well that's exactly what is being researched.

Entire zombie movies have this as a starting premise:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Days_Later

Also, you know, 2019-2022.

Not really activism, rather ecology/bioterrorism as this will have a disastrous impact on the ecosystem.

Minks eat frogs, fish, crayfish, mice, voles, muskrats, shrew, moles, freshwater mussels, turtles, snakes, birds, birdeggs, insects.. And with 10k released on the spot, well it's not hard to figure out what will happen.

Minks also have 6-10 babies per year.

> these animals can destroy the local ecosystems.

Mink are native to Ohio and all of N. America. Fur farms are more harmful to local ecosystems than mink could ever be. The local impact of fur farms leads to the degradation of land, rural life, property values and economic activities. Plus, waste runoff seeps into soil and waterways, causing severe damage to local ecosystems. The concern here is only their threat to livestock, not the ecosystem. Humans are the problem, as always, not the mink. And the search for civilization continues.

I like the use of the expression "vandals".

It is appropriate to use derogatory names for people that do stupid acts, even if these acts are for a "good" cause (e.g.: vandalizing art in museums as a protest against GW).

In Brazil, supporters of former president Bolsonaro are "protesting" in front of military barracks demanding an authoritarian coup by the Army to "preserve" democracy. The rest of the country just mocks them.

When political activism becomes so stupid we shouldn't refrain to call it stupid.

Are not all minks carnivorous? Why did they add that to the headline?

You wouldn’t have been scared enough.

It’s a sly way to add emotional effect by enforcing the possibility that they’ll pose a risk to animals in the area.

With news being predominantly digital no one is worried about how much space a headline takes, HTML metadata can even present an alternative headline for social media, no worries about space on the printed page or ink. So pack on the emotionally charged, pressure cooked rhetoric.

Possibility? Will they start eating grass instead?

Well apparently they'll just get mowed down by cars

Why are we farming mink? Could we just stop with abusing animals merely for minuscule amounts of pleasure we get from using their products over alternatives?

It's probably still the best/cheapest way to produce that kind of quality coat, and the input is just whatever you feed them.

I don't want a mink coat but it doesn't surprise me the market is out there. I still have a down coat.

Alternatives are typically plastic-based and don't last as long.

I feel the same about leatherwear for motorcycling. Are there viable substitutes nowadays ?

Why do we have mink farms at all? Can we just ban mink farming?

I assume you understand basic economics in a capitalist system, supply vs demand, etc, so I'll interpret your first question as "why isn't it banned," which goes to your second question:

Sure, "we" can ban it, Ohio and the US are still nominally representative democracies, it just requires you and millions of others (people or dollars will work) to make your representatives care enough to enact legislation.

This is generally when ennui sets in and people move on to the next thing in their feed.

Mink can carry SARS CoV2 making them a great wild reservoir for mutation.

This is going to devastate the bird population.

Many have been run over with snow plows (it's snow season in Ohio right now).

I imagine that wild Mink are so rare that the few surviving mink will probably rebalance things more than anything else. How often do you see anything from the weasel family anymore?

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