New Zealand’s crusade to rid itself of mammals | Hacker News Reader

New Zealand’s crusade to rid itself of mammals

newyorker.com

124 pointsfennecfoxen90 comments

Im a kiwi in my late 20s. I spent much of my childhood and teenage years in the mountains and bush (jungles) of New Zealand hunting introduced mammals. I wouldn't have spent so much time in the bush if there weren't these mammals to hunt. I'm not a yee-haw gun toting hillbilly, I'm an educated guy who, as a young man, got so much informal education from being in the mountains trying to stalk in on Deer, Tahr, Pigs (all introduced) that I could take home and eat.

It taught me resourcefulness, physical discipline, patience and survival skills. Having now traveled the world and spent many years living outside of New Zealand I have come to realize what unique abilities these are and in what a unique way us Kiwis have them. My grandfather used to tell me how appreciated us Kiwis were in World War Two for exactly these reasons.

There is nothing special in our water or our climate or anything like that. We just have an incredible resource that many young kiwis have traditionally engaged, often for the purposes of recreational hunting.

There is a chunk of conservation advocates who hardly engage the New Zealand outdoors, like myself (and others), yet they have a say in how it is run. They live in cities and have an idealistic but impractical understanding of our resource. The outdoors and the animals within the outdoors are a concept to these people, not a part of their lives.

Some mammals in New Zealand are an absolute resource and would be easy to control if we saw them as such. We wouldn't need state sponsored poisoning runs or organized culls of NZ's large mammals if youth were shown the educational value of going out and learning how to survive, be safe, be brave, in order to hunt a deer - and then how to not waste it.

I really hope the larger mammals in New Zealand remain and are treated as a resource for NZ's ambitious young people who want adventure but instead find it in playing video games and driving cars fast on public roads.

I see myself as a conservationist, I just don't see the need to wind back the clock 300 years. Lets control the large mammals and protect our unique environment: the two aren't mutually exclusive.

According to the article, it's not really about large mammals (which are always easier to control), but about rats and similar small, uncontrollable pests.

Whatever the case, it makes every kind of sense to focus preservation efforts in NZ on saving the truly unique birds, rather than the same mammals that occur everywhere in the world. Those unique birds are the truly unique resource that New Zealand has.

Agreed, however, there are those that would have all mammals (including large ones) removed for the sake of NZ's ecological originality. Perhaps this is an "authentic" thing to do but I believe there is more at stake than original ecological authenticity. Protect the unique birds, definitely, but I haven't heard of large mammals posing a threat to birdlife in NZ except when populations get so out of hand that vegetation is being destroyed - a point we wouldn't reach with well managed large mammal initiatives.

I see what you are saying as similar to the "window breaking argument". Just because a bad activity produces a positive output, doesn't mean we shouldn't fight the bad activity(so like in the example - just because city's glass makers have more work thanks to the vandals breaking down windows everywhere, doesn't mean we shouldn't be trying to stop the vandals).

>>ambitious young people who want adventure but instead find it in playing video games and driving cars fast on public roads.

Come on now, real world is never as black and white as this. It's not like the only decisions in the world a young person can make are "hunting in the wild and learning to be brave" and "driving fast on public roads". I am very glad you had a great childhood - but I also feel like you are romanticizing your experiences and feeling like everyone should have the same ones because they were the only good ones in your opinion. That's called bigotry, no?

I'm not against organized mammal control in NZ. I am against ridding the country of mammals completely. My statement was an attempt to show that I believe we have an incredible resource that is largely under-utilized for the benefits it offers people.

Regarding your last point; it depends if you see spending time in the outdoors and breaking laws on public roads as ethically the same thing.

Everyone doesn't need to have my experiences, but if I cant talk about the value of those personal experiences and recommend some of them without it being referred to as bigotry then I'm left wondering what the free sharing of ideas is for? Can I only share purely objective ideas? - Because, unfortunately, I don't have any of those.

Oh god no. I appreciate the ideas. My problem is that you categorized experiences into good ones(as in - the ones you had) and into bad ones(as in - the ones others are having). And driving fast on public roads is not the only point you made and I am not trying to defend illegal activities - and also one could argue that ethically hunting animals stands lower than speeding - but I am not trying to make such point so I will not defend it if you decide to discuss it. You also mentioned people spending their childhood playing games - what if I show you someone who thanks to THEIR experience with games went on to become a programmer, designer, artist - and is now a perfectly happy person? Is their life any less because they have not experienced hunting deer in the wilderness?

I only mentioned bigotry, because this is what happens when someone says "I have experience X, therefore everyone should have experience X because I have had it and it is the best, instead of activities Y or Z which are clearly inferior to my experience X". I am not calling you a bigot - one comment on the internet is far too little to judge that.

I think a charitable interpretation of the grandparent poster is that he wants young people to channel their desire for adventure into not only playing video games rather than for them to not play video games at all.

Well said, thanks

Just for background, there's an ideological divide in contemporary Aotearoa. On the one side are the proponents of "traditional" (pre-late 1960s) white Pakeha culture. They tend to be pro-farming and hunting (good vigorous manful activities), pro-traditional gender ideas and against most/all reconciliation/restitution measures towards the Maori population. This group includes a lot of Aotearoa's wealthiest white families and so has economic strength. Their party (National) is currently in power and supports generally liberal economics.

The other side is critical of these white tropes, and tends to support measure pushing back against whitification of Aotearoa (habitat/native population restoration, promotion of Maori culture, treaty settlements.) This groups is more popular with Aotearoa's middle and lower classes, and their opinions are functionally mainstream. Anybody openly endorsing the attitudes of the former camp are subject to a lot of criticism (although you would be surprised how many white homes are, within private walls, against this consensus.)

Because it's an ideological divide you tend to find this sort of defensive, irritable black and white argumentation when the pro-white side feels under attack. They don't get to express their opinions publicly very much, so they bottle up a lot of frustration.

In case you were, like myself, wondering, "Aotearoa" is the Maori name for New Zealand (originally just the Northern Island).

>They tend to be pro-[...]hunting

Interesting that you describe hunting as something favored by white New Zealanders. Are Maori people against hunting? Do they hunt mammals?

Hunting is a traditional activity among Pakeha farmers and farming communities in Aotearoa. These people came from lower and middle class British communities, and enthusiastically began hunting in Aotearoa because in Britain it was traditionally an upper-class-only privilege. As such it is and has always been primarily been a leisure activity. Nowadays Pakeha culture is strongest in rural areas so the hunting continues and is part of a grid of activities (rugby, agricultural shows, many varieties of sport, other farming-centric activities) which strengthen in-group bonds.

Maori hunted extensively for subsistence, primarily bird and fish species, but this was more trapping and gathering (rope traps for birds, gathering bivalves). In recent times their culture has become more urban-based, relatively young and lower SES, and I think they are more involved and interested these days in urban family/community ties, Marae activities, travel and international youth culture. Maori groups promote the traditional ecology of the islands, and promote the authenticity of traditional Maori food-gathering, but especially given the scarcity of native birdlife, don't actually hunt birds anymore (as far as I'm aware - though shell-gathering is popular).

The university-liberal segment of Pakeha culture that is pro-Maori is generally pretty pacifist and urban, so they don't participate in rural-centric activities like hunting.

I think Maori people in Aotearoa taking up white-style hunting would be like native tribes in America turning into massive baseball lovers.

Are you actually from NZ? Because what you're saying doesn't really match reality. Heaps of Maori people hunt.

News to me, but I haven't spent much time in the North Island so maybe I just haven't seen it. I'm not really a North Island/Maori expert.

So, you're not an expert, but I'm still defensive, irritable (with) black and white argumentation when the pro-white side (presumably me) feels under attack....

I am pakeha but went to bilingual school, am pro treaty settlements, predominantly hunt WITH Maori people, have been involved with Maori society my entire life and my family members are buried in a Maori urupa.

Please be more careful about the snap judgements you make based on a single comment.

Sorry, in my experience white South Island culture is generally pro-hunting and anti-Maori. I've also met plenty of rural North Island people who are cut from the same cloth. I take back the implied characterisation of you but I've seen it many times that when Aotearoa is discussed among foreigners online, Pakeha apologists come forward and start pushing their agenda in a way that sounds very reasonable and benign to those not in the know. And hunting seems to be one of those issues where the apologists feel like drawing a line in the sand.

People tend to assume NZ is this cute little nation where everyone agrees on everything, so everyone is on the same page when it comes to stuff like hunting, environmentalism, etc. So I would say it's useful to have it pointed out that there are big differences of opinion.

Anyway it's interesting to know that there are Maori who hunt, that's something that I'd like to learn more about.

> Anyway it's interesting to know that there are Maori who hunt, that's something that I'd like to learn more about.

http://www.maoritelevision.com/tv/shows/hunting-aotearoa

...there are Maori in the South Island too. You speak so assuredly from a position of cluelessness. :/

You ask an excellent question. Maori people do heaps of hunting, I have no idea what the person you're responding to is on about.

Hell, the best hunting show is on Maori television: http://www.maoritelevision.com/tv/shows/hunting-aotearoa

I visited New Zealand for the millennium. When we picked up our rental car in Auckland, the following conversation happened:

"Sir, a moment before I give you your keys?"

"Certainly."

"You know what a possum is, correct?"

"Yeah."

"Well, we have these furry cute ones that foreigners love to coo over."

"Really?"

"Yes. Very cute. Fuzzy and the like."

"Fascinating"

"Quite! Now, if you see one of the little buggers on the road, there's something you should do."

"Oh? Slow down or drive around them? What should I do?"

"Aim."

Total tally: 15

Sounds like a fun road trip.

Driving up the Whanganui River Road in 2001:

Local: "Now, that's a good possum."

Me, having missed it completely: "Uh, I didn't know there were any good possums."

Local: "That one was dead."

I hope you aimed well enough. Can you be sure not to have left behind any half-dead, suffering animals?

No disrespect to you in particular but this way of handling the problem comes off as very blunt and uncivilized.

Sounded like a joke? In any case, swerving to avoid/hit a small animal is quite dangerous, and leads to crashes. If the animal isn't big enough to cause significant damage (I've heard "smaller than a medium sized dog", dunno if that's a accurate) then you shouldn't do any evasive maneuvering.

Most likely a sane default but I would think also strongly circumstantial depending on traffic, current speed and weather/light conditions.

As the pinnacle of the animal kingdom we should be able to come up with smarter solutions.

I always liked the story of Andrew Hallidie, the man behind promoting the idea of the San Franciscan Cable Car - he and his main engineer William Eppelsheimer were motivated to find a better solution to what was to a high-degree an animal welfare issue.

Street cars in SF during the late 19th century used to be pulled by horses which both was dangerous for them as well as passengers:

"I was largely induced to think over the matter from seeing the difficulty and pain the horses experienced in hauling the cars up Jackson Street, from Kearny to Stockton Street, on which street four or five horses were needed for the purpose–the driving being accompanied by the free use of the whip and voice, and occasionally by the horses falling and being dragged down the hill on their sides, by the car loaded with passengers sliding on its track..... .... With the view of obviating these difficulties, and for the purpose of reducing the expense of operating street railways (tram-roads), I devoted all my available time to the careful consideration of the subject, and so far matured my plans that I had California Street (a very steep street in San Francisco) surveyed [between Kearny and Powell streets, a distance of 1,386 feet] in 1870 by an engineer of the name of David R. Smith, and in the Sacramento Record, a newspaper published in the City of Sacramento, California, in 1870, a statement is there published in its telegraphic news of what I proposed to do, viz: to run a rope railway to carry passengers from the city to the plateau above."

http://www.sfmuseum.org/bio/hallidie.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_cable_car_system

You're driving too close to the car in front if you hit them after they do an emergency braking manouver.

Where did gp say anything about a car in front of theirs?

I grew up driving in Buffalo, NY, and if that doesn't evoke visions of black-ice covered frozen tundra roads, it should. One thing I know from having learned here is, a deer can jump out of the brush at any time. You don't want to hit a deer. Even if you have comprehensive insurance there is a very real risk of bodily harm to yourself, deer are large and probably more likely to survive than most small animals, if you don't have a hunting knife or a gun, you might even be waiting for police or animal control to come and put the thing out of its misery, if you weren't going fast enough to kill it.

The same is true about small animals - they can jump out at any time. But on snow-covered roads, they are more dangerous to you if you try to avoid hitting them than if you just keep going. Especially don't swerve. You might be driving too fast if you can't safely come to a stop when an animal jumps out in front of you, or you might just have bad luck and timing.

Anyway, if you had to stop (or thought you had to stop) and got rear-ended, there is unfortunately not much you can do about the guy that was driving too close behind you.

I don't think it's so much about the car in front as the cars behind, oncoming traffic, and obstacles on the sides of the road (curbs, medians, trees, signs, drop-offs, ...)

Says someone who has obviously never driven or lived in NZ. The little shits sit in the middle of the road. And these aren't long highways, they're windy little country roads (eg. state highway 1).

You are right, I've never been to NZ but the way of handling the issue implied by the comment didn't put it in a context of "if dangerous then keep on going" but "aiming" for them (i.e. "population control").

I'm not sure you understand what you're saying here. Being crushed and having your innards squirt out your arsehole is not a pleasant experience. These animals definitely suffer when they die.

They'll probably suffer less this way than how they usually go, which is to have sharp talons dig into the flesh of their backs, carry them a hundred feet into the air, then pin them down so that a beak can tear their skin apart, rip out their insides, and feed them to a nearby chick.

> No disrespect to you in particular but this way of handling the problem comes off as very blunt and uncivilized.

1080 is hardly any more civilised. But it's the possums or our native trees/birds, and we're fond of having forests with bird song.

The introduced rats were a foodstuff for the Polynesian sailors who brought them to New Zealand.[1] The article mentions the exception of the bats, [edit (thanks!): and mentions stoats and ferrets being released to hunt rabbits, without specifically mentioning how the stoats] got to New Zealand. Looking up the issue,[2] it appears that several of the nastiest invasive species on New Zealand were brought in to be hunted for sport, which has turned out to be a mistake.

Where I live in central North America, I have seen and heard coyote quite near by, and I'm glad they are here, as they help cull the deer, which I have also seen at very close range in my neighborhood. (Once my third son and I happened to meet going opposite directions on our city trail just where my son had noticed a magnificent eight-point buck calmly browsing in the restored wild swamp alongside the trail.) Here it is actually important to kill native deer, as deer are the most lethal wild animal in the United States today.[3]

[1] http://www.doc.govt.nz/Documents/about-doc/concessions-and-p...

[2] http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/1966/mammals-introduced

[3] http://reason.com/archives/2001/11/21/north-americas-most-da...

The article suggests that stoats were brought over to try to control the rabbit population. A real forehead-slapper...

Well, mustelids worked well for rabbits in England. And to be fair, ferrets (they introduced stoats, weasels and ferrets) do spend most of their time in the grasslands preying on rabbits. It's the stoats and weasels that really devastate the birds. The 1080 drops for rodents works on well on mustelids too, as they tend to eat the dead bodies, and 1080 bioaccumulates.

But yeah, in hindsight, thanks guys. But at least they didn't get around to introducing dingoes from Australia to control the possums as proposed.

Their neighbours the Australians brought in the cane toad (Rhinella marina) to control the cane beetle.

Rabbits, foxes, water buffalo, camels..... the list is quite long, take your pick:

http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/invasive-species/...

I've never been able to find the footage again, but it was quite something - arid scrubland in the foreground, rabbit-proof fence across the middle, and orange sand from there to the horizon. On the other side of the fence was a boiling mass of furry bodies; rabbits trying to get into the scrub.

Nope, only the Polynesian rat, kiore, was the foodstuff introduced by Maori. The other two species were stowaways.

Incidentally. the kiore is now endangered due to being outcompeted by the other rat species.

One thing that the article fails to mention, and some comments here don't seem to understand, is that Environmental organisations such as Greenpeace NZ sanction the fur trade in some NZ mammals (eg. the possum) as they are regarded as such a destructive pest.

My family has a high country farm in the south of the South Island and it used to be overrun with rabbits. Not cute; more like a biblical plague as there are no predators (aside from the occasional hawk). I recall driving up the farm road and having rabbits part in front of me like water. Crazy numbers.

Don't mistake a cavalier attitude to possums/rabbits/stoats/australians for lack of civilisation. It's just a different set of circumstances than what you may have experienced.

> possums/rabbits/stoats/australians

Australians. Huh?

Yep. Particularly Queenslanders, victorious Aussie Sporting teams, overly attractive bikini models and other non-kiwi things.

> other non-kiwi things

Like respectable rugby teams?

Good on you mate. Queenslander here. Wouldn't trade it for the world. Will see you next year in the World Cup.

Irrespective of your opinion on the complicated topic of abortion wouldn't you agree that contraceptives exemplify a more civilized approach to birth control? Maybe a bad analogy, yes but shouldn't we primarily look for solutions which prevent suffering in the first place?

It's a shame because you don't want to be cruel to Mammals who after all are pretty similar to us, however you also don't want to lose rare and endemic species. So its a moral dilemma, the problem is that 1080, and most poisons, are particularly horrible ways to die. It's not the animals fault that they are here, its purely our fault, yet the animals suffer.

Saying that I live next to http://www.visitzealandia.com/ which is an inner city pest free zone in Wellington, since it was completed in the late nineties years ago the bird life in the area is amazing. It has about ten kilometres of fencing around the perimeter which is three metres tall and extends under ground.

I lived right beside it for a while, we had a lot of visiting birds (Tui mostly) singing in our garden.

Hopefully not ALL the mammals. New Zealand does have some native mammals. The short tailed bat [0]

[0] http://www.doc.govt.nz/conservation/native-animals/bats/

I hear there are also about 4 and a half million homo sapiens there, though presumably they are an introduced species.

And 40 million sheep, though this is down from 70 million in 1982.

This invasive species is slowly being relocated to Australia.

...they've started coming back.

Thanks Tony?

It would just be easier to reclassify NZ as Australian territory.

Being more serious NZ has the right to join as an Australian state when they want. It is really an historical accident that they never did.

I couldn't imagine they'd want to do that after all this time.

Australians and New Zealanders like to pretend that we are really different, but we are very similar. In reality we operate as a single country economically, but on the sporting field that we are two countries.

That is not reality at all, there is very close collaboration between the two countries but its like saying Canada and the US operate as a single country economically.

There are also significant differences ideologically between the societies as a stereotype.

New Zealand's economy maps closer to New South Wales' economy than NSW does to Western Australia's economy (these are Australian States). If you look on the back of any product for sale in Australia or New Zealand you will see they are made for both markets. Citizens from either country can go and work and live in either country without a visa. None of these apply to the USA and Canada.

Politically New Zealand and Australia are different, but I think a lot of that difference is due to Australian federation and our electoral systems. If New Zealand were to join as an Australian state and use the Australian system of preferential voting (instant runoff) I think we would see a convergence in politics. I don't see New Zealand joining the Australian federation anytime soon, but if there was a desire it could happen pretty easily.

A lot of people are also fond of the recreational hunting species (Red/fallow/sambar/rusa/sika/whitetail deer, chamois, tahr, goats, wild pigs, wild cattle... and maybe a tiny population of moose). They are controlled to some extent via the occasional cull, (and if they die as a result of the 1080 drops, DOC's official position is a shrug), but for the most part their numbers are kept low by recreational hunting, and economics...

...when deer population numbers get high, the animals become economically viable to harvest for meat by helicopter, so the WARO (Wild Animal Recovery Operation) flights take off, shoot all that they can, and then export it to Germany, who loves wild venison. The recreational hunters shake their fists at the helicopters, but it keeps the animal numbers at an acceptable level.

It's a bit of overstatement, but the general idea of getting rid of the invasive mammals would be great.

A massive project though, getting rid of animals trying to survive is incredibly hard - one of my uncles worked on clearing Motuihe in the Auckland harbour, and they had a hell of a time with the rabbits - when threatened, they go into a 2-week breeding cycle, and were hiding in holes halfway down the cliffs!

There was a great Nerdnite talk about those bats not long ago http://auckland.nerdnite.com/2014/10/05/nerd-nite-auckland-c...

Where I live in Dunedin the peninsula is the site of one of the few breeding colonies of yellow eyed penguins, and the only mainland alabtross colony in the world. They've eradicated possums back to the city limit.

The Aussie possums we've been infested with are not at all like their American namesakes, they make great coats, sadly the fur-is-murder people wont make exemptions for ecological devistation.

Greenpeace NZ unambiguously supports and advocates hunting possums, and selling their fur.

Sirocco was the bird that famously attempted to shag Mark Carwardine's head: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T1vfsHYiKY

According to the wikipedia page for the "1080" pesticide [1], it can be toxic not only to mammals but also to birds and insects.

What if we invented a substance that was only toxic to mammals, perhaps by targeting their unique reproductive method? Could we use something like that to eradicate all mammals from New Zealand, while taking sufficient care to protect ourselves?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_fluoroacetate

Animals aren't the only pests, the hills around Wellington for example are filled with gorse, a horrible, horrible plant.

Would definitely like to send a Terminator back thru time to eliminate the fools who brought it.

Gorse, as I understand it, was brought to New Zealand to be used as fencing between farm fields.

I understood it was also because of the pretty yellow flowers and that it didn't grow so well in western Europe

It grows plenty well in western Europe.

This seems likely since it was used for that back in the UK. Also the flowers were used for making dye.

I was quite taken by the hillsides that were completely covered in bushes with bright yellow flowers. I asked what they were, and was surprised to find out they were an invasive species. Sure were beautiful though!

Given that the destructive mammals are already present, and number in the billions, wouldn't it be more efficient to introduce an extra layer of mammalian predators? That would get rid of the ones already present, or at least to keep their numbers down to manageable levels. It seems that these invasive species have become particularly destructive precisely because they are not subject to any native predators.

humans are mammals, so this is what is happening

That was a reason for introducing some of the existing predators. It didn't work. The new predators also like the existing fauna. What other predators are left, which will kill the rats? Cats? That hasn't worked anywhere else.

> wouldn't it be more efficient to introduce an extra layer of mammalian predators?

That's been done. The introduced extra layer went for the native wildlife, which were easier pickings.

For a minute there I thought New Zealand were about to give up all their sheep, and Wales would become the sheep rearing capital of the world!

I thought you were exaggerating (we have a very large stock here in Uruguay, thought we had them beat handily), but you're not:

"Figures just released from the June 2012 Survey of Agriculture and Horticulture in Wales, show the total number of sheep and lambs in Wales in June was nearly 8.9 million, with lamb numbers rising by nearly 5% to 4.6 million and ewe numbers rising slightly by 1.2 % to 4.2 million."

By comparison we have about 12 million sheep here in Uruguay, Argentina has 10 or 11 million, and New Zealand has about 40 million sheep.

"The country has the highest density of sheep per unit area in the world. For 130 years, sheep farming was the country's most important agricultural industry, but it was overtaken by dairy farming in 1987. Sheep numbers peaked in New Zealand in 1982 to 70 million and then dropped to about 40 million."

Area of Wales: 8,016 sq miles (20,761 km²) Area of Uruguay: 68,037 sq miles (176,215 km²) Area of New Zealand: 103,483 sq miles (268,021 km²) Area of Argentina: 1.074 million sq miles (2.78 million km²)

Uruguay usually looks up to New Zealand as a model to follow (similar population and economy).

The writing reminded me of Roald Dahl's "The Ratcatcher."

This is interesting heading. Humans are essentially mammals. Will extinct Kiwis reign over these two islands once again?

I hope the top on the list is Homo Sapiens

New Zealand’s Apollo program

Wiping out rats? The Apollo program? I know it's a small country, but wiping out rodents is both hopelessly petty and hopelessly grandiose at the same time. Spoiler: The mammals will win.

Wiping out rats is possible. While not exactly the same situation, the Canadian province of Alberta is rat-free due to an aggressive program to prevent and contain infestations [0].

[0] http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/agd...

they've also done it on several islands in haida gwaii(queen charlotte islands) in BC.

Alberta is not a very welcoming environment to the human-dependent Norway rats that article talks in the first place. It's a huge, empty area that, for those rats, is a barren wasteland with a few tiny oases of human population - and the Albertans still have to constantly clean out new infestations.

New Zealand is vastly more welcoming to the invasive species it has. In a decade or three, they'll call it "good enough" on the mainland islands and spend a great deal of effort in perpetuity to keep pest levels under a modicum of control.

It's good to see conservationists admit that their task is mostly killing. Too often people confuse conserving a species with being nice to animals. They're diametrically opposite ambitions. Conservationists sometimes try to tap into our "don't kill cute animals" feeling to support their cause, but have to do a 180 when it doesn't suit.

I once proposed to someone that the best way to prevent whales being killed was to kill them all. It's surely true, they can't be hunted if they're never even born. But his response was "you have no morals". Actually conservationism is an activity without morals.

> I once proposed to someone that the best way to prevent whales being killed was to kill them all. It's surely true, they can't be hunted if they're never even born. But his response was "you have no morals". Actually conservationism is an activity without morals.

Okay... But I'm pretty sure a conservationists goal is not to make species go extinct.

There is a long run goal which is the survival of as many species and habitats as possible. Being nice animals is not diametrically opposed with being a conversationist, nor would a conversationist actually argue for killing all whales unless it had greater benefits for ocean ecosystems as a whole. You're ignoring the long-term consequences and only focusing on the actions themselves in calculating moral utility.

There's also the prickly moral issue that whales are not clearly non-sentient, on a similar level of consciousness to humans.

Guy Williams has your back https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AG4odHCokw

Wiping out the species you're trying to save is obviously ludicrous. The point of this article is that rats (which are dead common in practically all corners of the world) pose an enormous threat to lots of unique species and ecosystems, and controlling rats is necessary if you want to preserve those unique species and ecosystems.

Spreaking large amounts of poison to do that, certainly makes me quite uncomfortable. But I'm no conservationist, so I can't really judge whether that's ultimately a good or bad idea.

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