this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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I appreciate where the author of this article is coming from, but I think they're being a bit too one-sided.
For example, they make the point that zoos don't contribute enough to conservation, donating only around 5% of their spending, as if the millions of dollars given doesn't justify their existence. But if zoos didn't exist, that's a big chunk of money that wouldn't be going towards conservation at all.
They also talk about the education aspect, that visitors don't necessarily read the information about the animals and instead go for the spectacle. But a child isn't going to read those plaques regardless, but seeing animals up close might ignite an interest in conservation later in life.
And one thing that the article doesn't really go into is the fact that humans are still actively hunting animals in the wild, and destroying habitats for profit. And while I think zoos are a bit of a band-aid fix when it comes to endangered species, I'd much rather see an animal in captivity surrounded by zookeepers that care about it rather than extinction.
In an ideal world, zoos wouldn't exist. In a slightly less ideal world, only open-plain zoos would exist. But we are a very long way from that, and I personally believe that reputable zoos are a positive in the world we currently live in.
Hunting also needs to be looked at objectively. Many people hunt, and for many different reasons.
Poor people will hunt because it's is free food. Some risk they're lives to do it. Some places like Tanzania will kill poachers. We need to look into removing that incentive, as in, we need to reduce global poverty.
I hunt because one deer will be most of my meat for a year. The price to have someone else cut it up makes it cost the same as cheap grocery store ground beef, but it tastes better and is much more eco friendly than that cute would have been.
Rich people BS hunting like I imagine you're referring to is BS, but they pay big money to do it. The money they spend on that one animal funds the preservation of many times more animals, and by having a legal process to do it, there is less incentive to do it illegally, where accurate counts of animals taken can't be done.
The first example I can think of showing the success of this is the American Alligator. They were almost wiped out, but now they flourish because people want to hunt and/or eat them. I think it's something like 10 are raised fire every one that is allowed to be hunted. I'll admit, it's a bit like strange logic at first, but there are success stories to show it works.
I love animals. I even take care of the spiders at my house the best I can. But I hunt ethically as possible, just one legal deer a year. That deer lived a better life than a feed lot cow, didn't need to clear cut or pollute land to live, and it was appreciated for it's sacrifice every day by me, and I do my best to not waste a scrap of that meat, because I had to do the hard part myself.
I've met unethical hunters, and I won't associate with them. They're trash like any other cruel person. But most are regular people.
Unrelated: How do you conserve a whole deer for an entire year? You freeze the crap out of it? lol
We drop them off at a beef farm for processing. They pack it up all nice like you'd get it from a butcher shop, mainly in pound size packaging. We get from 60 to 80 pounds typically. Then it goes in the freezer.
You can also donate them to the poor through the Game Commission I think. It's our family's primary source of meat though. I just empty my freezer by Thanksgiving and it have room for it all. I occasionally find some that's from the last season and it's still always been fine.
Here's one pack of ground meat from last year I still have. We also got jerky sticks, sausage, and stew cubes and loins. They're just wrapped in butchers paper.
Found a tenderloin piece hidden away too.
How can it be ethical to take a sentient being's life against its will? If it lived a good life it is even worse to end it.
I don't totally disagree with you. Many animals from bugs to mice and birds are killed in the process of farming and the delivery of those goods to market.
If I hunt a deer, I can tell you exactly what my environmental cost was, exactly one deer. It's not something I'm proud of, it's just getting food for my home. I'm very grateful to it, and appropriate the sacrifice I asked of it.
You don't have to agree with me on that. If you don't use any animal products, I appreciate your decision. But no supply chain is free of environmental cost, and I think it's fair to ask you to keep that in mind too.
Because humans are powerful enough that we are a bit like gods, and we have to make these choices between which lives we keep and which lives we kill.
Is it ethical to allow the hunting of African game if that money funds the conservation of many more animals? We have to make that trade off. Ethics are subjective, and I'm firmly on the side of allowing hunting as are many other people.
In New Zealand, as with other isolated islands, there's a unique population of indigenous birds that are now being massacred by introduced mammals. Is it ethical to hunt and trap and poison the introduced pests to save the indigenous birds. We have to make that choice.
A runaway trolley is going to kill 5 humans unless you switch it to another track where it will only kill 1 human. Is that ethical?
A politician could choose to lower the speed limit of a road to 10 km/h, saving lives but costing the economy, quality of life, and future election wins. Is that ethical?
Ethics are subjective, but we have to choose.
I see only humans as sentient so no question of ethics there. Though sentience by itself isn't sufficient unless you have a very shallow sense of ethics. For example self-defense can involve taking a being's life against it's will. But that in no way suggests the action was unethical.