@emma9
Your argument is kinda weak when you say "I simply detest the inhumane and needless slaughter of beautiful living beings, merely because someone wants an exotic dish on the table. Culture my ass, no animal deserves to suffer like that just so a population can continue the medieval practices of their forefathers."
and then go onto say,"If only I had a license to kill and unlimited access to firearms, I would go around putting bullets in the heads of any man, woman or child that so much dares to kill an animal for sport. Just so they know what it's like to have their lives cut short merely because someone is after the cheap thrill of hunting."
Why? You say your against inhumane treatment and then advocate inhumane treatment when you dislike what a person does. Personally I'd rather have people who do things against the law, no matter how morbid, to rot in jail. I also disagree about murdering people to save whales. What you say is kinda sick and twisted in my opinion, no offense but thats how I take it. Though I can understand your distaste for what you believe is wrong, I don't care to go that far in examples or retribution.
As for numbers, thats how conservation goes, by the numbers. The government uses it for thinning out populations or protecting populations when needed and also to gather data on said populations, track their movements, etc... Hence why numbers are important.
As for humans, human populations are different to me then animals, people can be controlled through laws, animals can't. Its a broad idea but think of why we take census', to help understand whats going on within our populations. If a population gets to dense, it tends to direct people to fix it. How that affects the human population? Look at building developments, man makes a bigger building. Whereas animals, for example wild boar, get to high in density and can be corrected over time due to starvation from lacking resources. Since man is competing with boars over resources, like corn, man usually shoots said boar and saves the corn that he planted while correcting the population.
As for whales, they are considered a resource of meat and can be rightly hunted and managed like boar if they have a surplus in population. They are also competing against other whale populations and other fish too. So by thinning out one population a little could improve another struggling population. But we could also mess this up indirectly by fishing to. For instance, fish eat smaller fish which eat plankton which what whales eat. Its one big picture that is complicated, understanding it is easy managing it is hard.
Is whaling the answer? I don't know, man can shift the balance of a ecosystem where the minke could thrive due to our current involvement in fishing and make other whale populations suffer or it could just be us causing other populations suffer apart from the minke whale.
As for methods of killing, I'm with you on the painless part, I'd rather have a animal not suffer. I personally have shot and killed animals, shooting animals I think is more humane imo. Most animals I shoot die within seconds if not instantly. I also like instant death when it goes with slaughtering animals in a slaughter houses, like cows with the pneumatic piston, though I don't care for the zap and cut method when dealing with chickens and pigs. Now that I think of it whaling doesn't really have a quick way of killing, unless you used a large taser to stun it but it seems most whalers use the harpoon it until it bleeds out. Which I don't care for... I guess I didn't really think it through to much, my mistake.
Though some people may be against hunting and/or meat, I understand. I don't view hunting as a sport, rather a way to get meat(actually better tasting meat). On the meat side, I have no qualms about eating a animal, I view cattle as a animal and a resource for meat.
A good show to watch on this isn't whale wars imo, try watching "kill it, cook it, eat it," its a BBC program on eating animals. Which is the main reason why this goes on, maybe there needs to be a program on about conservation? I don't think a hunting show would really count for this but then again when does a conservation show have the shock value like Whale Wars?
Many might not know but once the Wood Duck once was in such a decline that some thought it might be extinctable(I made up a word but its a good one) due to loss of nestable habitat. It then rebounded thanks to the building of duck boxes near swamps and is still hunted today. They are beautiful ducks I enjoy watching them and I'll bag one every now and then during hunting season.
Since the main focus is on the whales, the underlying problems is whale meat and how its collected and also the populations. The main problem is that the current way we harvest is bad and also that the populations are bad(Minke is arguable). When both are considered good would we still have a problem with whaling for meat? I personally think it would be ok for most and then we'd have the PETA types still out there....
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