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Is it our job to stop natural extinction situation?

HuumanCreed

HuumanCreed

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Westminster Maryland
www.latimes.com

The federal government plans to kill half a million West Coast owls

The federal government has proposed a plan to shoot 500,000 barred owls to save another owl species that inhabits California. Foes say it's a reckless plan.
www.latimes.com www.latimes.com

Lets keep thing as non political as possible.

Not sure if natural extinction is a real term. But I can't think of anything else that sound accurate. Basically because one specie of owl is pushing another specie to extinction. Is it our job to stop it? Especially if we are not the cause of it.

Basically the BARRED owls diet is very adaptable, they can eat a lot of different things and are bigger. While the SPOTTED owls diet is very particular, they are picky eater and are smaller. So the barred owls are slowly pushing the spotted owls out of their habitants and if the situation is left unchecked, the spotted owls face extinction.

Honestly, I'm not even a little sad for the spotted owls. Isn't this what nature and evolution is all about? Are we actually going AGAINST nature and the order of things if we try to help the spotted owls?

This is not similar to other situations where we are at fault, like we introduced plants/animal not native to the area and are responsible for the outcome.

So me personally, I say let nature be, and if the spotted owls are going to be extinct in a few decades, that's evolution. But I'm opening to changing my mind if you have good arguments.
 
You are assuming that we havent played a role but how much of the spotted owls preferred or primary habitat is gone due to human expansion? If our expansion has pushed them into a smaller area where they are forced to compete against a superior critter, we played a role. I dont know the answer to that and I am not sure I support killing a bunch of barred owls either.

The one thing I can tell you is barred owls make the turkeys gobble and that gets them a vote in my book.
 
As stated above I’d bet money it’s people that ultimately caused it with expansion and forcing them to compete, but also it’s natural for species to go extinct, the strong will survive and sometimes that means a whole species but the caviot is them going extinct from natural circumstances is the order of things, people eradicating animals to save a lesser species is agregious. There has been a natural order to things for eternity and I think as people became less nomadic and started building we’ve ruined it and changed it forever. We’re the only animals that coddle our weak instead of letting natural order rule, if we didn’t do that there would be way less people and in turn smaller and less cities and infrastructure. I’m not an overpopulation guy by any means and I think it’s not a real thing and I’m torn between that though and sympathy for the weak. But One has to ask, at what cost? Instead of using our greater intellect and thumbs and speech to build worlds for ourselves shielded from nature which is a huge red flag, we should use our advantages to live hand in hand with the rest of what inhabits the planet. Goodness I sound like a hippie lol
 
We cull animals of a large variety of species for various reasons, so (caveat being I don't know much about the specifics) this one doesn't seem too different to me. I don't know enough to weigh in on the should/shouldn't debate, but on the surface it seems this is somewhat scientifically based, not arbitrary? Meaning it makes a bit more sense than shooting bears and deer after we knock down their habits to build houses and we find them entering our subdivisions and getting into trash cans.

But I dunno if we can really correctly guess. I was just relearning about the chestnut blight and passenger pigeon extinction a bit over a century ago. All because some NYC chestnut vendor wanted to make a bit more profit by selling imported chestnuts instead of US grown, and resulted in widespread accidental destruction. Sometimes we don't know the impacts we will have.
 
thedutchtouch said:
But I dunno if we can really correctly guess. I was just relearning about the chestnut blight and passenger pigeon extinction a bit over a century ago. All because some NYC chestnut vendor wanted to make a bit more profit by selling imported chestnuts instead of US grown, and resulted in widespread accidental destruction. Sometimes we don't know the impacts we will have.
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Yes! I tell people about the American chestnut all the time and nobody knows it seems, it used to be the most abundant tree on North America, nowadays if you plant an American CN it’ll grow for a while but ultimately die. I’ve recently planted some crossed with a chi ease chestnut (very skepticaly planted) and they’re doing good so far after first 6 months.
 
This is a great question. The Barred owl is a challenging example, because it’s uncertain if their movement west was natural range expansion or if it resulted from changes humans made to the environments.

Should we accept Pythons and anacondas that people released in Florida? Or wild Pigs? Should we remove invasive bittersweet vines that gardeners imported from Asia? Should we control deer numbers in places where there are too many or too few? What about those sambar deer that were deposited on an island so they could be hunted - should we get rid of them before they escape the island and populate
Other areas?

These aren’t easy questions. Check out this documentary about wild horses in the western US:

m.imdb.com

Unbranded (2015) ⭐ 7.3 | Documentary, Adventure, Western

1h 46m | PG-13
m.imdb.com m.imdb.com
 
I’d still like to think that our wildlife conservation and management agencies have the best information and intentions for all native species in our country. I’ll defer to them. This is a big statement for me because generally I’m a small government type of guy to begin with. I hold out hope that most of our conversation agencies are still mostly staffed with actual conservationists and not preservationists with the basic premise thst the principles of wildlife management and conservation from the likes of Aldo Leopold and others of that day are still the overall compass heading.
 
I wish Dinosaurs hadn't gone extinct. I always wanted to know what it would be like hunting a T-Rex. lol. I think I would have to get higher than 20 feet up. :tearsofjoy: As for the owls, I think mankind should mind their own darn business and let Mother nature do what Mother nature does. Mankind is so arrogant anyways thinking we can control nature and weather and such. Just my 2 cents. Oh also, when does our government actually get something right anyways?
 
You guys understand that all they are doing is opening up a hunting season and setting a bag limit, right? This is exactly what is done with every game species. Quotas are set to keep numbers at a level that doesn’t put too much pressure on habitat and other species.

The argument being made by the anti hunting group in the article and that many seem to be siding with is the exact same argument the same groups make against all of our hunting seasons and quotas.
 
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Assuming anyone would want to hunt an owl...trophy? Edible? Feathers? Why would anyone want to hunt one? How would that play out anyway? Just stand around and hoot and hope one flies in, lol. Strap a squirrel decoy to the top of your head and wave a cricket bat around when one flies in? What would your buddies say when you told them "I'm quitting turkeys and going all in on owls".
 
Is it a natural extinction, or is it man-made? We've come way past "letting nature take its course". We build and build and encroach so much, that nature doesn't stand a chance unless we bring nature back to where we live. It's time we stop thinking of nature as "out there". The "out there" is getting less and less because of our doing.
 
LAKY said:
Is it a natural extinction, or is it man-made? We've come way past "letting nature take its course". We build and build and encroach so much, that nature doesn't stand a chance unless we bring nature back to where we live. It's time we stop thinking of nature as "out there". The "out there" is getting less and less because of our doing.
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Haha! Nature doesn't stand a chance? I think in the end it will be the other way around.
 
DroptineKrazy said:
I wish Dinosaurs hadn't gone extinct. I always wanted to know what it would be like hunting a T-Rex. lol. I think I would have to get higher than 20 feet up. :tearsofjoy: As for the owls, I think mankind should mind their own darn business and let Mother nature do what Mother nature does. Mankind is so arrogant anyways thinking we can control nature and weather and such. Just my 2 cents. Oh also, when does our government actually get something right anyways?
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Your post made me think of a story.

There's a extremely interesting short story called The Sound of Thunder. It primarily deals on the butterfly effect, but most of the story is about weve perfected time travel, and there's a guiding service that takes people back in time to hunt dinosaurs.
One of the clients wanted a trex in the worst way and talks all high and mighty about taking one.

But when the time comes to pull the trigger he freezes and turns to cowardice. It's described as having the breath of death as rotting meat is stuck in its teeth. And it has eyes like the devil, full of malice and bad intent. Great read 1000020615.png
 
NMSbowhunter said:
Assuming anyone would want to hunt an owl...trophy? Edible? Feathers? Why would anyone want to hunt one? How would that play out anyway? Just stand around and hoot and hope one flies in, lol. Strap a squirrel decoy to the top of your head and wave a cricket bat around when one flies in? What would your buddies say when you told them "I'm quitting turkeys and going all in on owls".
Click to expand...
I would Love owl feathers for native headdresses and other cool stuff I would eventually like to try and craft. When I was a kid one of my Cub Scout projects was making a Sioux Warbonnet. I would someday like to make a Woodlands Indian headdress which I believe consists of owl feathers.
 
I’m gradually radicalizing toward doomerism, I might be there already. Just a fun fact loosely related here - humans and livestock account for 96% of all land mammal biomass, wild animals are now 4%.
 
neonomad said:
I’m gradually radicalizing toward doomerism, I might be there already. Just a fun fact loosely related here - humans and livestock account for 96% of all land mammal biomass, wild animals are now 4%.
Click to expand...
I was thinking I saw somewhere that ants and humans had roughly equal biomass...Lots more ants than humans.
 
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