Killing Animals to Save Them
Ronald Bailey | March 30, 2007, 7:58am
There is no Persian cat shortage. The world is in no danger of running out of chickens. Yet the world has fewer and fewer elephants. lions, tigers, giraffes and so forth. Why? In part it is because no one owns wild animals and consequently they are nuisances rather than resources. Many species in the U.S. also declined when they were unowned. For example, by 1900 in the U.S. the number of bison had dropped from millions to just 200. Today, there are 500,000, and 95 percent are privately owned.
In the New Scientist conservationist Mike Norton-Giriffiths asks the right question: Whose wildlife is it anyway? (subscription required). He notes:
Since 1977, the country [Kenya] as lost between 60 and 70 per cent of its large wild animals.
Why?
The two immediate reasons for the dramatic decline in animal numbers are destruction of habitat and uncontrolled poaching. The economic driving force behind both these is the fact that for most landowners the returns available from agriculture greatly exceed those from livestock, so it pays them to plough up the rangelands. Everything is loaded against landowners making money from wildlife...
If Kenya wishes to maintain significant wildlife populations outside its protected areas, then it has to ensure that landowners can gain an income from wildlife that is competitive with what they can earn from agriculture and livestock.
What should be done? Norton-Griffiths argues:
First, user rights, and perhaps even ownership rights, need to be devolved from the state to landowners so that they can treat wildlife as a marketable commodity. Second, restrictions on income-generating opportunities need to be relaxed to permit activities such as ranching, the sale of live wild animals, the culling of locally abundant populations, the marketing of trophies, and the most valuable of all-sport hunting.
Norton-Griffiths notes that recent legislative moves in this direction have been blocked by lobbying from big Western non-government organizations including the International Fund for Animal Welfare and the Humane Society. He concludes:
If they succeed in derailing the wildlife policy review, the decline in the country's wildlife will carry inexorably on. That would hardly be a victory for conservation.
But it would be a victory for blind pig-headed anti-market ideology. And that may be what's more important than saving wildlife to the NGOs.
Disclosure: I don't hunt. I'm a terrible shot and skinning and gutting game is way too labor intensive for me. However, I certainly do eat game that someone else has killed and cleaned. For example, I've enjoyed squirrels, rabbits, groundhogs, opposums, elk (road kill), venison, bison, alligator, caribou (tastes nastily of liver to me) and springbok (the tastiest meat ever).
biologist | March 30, 2007, 7:25pm | #
Gamito, your ignorance of a subject doesn't make the conclusions of others regarding the subject begging the question (or even
begging, nor
begging the question). My comment is no more an instance of begging the question than is Ron's post. If you don't agree with the ethics and goals of conservation biology, fine, just say so. If you don't know anything about the arguments for conservation, try reading a book. Don't try to dress up your ignorance of a topic as the commission of a logical fallacy on my part.
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Would it not an Endangered Species Act imply that some animals would be desired by someone?"
No, but it implies that we as a society recognize the wisdom and ethics of practicing the precautionary principle with regard to environmental conservation.
"...
considering that the government is not this omniscient being that can simply "know" which species needs protecting - SOMEONE must value that particular species sufficiently to lobby for its protection..."
well, there are these people, let's call them "biologists" who work for a governmental agency called the "U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service", which is charged by Congress, in part, to identify and protect species that are in danger of going extinct. No lobbying is necessary, although it occurs.
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The point is that there would be more than enough people interested enough in a certain species to protect them by private means."
Nice unsupported assertion. Here's a counter-example: passenger pigeons were once so common that during migration, they were said to block the sunlight through the sheer numbers of them flying overhead. People cared about them, because they were an excellent, free food source. No one owned them. There was no governmental protection. They're extinct now, even though people wanted them around.
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The thing with certain persons is that they want to externalize their costs (their interest in saving a particular species) towards the rest of us by way of a violent imposition by the State - something we freedom-lovers call "fascism"."
Other people like to externalize their costs more subtly, by ruining the environment we all have to live in and derive the natural resources from that allow us to have an economy, then expect others to deal with the mess they make, from contaminated water and air, to eradicating species until ecosystems collapse, and the services ecosystems provide for free, just by being left alone, have to be provided at some expense.
It seems to me that the downfall of the free market and the law of supply and demand is evident in environmental protection, since commodities don't have much economic value until they're rare. I'd rather not wait until oxygen is rare to make sure we have enough to breathe. How many are willing to risk their access to clean drinking water on "just in time" inventory systems?
Gamito | March 30, 2007, 11:15pm | #
your ignorance of a subject doesn't make the conclusions of others regarding the subject begging the question (or even begging, nor begging the question).
No, you beg the question when you ASSUME your conclusion: That species protection acts are needed because people do not value the species contained in such acts. However, for this to be true, the species on such lists would have to appear as if by magic. That, or SOMEONE valued such species ENOUGH to lobby for their protection.
Due to your own bias against people's valuation of things, or your own collectivism, you assume people only value those things that will give them money. This is your mistake, so do not try to dress YOUR bias or chauvinism by claiming I ignore a subject.
well, there are these people, let's call them "biologists" who work for a governmental agency called the "U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service", which is charged by Congress, in part, to identify and protect species that are in danger of going extinct. No lobbying is necessary, although it occurs.
And of course, biologists do NOT make subjective valuations when it comes to species, right? Nor do the legislators that vote on such measures, right?
Here's a counter-example: passenger pigeons were once so common that during migration, they were said to block the sunlight through the sheer numbers of them flying overhead. People cared about them, because they were an excellent, free food source.
There was no governmental protection. They're extinct now, even though people wanted them around.
Indeed. Your knowledge of economics is wanting - as they became even more scarce, their price would have gone up, encouraging their domestication. Since this did not happen, the answer could be that they became exting more due to their flocking in big numbers, making them vulnerable to disease, like Lyme disease.
It seems to me that the downfall of the free market and the law of supply and demand is evident in environmental protection, since commodities don't have much economic value until they're rare.
Which explains why in places with no free markets, environments were pristine and clean... no, wait, it was NOT.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3854/is_199807/ai_n8795240
