by Marc Bekoff, Ph.D. in Animal Emotions
A new essay in the magazine Conservation by science writer Warren Cornwall called “There Will Be Blood” is a must read for anyone interested in keeping up with current discussions and debates about the supposed need to kill animals of one species to save those of another species. The question at hand in this fine essay is, “Should barred owls be killed to save endangered spotted owls?” (See also “Birds and Us: Should Cormorants Be Killed to Save Salmon?“). Spotted owls are shy birds who favor ancient forests that are disappearing due to logging in the northwestern United States, and they are threatened by larger and more aggressive barred owls who have migrated west from their original homes on the east coast of the United States.
A conservation problem from hell
At the beginning of his piece Mr. Cornwall writes, “The pressure to reach for a gun to help save one animal from another is stronger than ever. And it has triggered a conservation problem from hell.” He’s right. Mr. Cornwall also notes that the history of conservation is “tinged with blood.” For example, noted conservationists John Audubon and Aldo Leopold were quite comfortable killing members of one species to save members of another species, and so too are many conservationists nowadays. Mr. Cornwall provides some summary statistics for animals who were killed for conservation. These include 1.1 million lake trout and 60 California sea lions. There also are plans in the works to kill 16,000 double-crested cormorants to protect salmon and to poison 4000 ravens to help the greater sage grouse.
The United States government also sanctions mass and wanton killing. Mr. Cornwall’s summaries of body counts of animals killed by Wildlife Services, aka Murder Inc., is truly sickening. Individuals working for Wildlife Services kill millions of animals every year, including two million European starlings and more than one million brown-headed cowbirds. It’s really heartening that their murderous ways are under investigation by members of congress and various organizations including Project Coyote and Predator Defense (see also).
Unacceptable alternatives and a planned killing experiment: Is there a suitable exit strategy?
Concerning the owls, there are varied opinions. Bob Sallinger, conservation director of the Audubon Society of Portland, Oregon, notes, “On the one hand, killing
Exposing the Big Game 
I swear to God, this country is so effed up!!
This is a disturbing trend I’ve seen in recent years – instead of curtailing our own numbers and activities, we blame habitat competition for the limited amount we have left wildlife and try to adjust population numbers! Besides being flat-out unethical and wrong, it is going to result in a vicious cycle of more and more killing of other life as our population continues to grow, and we take more and more habitat for logging, energy and all of the other wasteful things we feel we need. We can see this with the destruction of wild horse herds where the government completely ignores the effects of grazing on the landscape, we can see it with wolves and ungulates – there’s a study out that blames declining moose numbers on increase in wolf population, but in reality probably there are a lot of factors contributing to decline in moose numbers, the biggest one being humans!
The exit strategy from man wildlife management is stop! We, man, and wildlife agencies and their hunter and trapper and fishermen and hunting seasons instruments do not know enough about ecology to be playing God with species and choosing which to farm, which to protect. Let nature stupid (s)! This “management” is the mistake of state wildlife agencies, federal wildlife agencies, species specific conservationists, the Aldo Leopold(s), who wised up. Most man management is self-centered actions which are usually crazy nonsense based on myth, lies and self-centered thinking, and delusions of adequacy. We should just do what we can to protect and provide habitat, stop sport killing and sport targets farming, protect ESA and EPA, elect wildlife friendly politicians, revamp the wildlife agencies (maybe fire and start over), expose the abuse and don’t be shy about showing the violence against animals evident in some of our squeamish conservation members and their squeamish reactions, else it is too abstract and easy to ignore. Species have been “going against species forever” so let it be. We hear these rationalizations or mistaken thinking in state wildlife and federal wildlife agencies: Kill predators to protect ungulates, kill raptors to protect game birds, kill sea lions, seals and cormorants to protect fisheries, kill “invasive species” to protect the ones some humans want more. Wildlife biologists are consumed with management of species when they should be consumed with the management of their bedfellows, hunters and trappers and fishermen. The only species needing management is man.
Reblogged this on Ann Novek–With the Sky as the Ceiling and the Heart Outdoors.