Bill,
Let's hope your venison roast contains no lead fragments.
We must ban lead hunting ammunition!
Tom Mathews
In a message dated 4/18/2011 3:24:42 P.M. Central Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
This is starting to sound like a "Perfect vs. Good" argument, as in "The
perfect becomes the enemy of the good."
Protection and preservation of our seriously beleaguered natural
communities and ecosystems is a very high level Good.
One can be highly principled in adhering a standard of personal behavior
that forbids killing of animals, or doing anything that contributes to the
killing of animals, e.g. become a vegan, which may be a very high level
personal Good.
However, universally applying such a standard (the Perfect) can create an
inverted tragedy of the commons: unchecked deer herds decimate entire
natual communities.
Systematically applying checks to a destructive force (a rampantly
over-populated deer herd) that is ravaging our remnant natural heritage is a
contributory good to the higher good of ecosytem and natural communities
protection.
In a perfect world, perhaps, Iowa would be a wilderness of prairie,
savanna, forest, and wetlands. Free-ranging wolf packs, stalking cougars,
lumbering bears, and stealthy coyotes would check deer and elk populations. And
when the predators had held sway too long and deer got scarce, the
fang-bearers would decline, and their prey would rebound.
I would love to see enough wolves and cougars to compete around here with
Iowa deer hunters. And just how likely is that?
I'm for orchids. And white pine seedlings. Low nesting warblers.
Our industrial farmers are giving deer more than enough help...at the
expense of orchids, white pines, warblers, and so much else.
I don't shoot deer, but I do approve others' taking good aim. Often.
Bill Witt
PS. Personal disclaimer: If somebody gives me a nice venison roast, I
will roast it (with onions, carrots, celery, mushrooms, olive oil, rosemary,
bay leaves and a bit of chicken broth), and then I'll uncork a nice
Bordeaux to wash it down. (I'm only suffering through all this for the orchids'
sake, of course.)
On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 2:24 PM, Cindy Hildebrand <[log in to unmask]
(mailto:[log in to unmask]) > wrote:
Phyllis, I'm afraid I still don't really understand. To me, it seems
obvious that killing wolves so that human hunters will have more caribou and
moose to hunt is very different than killing deer so that many species of
orchids, lilies, butterflies, songbirds, and herps won't decline or even
disappear. In certain parts of the East Coast where deer hunting is not
allowed, some wildflower species haven't been seen for decades, and low-nesting
songbirds can no longer nest. In some parts of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania
that have too many deer, native plant communities are being decimated. The
only plant species that can survive to reproduce are those unpalatable to
deer.
I grew up near a state park in southeast Michigan where an anti-hunting
organization prevented a much-needed deer hunt for years. By the time a
sharpshooter was finally hired, there were two hundred deer per square mile,
fourteen species of wildflowers had completely disappeared from the park,
many other wildflower species were barely hanging on, and songbirds,
butterflies, and other animals were seriously suffering. Aldo Leopold was right
in saying that a mountain lives "in mortal fear of its deer" because of what
deer overpopulation can do. So do other ecosystems.
I don't want that level of deer damage in Iowa. Some of it is happening
here already.
I respect and greatly appreciate what you do for conservation. However,
if you are saying that we shouldn't kill deer in Iowa, then yes, you and I
will have to respectfully agree to disagree on this one. Best wishes --
ch
Cindy Hildebrand
[log in to unmask] (mailto:[log in to unmask])
Ames, IA 50010
"A tree is an aerial garden, a botanical migration from the sea, from
those earliest plants, the seaweeds; it is a purchase on crumbled rock, on
ground. The human, standing, is only a different upsweep and articulation of
cells. How treelike we are, how human the tree." (Gretel Ehrlich)
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