So I get involved

[ChrisKavanaugh]

It's pouring rain here. We've had a series of heavy storms move in. It's expected, first the brushfires of summer and then potential mudslides, rockslides in the coastal canyons and flooding. I just turned off another NATURE programme on the tellie. Once again some photographer records the pathos of some life and death struggle with the reminder we must not interfere in Nature's great competition. Well, @#&*%!! that rubbish. We've interfered everywhere allready and somebody tells me it's noble to watch a crippled baby elephant suffer on camera for days on end with rescue sanctuaries a day's drive away? Back to my posting. I had a large quantity of meat in the freezer go past it's use date and While out replacing it bought @ 25 lbs of ripped birdseed bags on discount. I spread the seed out during a brief lull in the storm and placed the meat on a large rock . I watched countless birds and the local squirrels stock up and just now saw the grey ghost profile of a coyote gulping down the meat. So I'm interfering with the natural cycle here. Tough

 

[Wayne]

First rate we all effect natural cycles everyday. We all need to give nature a helping hand. :super:

 

[Abbe Osram]

It's pouring rain here. We've had a series of heavy storms move in. It's expected, first the brushfires of summer and then potential mudslides, rockslides in the coastal canyons and flooding. I just turned off another NATURE programme on the tellie. Once again some photographer records the pathos of some life and death struggle with the reminder we must not interfere in Nature's great competition. Well, @#&*%!! that rubbish. We've interfered everywhere allready and somebody tells me it's noble to watch a crippled baby elephant suffer on camera for days on end with rescue sanctuaries a day's drive away? Back to my posting. I had a large quantity of meat in the freezer go past it's use date and While out replacing it bought @ 25 lbs of ripped birdseed bags on discount. I spread the seed out during a brief lull in the storm and placed the meat on a large rock . I watched countless birds and the local squirrels stock up and just now saw the grey ghost profile of a coyote gulping down the meat. So I'm interfering with the natural cycle here. Tough

It could be that the movie maker doesn't want to interfere with the scene of his shooting. I believe that there is a kind of codex between the wild-life photographers not to manipulate the wildlife they are going to show, otherwise anyone can go into the zoo and make a so called wildlife movie. I am just now in a education to get a hunting licence and there they teach a lot about how to help nature. There is a lot of teaching how to balance the predators and how to get the animals survive our strong winters here.
I think you did a great job feeding the animals.

Well done! :biggthump
/Abbe

 

[Adi007]

It amazes me how, on one had we live on a planet where the quality of the air we breathe and wanter that we drink is being degraded by the activities of a small handful of individuals while on the other hand some feel that going to the aid of a creature in distress is somehow going to throw the whole ecosystem out of balance.

 

[leon-1]

It amazes me how, on one had we live on a planet where the quality of the air we breathe and wanter that we drink is being degraded by the activities of a small handful of individuals while on the other hand some feel that going to the aid of a creature in distress is somehow going to throw the whole ecosystem out of balance.

I agree, mans impact on wildlife in the past has been to reduce its numbers to levels where they become almost extinct and then in hindsight complain that we are being overrun by some kind of vermin when we are the ones that have nearly wiped out the predators for these creatures.

Giving a helping hand every now and then is not really interfering, perhaps it is doing something to try and atone for previous sins as a species, lets face it we are always told "do unto others as we would have done unto ourselves", why can this not apply to animals as well, they have just as much right to live as we have.

 

[C_Claycomb]

This isn't meant to sound like a harangue, just my thoughts :roll:


"Helping" wildlife is a very dodgy thing to believe in. Our crude attempts at "helping" have often been what has caused problems in the past.

Chris, you suggest that the filmmakers should have intervened and saved that elephant? Where does that stop? Are the filmmakers to go and save every sick or injured animal they see, or just the ones they point a camera at? Are they to chase away the predators, what if it’s a predator that is sick, are they to go find meat to feed it? Why stop with wild life filmmakers? After all it is a moral thing, everyone should be bound by the same obligations. Where does it end?

What gives us the right to think we SHOULD mess with nature one way or the other, what gives us the right to micro manage that way? If you choose to that is your affair, but I don't think that it is a thing that should, or should not, be done unilaterally.

Help can have unplanned side effects, feeding birds in the UK invariably attracts gray squirrels, which are a pest. The ducks and geese on the town pond can only survive because of all the bread people throw in, but that is hardly a healthy diet. Is such feeding right? It helps keep a totally un-natural concentration of waterfowl in the town.

For a real environmental help, don't buy so much meat that you can't eat it before it goes out of date! The coyotes don't need the help anyway.

 

[Squidders]

This may seem like a really stupid question... why are grey squirrels a pest?

 

[leon-1]

This may seem like a really stupid question... why are grey squirrels a pest?

Partly because they are non indigenous to this country and thier colonisation of areas has greatly affected the red squirrel to the point of almost killing it off totally in the UK.

It can also cause a great deal of damage, but I believe that we have members who are trying to turn around the grey squirrel problem by eating them ):

 

[Raz]

Squidders,

Although there is no real proof of them directly interfering with red squirrel populations (they still live happily together in some areas) and live very different lives. They are still a menace.
Grey squirrels are egg pinchers. We cleared a very quiet desolate wood of them by shooting once a week; the result was a wonderful chorus of songbirds.
Any opportunity to take one should be jumped at. I'm also told helping them is infact agaisnt the law. Someone else may be able to clairfy that though.

[Editied to remove personal opinion]

 

[TheViking]

My personal opinion is that wildlife has lived and survived from the big bang (well almost) and till now and probably will do many years ahead. I guess I'm pretty neutral on that point when it comes to helping or putting away animals.

If I for example saw an animal lying suffering, I wouldn't just let things slide. Who gives a d**n calling a vet? :roll: If I had a proper object to put it away with I'd do it, else not (there's no reason to attempt to do such a thing without proper materials, that would just make it suffer more). But I would carry my dog for miles if it could save it's life. It's called not just letting things slide.....

If it was an animal who could be host of rabies, I wouldn't of course. If it was possible to save the animal, say a dog, I'd take it to a vet. Depends if it was deadly injured. (my old dog was driven down and he had been dehydrated for 2 weeks before that, he wouldn't drink anything and he had broke one leg, letting him live until the leg was healed and he was stabilised again, would be cruelty, so we chose to put him away) In that situation one should call a vet.

I can surely say, the bigger the animal, the harder it is to put away.
I once put away a kitten, because it was a 100% necessarity! Not going to details here though. Not an exciting feeling... So all we can hope for is never to get in a situation where we would have to decide such things.

 

[RovingArcher]

There are many viewpoints on this and I for one believe that under natural conditions, it is our obligation not to interfere where it isn't our business. When we aid a species in survival, when Nature has deemed that it should die back and start fresh, we make that species weak and that includes humans.

However, things aren't as Nature intended, because humans affect the natural cycle every day and do it in a big way. A simple fence can affect the migration of a species, or seperate a species from it's food and water sources. Daming a river competely changes eco systems. Agriculture throws everything out of whack. Populations explode, which causes undo stress on an overloaded system, which is being attacked by development, toxins that are introduced into the system, Natures continued program of adding and deleting species, etc.

What harm saving a baby elephant would have is beyond my ability to say one way or the other. Does saving a herd of Elk from starving in a severe winter storm, weaken the species? Or, does it help to save a species that is already being threatened by man's continued attack on the global environment?

I for one, commend Chris for not wasting a precious resource and doing it in a way that helped critters that have been surviving man's encroachment, drought, fires and now a series of fierce storms, landslides and flooding. Under normal circumstances, I'd say let Nature takes it's course and go out and collect what meat and hides ya can before it spoils. But, these aren't normal circumstances.

 

[Moine]

Chris,

Apart from feeding the critters, this is interesting food for thought. Thanks for that.

Should a crippled elephant be shot on film or helped?

Why not both?

What will be the effects of you feeding the birds and coyotes with old frozen meat ?

1 - that won't waste the meat. Good thing... but the bacteria that would have eaten it were living creatures as well, no ?
2 - that might make an association in the coyote's mind : this house = food. So that coyote might very well come back. We usually don't feed wild animals because we don't want them to cause problems, not because we care for them. They DO eat carcasses and anything they can in the wild. I fail to see how it interfered with natural cycles... A free meal is something pretty darn natural to me...
3 - you shouldn't have let that meat get that old anyways. You should have eaten it (invite friends for a giant stew or something...).

Cheers,

David

 

[Squidders]

Why is everyone coming from the viewpoint that humans aren't part of nature? We're right there... see?!... under "Mammal" *point*

If a dolphin helps a drowning man do the other dolphins give it a hard time about the state of the planet?

If an orca kills a whale and only eats its head, do all the other orcas start ranting about it being wasteful?

We as human animals have a respontibility to behave like animals and replace our high horses with shetland ponies.

 

[Wayne]

It could be argued that the colonisation of the Uk by Grey squirrels is a natural process as we are a part of natures cycle. You cannot say that Grey Squirrels are horrible egg eaters. They are not horrible they are just performing a natural behaviour. I feel the film crew should have acted to either end the elephants suffering or had it treated. Humans make value judegements daily about which animals are worth saving.

i personally think it is wrong to make the small pox virus extinct. I'm not saying its a good thing before i am lynched. I just don't feel that we have the moral right to make anything deliberately extinct.

what do you think?

 

[Raz]

'Horrible' is purely a subjective expression, by it I really meant copious. I have cleared that up with an edit.

I have spent about an hour reworking an answer, and I simply can’t come to a conclusion myself, which is quite a problem as a student of conservation biology!

I however do believe as beings with the capacity for empathy it is our duty to protect less fortune life from whatever plight or disease afflicts them seriously. To do not so would surely be morally unjustifiable.

 

[ChrisKavanaugh]

I am not talking absolutes. The particular documentary has been on before, and has drawn equal criticism from my local DVM, PETA, a world renowned biologist and the local NRA hunting safety instructor. The issue I wished to raise was this proprietary elitism various individuals and groups place on the natural world. If theres an 'unnatural world' the industrial music genre can have full legal rights to it Captain Watson of the Sea Shepherd Society was once harranged by a heckler because his ships use petroleum. He was somewhat exasperated asking how he could enforce international maritime laws if he had to push the boats while swimming :?: I can look at 'the big picture' and understand deer culls. Yet conversly I thrill at seeing animal programmes that show entire comunities and emergency services mustering to save a moose fallen through lake ice. Remember the 3 California Grey Whales trapped in Alaska sea ice? It came down to an Inuit HUNTER with a chainsaw who figured out cutting air holes leading to open water was the solution. My local area has, and is being scabbed over with gated communities of asphalt and exotic plants. I used to open my window to the smell of white sage and a pair of geat horned owls in the oaktree. Now I have some family growing water hungry iceplant to act as a firebreak. I'm monitoring the increasing erosion of their artificially graded and filled Estate under that heavy groundcover. It will probably come down into my window. thats fair, who knows what bit of nature my place displaced. So I do a little penance. The meat was a gift from a friend moving out of state and allready suspect. The coyote is the grandson of a female named Suzi I befriended several years ago. I know, because I've watched them to where they think I'm a coyote. The local dumpster ( dustbin ) would be an enticement, were it not for the racoons nobody believes are still here- along with skunks, possums and a weasel!