Seldom have I read a more tragic story than the extinction of the passenger pigeon, flocks that stretched as far as the eye could see, one tier above another, taking an entire day to pass overhead.
In just 200 years, Europeans arrived in America and decimated 5 billion birds for cheap meat, feathers, target practice and fun. Sometimes they would bring down several birds at a time, merely because they could. The passenger pigeon died out in the wild in Ohio about 1900. The last survivor died (of loneliness I’m sure) in captivity in 1914.Reminiscent of the violent mentality behind this shortsighted and consumptive paradigm free of remorse, 85% of Bend residents voted in a Source poll in favor of killing resident geese – because they poop! Are you kidding?! Walk around it! Stay at home! Quit whining!
Intrinsic value: The right of other life forms to exist and live in peace, for their own sakes, regardless of their instrumental value to humans.
This article appears in Oct 15-21, 2009.
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Wasn’t just the hunters although they definitely did play a part in the extinction.
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/779939pass.html
I concur Vanessa, but the intention, allegedly expressed in the Source poll results, to exterminate the local population of Geese BECAUSE THEY POOP highlights a new level of stupidity – even worse than managing to wipe out billions of birds for food (arguably a much better reason, though still regrettable).
Some people seem to hold on to the primitive and ridiculous belief that all the animals on Earth were specifically put here for our use and we can do with them what we damn well please. They are seemingly ineducable. The logical end-point of their ignorance is a barren monotonous earth.
Well, it is doubtful that killing a few geese will bring about their extinction, and as the article I posted concluded it was not just the killing of the pigeons that led to their extinction. What is sad is that the information about the breeding habits of the passenger pigeon was not available at the time.
However, when you speak of the uneducatable one should also consider what is happening in SW California to the farmers over the so-called “Delta Smelt” with the loss of 90,000 jobs, millions of pounds of crops, and the causing of the importation of food which could have been avoided if a little common sense was used. The same is true of what happened in the Klamath Basin a couple of years ago.
One has to always wonder why it is that some feel the animal has more rights then humans unless it comes to the topic of abortion.
You’re kidding me. Swipies is trying to steer a discussion about geese…as in the birds…toward abortion? Fer Pete’s sake.
Hmmm, and someone was steering the conversation to animal rights over human rights without objection from you.
Guess you proved my point.