Documents released by the agency show a maximum of about 450,000 barred owls would be shot over three decades after the birds from the eastern U.S. encroached into the West Coast territory of two owls: northern spotted owls and California spotted owls. The smaller spotted owls have been unable to compete for food and habitat with the invaders.
That sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Conservation isn’t about getting all animals to live together in harmony or some shit. An invasive species is threatening to cause the extinction of another, so the former needs to be curbed to save the latter.
Maybe if they could be picked up and moved somewhere else that would be better. But how exactly are you going to mass migrate half a million owls?
I don’t fully agree. Extinction can be natural, what right do humans have to intervene in this? Just because conservation makes us feel nice?
Each situation is extremely intricate of course, so maybe this is the right choice in this instance, such as preventing a larger impact to a local ecosystem, or if the barred owls were introduced directly unnaturally. But direct human intervention should always be greatly scrutinized. We already do enough damage indirectly from exploiting global resources.
as someone who’s put thousands of hours into conservation, your take is extremely stupid
Nice, what kinda conservation? I really regret not taking environmental bio courses in college, especially the hands on ones.
Thinking of volunteering for my city’s summer plant a tree thing. Seems like a place to vibe and learn how to do stuff with plants (which i always was bad at in like elementary school… I am so sad my little plants we grew in cut plastic bottles would die T_T)
There are no natural systems untouched by human actions, and there is no way to separate the consequences of a changing environment like extinction from human activity.
Conservation is a movement to preserve the natural systems that were here before industrialisation, and are here now, not to "let nature run it’s course*.
what right do humans have to intervene in this?
There are no rights in nature, rights are a part of the fabric of society. We want to conserve nature and so we will.
i wonder if there is a way to distinguish between interventions which are well-thought out and legitimately helpful and stuff like settlers killing and attempting to wipe out the buffalo.
it always seemed to me like the discussion between gmo and non-gmo, like there are no non artificially selected for agricultural crops.
im probably wrong but i always had a sense it was the corporate or moneyed interest that made things worse, i can’t see a genuinely materialist objection towards doing our best to interfere in the least harmful way possible, humans will do it anyway i think… might as well do it with good intentions and a long tern focus
idk, my background is in the natural sciences and plenty of folks here tend to be “lets see just how fked up we can make stuff” so maybe the brainworms have already gotten to me…
And what happens when this intervention causes new unforeseen consequences? How many disruptions until we leave well enough alone?
We don’t live in nature. We literally live in a human society. Rights do apply to us within our own realm lmao.
Edit: You probably stack rocks.
@Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net pls check in so we no ur ok
It’s not made clear why barred owls are encroaching, is this our fault? If not I don’t see why we should get involved.
Maybe we should be shooting European starlings or removing kudzu instead
Barred owls are encroaching west because of climate change and habitat destruction. It’s 100% our fault.
Real “fucking for virginity” vibes right here… then again, its invasive species…
