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| Raccoon |
There’s plenty to do for animals in our state, including support for
pending legislation and a continuous fight on numerous fronts against the
Division of Fish and Wildlife (DFW), a hunter-backed state agency that
ostensibly supports wildlife.
But it’s a big world, with animal jeopardy everywhere -- and
misunderstood, under-appreciated animals too.
The columnist linked below writes appealingly in praise of “ugly,
unloved animals” who in fact do a lot of good.
Opossums, for instance, consume cockroaches, carrion and venomous
snakes; while the vulture, “soarer of air currents,” eats gore, completing
other animals’ life cycle.
Mosquitoes, wasps, spiders, red bats and rat snakes can seem at first
to be no friends of ours, yet they serve as food for birds we love; they spin
silk that supports bird nests and babies; they eat caterpillars who forage in
our gardens; they catch the moth larvae that can destroy trees; they thin out
the field mouse population.
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| Opossum |
Meanwhile, in Vietnam
Scenic, exotic and accessible,
Vietnam was for some time a place where “new-to-science” species of plants and
animals were discovered during the last 30 years. Comparatively crammed with national parks
where these anomalies could once be readily seen, this Southeast Asian country is now the
scene of widespread animal elimination.
Eventually writing about all this, two tourists were warned off these
parks, where wildlife has been decimated.
The resulting article, “Vietnam’s Empty Forests” (linked below) tells
the story: “The Asian nation is a hot spot of biological diversity, but local
and international conservation groups are struggling to halt what amounts to
animal genocide.”
The “usual suspects” are blamed:
habitat destruction, human population growth, appetite for animal parts
(used in “medicine”) and animal meat (served in upscale restaurants). Increasing tourism is a potential threat:
high-rise hotels going up on the edge of wildlife parks.
And, as in so many other places, Vietnam has become a world center for
criminal wildlife trafficking, with low-paid rangers often abetting poachers. Some species are already wiped out, while in
safe pockets of the country, tiny populations hang on.
“So it goes.”
New elephant danger
While probably
appealing to residents of rural areas, where human-elephant conflicts occur
without sufficient means to curtail them, the decision has hit conservationists
hard. Botswana, after all, has the
largest elephant population in Africa -- about 1/3 of the continent’s (ever-shrinking)
total.
One argument
supporting resumption of hunting is that it will balance the country’s economic
needs with conservationists’ demands. Further,
the current population, resulting from the ban, is argued to be unsustainable. And ultimately, sacrificing 700 elephants (to trophy hunters,
who presumably will pay for their murderous “sport”) may save more elephants.
That’s very hard
to see. Once African elephants are gone
and functionally extinct, they are gone!
#
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