BBC News Boar cull?

[gbal]

Yes and we know of several humanoid species in particular the Neanderthal that simply 'disappeared' between then and now, Nobody knows 100% why but the suspicion is that the process was neither concensual or pleasant for the losers. Nowadays we call that 'ethnic cleansing' and 'genocide' and put people on trial at The Hague and give them 20 to 30 year prison terms. So what happened in pre-history is pretty well irrelevant to todays' situation.

 

What several people are saying is that we live in a crowded world with an increasing number of scientists warning we are pushing soil, water and food resources to the point of irretrievable breakdown. If we step over a cliff-edge, such a reducing ocean fish-stock species which still feed a significant percentage of the global population (and not just human remember, there are other animals with the right and need to eat such resources) below sustainable levels, there is simply no return, not within a generation or two at least.

 

The whole deer, boar, rat, fox, grey squirrel, magpie etc population issue is a subset of this. How can they be managed? Should they be? What benefits and disbenefits do their populations bring? How do they impact on human food and resources production, and is that more important than their right to thrive in the wild? Getting answers is incredibly difficult, and I imagine the answers to these various questions and for different species / needs will often contradict each other, but as other posters are saying, the debates are all too often driven by sentimentality, opinions allied to a lack of insight by people with axes to grind, political correctness, and also so far as the actual politicians are concerned, a lack of courage as soon as the going gets rough. (The real-life equivalent of Sir Humphrey's easiest and most effective way of putting government minister Jim Hacker off a policy being to suck his teeth and say he 'admires the minister's courage!')

 

I've no answers and even less expertise, but I do firmly believe we can't suddenly decide it's unethical to stop managing their populations and let them do their own thing in an unnatural countryside environment, one created by man for man over a few thousand years. As an earlier poster said, the LACS no-cull policy on their protect-the-deer-from-the-hunters-reserve was neither successful nor ethical, nor at all pretty. Funny how LACS could do this and suffer nothing more serious than criticism in a few specialist fieldsports magazines and 'right-wing newpapers', but if it was some confused old geezer with a load of scruffy half-starved dogs or cats running around a terraced house, or a smallholder with starving and diseased livestock, the RSPCA would have jumped in, seized, put down, or rehomed the animals and had their owner in the Magistrates Court before you could say 'animal cruelty'.

Much I agree with .

 

When 'god' designed the world,he understood complexity,but was not bloody minded.

When many men come to deal with the world,they are the just the opposite.

 

Gbal

[maxxis35]

Like I said earlier,it goes deeper than boar deer culls, As a species we are making a mess of our environment,even the bees are now suffering at our hands, and we needs those more than anything, we are manipulating nature to the point of no return.

[Missed]

I would argue that a 'god' or other deity had nothing to do with reality or the existence of life. Chance, chemistry and luck I can accept.

[gbal]

I would argue that a 'god' or other deity had nothing to do with reality or the existence of life. Chance, chemistry and luck I can accept.[/quote

 

It was just Einstein's way of putting the idea of complexity.'god' is put lower case and quote marks,for a reason-to allow other mechanisms.I'd add evolution,and the selfish gene to your suggestions.The second comment on human fallibility is mine.

Gbal

[Missed]

Aha, alles klar!

Whilst I think most of us agree that there has to be management of the ecosystem, as always the devil is in the detail: the antis' want everything left alone until it affect or bites them; others want it managed to the 'nth degree. I cannot remember if I mentioned this before but some years ago we had a visit from a very senior politician. In private the question of a seal cull was brought up and this politician agreed that it was very badly needed, however it was also suggested that no politician who wanted to stay in politics would ever, ever bring the suggestion of such a cull up! Politics and the fear of a public who, in general fail to understand the symbiosis of environment and the life it sustains win over sensible management every time.