Japan Hunts Humpback Whales.

[HadleyH]

Historically, nobody really seems to care if people kill ugly or physically uncoordinated animals which seems a bit unfair.

eightbore

I care!

 

[eightbore]

I believe this. Do you wear leather? Everyone seems to have a line either aesthetic or one of convenience it seems. Not even my sister in law the very militant vegan (no, family dinners are not fun) will inconvenience herself enough to only wear 100% synthetic shoes.

 

[HadleyH]

I believe this. Do you wear leather? Everyone seems to have a line either aesthetic or one of convenience it seems. Not even my sister in law the very militant vegan (no, family dinners are not fun) will inconvenience herself enough to only wear synthetic shoes.

With all respect, eightbore, wearing leather has nothing to do with killing whales.
Let's keep things in perspective. Rome wasn't made in a day.
Today we stop the killing of anything. Tomorrow we might stop wearing leather if that's the way we feel.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

I'd like to shoot every single bald eagle i see. I think they'd make great meat.

Weak, ugly and physically uncoordinated humans also make good meat.

Soylent Green, anyone?

bk

 

[Lincsong]

The way the fishermen used to go after them in rowboats and harpoons in the 18th and 19th Centuries make me say; "you boys had balls of steel!!!!"

 

[HadleyH]

The way the fishermen used to go after them in rowboats and spears in the 18th and 19th Centuries make me say; "you boys had balls of steel!!!!"

Yes, that's true Lincsong, they did ... but they don't anymore. [huh]

 

[Feraud]

I care!

Agreed. Obviously many of people do.

 

[Lincsong]

Yes, that's true Lincsong, they did ... but they don't anymore. [huh]

fftopic: But I finally figured out who you look like in that new avatar, Hadley;..... Philyss Maguire in Come Blow Your Horn with Frank Sinatra.

 

[eightbore]

With all respect, eightbore, wearing leather has nothing to do with killing whales.

And with similar respect, I think it does. I just see a life as a life. Just because one form is abundant or less "attractive" or less "graceful" or "domesticated" and one is uncommon or "elegant" or "wild" might not make a whole lot of difference to the individual critter being harvested for whatever purpose. It seems that we generally concern ourselves with or disregard certain aspects of these issues for very "human" purposes when, in reality, few of these species were around a few million years ago and most if not all will be gone (along with us almost assuredly) at some future point. We'll all be replaced by brand new species (who might debate these same issues) on brand new evolutionary paths and naturally, these beings will also be eventually brushed from the face of the planet just as we flick dust from our fedoras.


Best,

eightbore

 

[eightbore]

I'd like to shoot every single bald eagle i see. I think they'd make great meat. Weak, ugly and physically uncoordinated humans also make good meat. Soylent Green, anyone?
bk

Bald eagles are scavengers. Filthy birds. I think I recall Benjamin Franklin originally wanted the Wild Turkey to be America's national bird. Tasty critter that one. Just the thing after a long and fruitful revolution. As for cannibalism, I think any meat is good meat if you are hungry enough and there's plenty of historical and modern evidence for this. There's a saying that "NO protein is wasted in the African bush." Having been there, I believe it and can't fault them for it in a bare bones (pardon the pun) subsistence culture. Well, maybe I can since there is that nasty Spongiform Encephelopathy (Kuru) that tends to come from too much nibbling on one's kin.

Best,

eightbore

 

[scotrace]

If I have 300,000,000 apples that will never go bad, I'll eat them at will, without a second thought to where tomorrow's apple comes from. But if I have only 6 oranges that will have to last me the rest of my life, with no more possible if they run out, I might be a little protective of them. I'm certainly going to speak up if the idiot next door is snatching them to throw away for giggles.

The unnecessary killing of endangered species for sport or "tradition" is not ground that can be defended or held. So let's not expand the discussion to "you wear leather... so there. Nyaa."

I've learned a lot here, and will have to find out more about how the Norwegians are handling this. I'm sure there are responsible ways to try to manage any endangered species. But the Japanese expedition seems... wanton.

 

[eightbore]

The unnecessary killing of endangered species for sport or "tradition" is not ground that can be defended or held.

But it is and it certainly can be defended and held economically and ecologically. Zimbabwe is a prime example. Sport hunters pay $20K each to hunt elephant while the average "photo safari" client in Kenya pays maybe $200 per day there. Zim gets BOTH sorts of revenue and therefore is able to more effectively protect (poaching patrols and bio research) ALL RARE SPECIES that exist alongside the elephant as well. Consequece....dramatically swelling elephant populations over the last 30 years. The bottom line is if you want to save an entire species, you had better be willing put one on the market once in a while. And now that I think about it, there is nothing to prevent a non-hunter from buying these licenses only to not use them. If "non-consumptive conservationists" want to conserve a rare species, it's time for them to put their money where thier mouths are. South Africa has seen great success in this market approach with White Rhino and the population is recovering nicely thank you. Last Year South Africa saw its first Black Rhino hunt in a very long time. Some European paid over $250,000 for the right and took a very nice old bull. That money goes a VERY long way toward successfully conserving an animal MUCH more rare than the whales being discussed here. Canada does the same with the EXTREMELY rare (pop. 6000 or so) Wood Bison and America does the same with rare desert sheep species. Meanwhile, India prohibits Tiger hunting and look how successful that has been.

So let's not expand the discussion to "you wear leather... so there. Nyaa.".

I regularly get into this same conversation with my sister in law who is convinced I am a complete murderer (literally, she calls me "the murderer"). I just tell her that she is then the equivalent of a mob boss....unwilling to do the killing, but more than happy to send out "the contract" to kill every time she buys something made of leather. lol There is just nothing worse than a zealot of convenience. I also like to tell her that I can hear her salad screaming when she eats it and that she really shouldn't be so abusive of less developed organisims that can't even run before they're killed.

But the Japanese expedition seems... wanton.

Estimates of the current population range from 60,000-120,000. If we take 90,000 as a middle ground and combine this with the documented fact that a calf is born to every one of the presumably 45,000 females every two years, that means the population increase is about 25% per year (before the likely very low natural mortality). That's a minimum of 20,000 animals annually. 50 whales taken is very very little and nowhere near the slaughter for other, non-food or industrial purposes in previous centuries. It's the undocumented whaling that very likely keeps populations from growing so quickly as theorized above. If some international body taxed the harvesting of these 50 whales and put that money back into patrolling for illegal harvests and whale research, the populations would rocover faster than under prohibitive policies DEFINITELY NOT slower. Experience tell us this repeatedly

 

[Camille]

Let's look at another endangered species. The wolf. Today, there's around 100 000 - 200 000 in the entire world. It may sound much, but looking at just Scandinavia (Norway/Sweden) we have around 150-200 left. In Sweden, the government had bullet-money on each wolf killed up until 1965, making the -last- wolf disappear from Sweden in the 80's. (They'd been a protected species since 1966, but with poachers around, we didn't have a single wolf in the entire country) Nowadays, the entire scandinavian wolf-populace is threatened of diseases due to inbreeding as they all (most likely) stem from the same three wolves in the 70's. And reindeer-farmers won't let any new wolves across the borders because they're afraid they're gonna kill their reindeers. Proportions, anybody?

This would never have happened if people wouldn't have hunted them down the way they did.

Same thing goes for japanese whale-hunting. I don't think they care enough of the survivability of the species to take care of it in a nice, smooth way. Which the norwegians obviously do, or there would be no more whales around the coasts of norway.

 

[scotrace]

Is elephant habitat as large or wide-ranging as that of the Humpback Whale? I'm really not sure how far this whale species ranges. Are elephants any easier to spot and count? What's the infant mortality rate for each? Do they tend to have calves every mating season?

I don't know the answers.

 

[deanglen]

"I once shot an elephant in my pajamas..."








dean

 

[scotrace]

"I once shot an elephant in my pajamas..."

That's a whale of a tale.

 

[eightbore]

Camille,

Wolves are an interesting example of a species that can recover with amazing speed so it's clear poaching has kept them from recovery in Sweden. This poaching may be beneficial if you want your moose populations to recover however. After wolves were re-introduced into The Yellowstone area of the US, it was an amazingly short period of time before they showed up wild several hundred miles from the point of initial introduction and in surprising numbers having a measurable impact upon various prey species. We have a common rural policy in North America when it comes to wolves..."The Three S policy....shoot, shovel, and shut up" . While I like having predators around, its a very tough balancing act to keep something like a Moose or Stag population stable while also having wolves running around as a protected species. The same is true for bears in North America. I know some areas in the US that encourage hunters to legally harvest multiple bears to help faltering deer and moose populations caused by them. They take an amazing number of newly born calves every year and this can totally screw up the population dynamic in the long term.

Scotrace,

I believe elephant populations net an increase of 10-15% per year after infant and normal mortality. Imagine a country with over 100,000 elephants existing at habitat capacity and then having to deal with a surplus of 12,000 elephant per year. The habitat destruction that can take place is truly amazing. Thick forest can quickly become this....

They have tried relocation, very politically unpopular culling operations, and even jumbo birth control (seriously). I have seen video of an anesthetized mature elephant being loaded onto a huge truck for relocation to another national park. All this is extremely costly and is really incredibly impractical in the developing world when adopted as the only sort of policy. It makes much more sense to allow some crazy foreigners to shoot a bunch at $20,000 each, distribute the meat to the MANY hungry mouths in the area, pay a portion of the money to local villagers to discourage them from poaching other animals, then pump the remaining many hundreds of thousands of dollars generated into research or relocation or whatever crazy scheme that might be thought up to reduce elephant fertility. Better yet, use the money to enhance and extend habitat to enable more elephant to survive. Amazingly, it works....even in developing regions of the world where most policies fail. Why? Money talks.

Aside from the difficulty in assessing a population underwater or with such a huge migratory cycle, the problem it seems with whales is precisely the difficulty in managing a species that exists outside any particular national jurisdiction. Given modern technology, I would guess some reasonable estimate could be made as to whale populations and undoubtedly vast migrations but the problem is really funding it. The only way, it seems to me, is to pick the pockets of those who want to hunt them. Form an international organization or treaty with REAL teeth to punish those operating outside of its regulations, and then tax the Japanese or whoever to the point where a stable and acceptable population exists. People get their meat and research gets funded to ensure a stable or appropriately growing population. Prohibition didn't work in early 20th century America simply because the bootleggers were making more money than the lawmen (I know...booze paid for my dad's undergraduate education to some degree ). If lawmen are outgunned in a fight, there is no hope in enforcing a law. Absent a workable market for whales or elephants or any other species, enforcing the prohibition of specific harvests will be equally futile no matter how distasteful we find them.

Best,

eightbore

 

[eightbore]

"I once shot an elephant in my pajamas..."

I would love to actually go elephant hunting at some point in my life....but only go out stalking in my PJs. To be able to utter the above phrase and literally mean it would be hysterical. lol lol lol Surely there are some old time hunters or even modern ones who have done this out of necessity....perhaps a result of some late night raid of safari camp by a scavenging juvenile or cow ele? [huh]

 

[Camille]

Camille,

Wolves are an interesting example of a species that can recover with amazing speed so it's clear poaching has kept them from recovery in Sweden. This poaching may be beneficial if you want your moose populations to recover however. After wolves were re-introduced into The Yellowstone area of the US, it was an amazingly short period of time before they showed up wild several hundred miles from the point of initial introduction and in surprising numbers having a measurable impact upon various prey species. We have a common rural policy in North America when it comes to wolves..."The Three S policy....shoot, shovel, and shut up" . While I like having predators around, its a very tough balancing act to keep something like a Moose or Stag population stable while also having wolves running around as a protected species. The same is true for bears in North America. I know some areas in the US that encourage hunters to legally harvest multiple bears to help faltering deer and moose populations caused by them. They take an amazing number of newly born calves every year and this can totally screw up the population dynamic in the long term.

Right now it's actually the other way around. Alot of animal populations in Scandiavia are growing too large since they lack natural enemies. Like deer, for instance. People have started poaching deer like maniacs because their population simply is too large when there no longer are any predators around. We haven't had bear this far south for a long time, no wolves around either, and even the wolverines are on the brink of extinction. So I would say that poaching is what is destroying the natural order of things here. Regelated hunting is one thing, that allows to help keep balance in nature, but give swedes guns and they just shoot whatever fancies them. I suppose it's the berserker-heritage that starts kicking in.

 

[Camille]

"I once shot an elephant in A pajamas..."

...that would make it so much more fun, don't you think?