A wrong cause

A few weeks ago I wrote an article about why you should research the organisations you support and why it is crucial to apply critical thinking and investigating your organisation before you start supporting them. In this article I plan to expand a little bit on causes. People tend to take up causes that although seem to be well intended might end up screwing up with others plans other organisations have in place for the benefit of others. I am talking about wildlife of course and in particular animals.

Conservation has it's dark moments. Not only does it seem like it's a war that seems to be lost with so many defeats and very few victories(depending on where you stand) but working for conservation you might have to be involved with a task that few are happy about. Culling. Culling is basically the act of killing animals in order to thin out their numbers. It is often done to make sure that some animals don't overpopulate, to remove invasive species, to stop a disease from spreading, to prevent inbreeding(this is quite questionable) and to relieve other species from the pressure the culled species might be inflicting on them. For example it is common practice to cull predators in a habitat where a particular prey is considered endangered. As is natural, an animal loving public will protest to the “unjust” killing of these animals and it is true that although it is highly unlikely that an individual animal has done anything to blame, for conservationists they have to go. A recent example of this is the attempt to protect whatever Scottish wildcats(felis silvestris grampia)are left in the wild. One of the methods that this is done with is with the culling of feral cats(with which the wildcats hybridise and also the feral cats spread diseases to the wildcats). The public however was not happy to hear that game keepers will be going around trapping feral cats and killing them. Protests from certain people and specific groups occurred and now plans have changed to neuter and vaccinate the feral cats. Although unknown to me as to whether these plans were already in motion or if they changed from culling to neutering which it is to my opinion a more costly and harmful approach. Another example is the removal of grey squirrels(Sciurus carolinesis) from Scotland and ultimately from the U.K in general in order to allow red squirrels(Sciurus vulgaris) to thrive. Public outcries about the grey squirrel have died out as people realize the necessity of removing them.

If you are going to advocate for certain animals or certain animal rights then make sure you read up on all the facts. The animal may be cute, may be majestic but in the end it might be that it's harming the ecosystem a lot more. However make sure you do your research well. Groups with agendas will often misinform the public by being selective on what they quote and publish(see my previous article). It is often a good practise to contact both sides and then deciding. If you decide for example that grey squirrels shouldn't be killed because of the mistakes humans made then that's fine. Human morals vary after all. Just make sure you are not misled and used for other agendas.