White, Ryan writes:
>
> Exterminating a successful species seems sort of like punnishing a
> successful software company, except that the eels have no means within our
> social system to represent or defend their interests.
Er, the eels are unnatural in the sense that they wouldn't have popped
up at that particular place in that particular time without the
intervention of these meddling humans. (Assuming, that humans
themselves are unnatural, of course, which is a matter of
definition. Clearly, they're rather special animals, and hence should
be treated specially). Biosphere has not yet adapted to species
hitch-hikin' all over the globe, so this results in critters with a
differing fitness being suddunly introduced into an already occupied
niche, resulting in all kinds of havoc, until the system falls into a
stable attractor, eventually. Humans attempt to reestablish the status
quo which would have existed without them introducing a new species
into an existing equilibrium (which, of course, in the purist's point
of view is already denaturated by humans having been present there).
I personally find these efforts highly valuable, since teaching people
the meaning of "irreversibility" hands-on.
> I find it amusing how arbitrarily many humans seem to assign value to
> species on this planet.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:39:24 MDT