Killing Animals That Don't Fit In: Moral Dimensions of Habitat Restoration - by Jo-Ann Shelton.

[Kate✯GO VEGAN+NOBODY GETS HURT Ⓥ]

"I am not suggesting that we abandon our desire to conserve other species, but rather that we develop a system of values which would accommodate the interests of all animals, not just those to which we choose to give preference in our own particular decade or century.

The reasons for shooting bison and shooting feral sheep are similar in that both species were targeted for eradication because they violated our idea of what a particular landscape should look like, and our preference for how the land should be used. Thus, although we may believe that our attitudes toward the natural world have undergone a fundamental conversion, and that we are now more sensitive to the interests of other species, we are actually following a very old paradigm: we exterminate, without moral reservation, any species we determine to be a "misfit".
(Jo-Ann Shelton).

http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1048&...

[Kate✯GO VEGAN+NOBODY GETS HURT Ⓥ]

Hello Lynne. Thanks for your comment and the interesting questions you raise.

I would like to recommend this paper
http://masalladelaespecie.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/the-ethics-of-th...

as it's clear to me that it offers the most advanced nonspeciesist perspective on these vitally important issues.

Thankyou.

[Lynne Yates]

I agree with your comments totally!

Human animals have interfered with ecosystems all over the world and in many places have created imbalance with knock on effects that in some cases makes the present environment unsustainable.

In the UK there is a human made problem caused by eradicating all large predators (wolves and bears), as a result deer populations have increased to the extent that they are destroying their own habitats (extensive damage to forests and moorland). Conservationists point to the reduction of numbers of different species of plants and other animals and the lowering of biodiversity as an excuse to cull the deer. As a committed vegan I naturally do not agree with killing deer. I also do not want to see the destruction of habitats essential to other animals. This leaves me to ask the following questions:

Having messed up the original ecosystems in the UK do we now leave them alone to establish a new balance even if that results in a loss of other animal species?

Should the deer population be controlled by means other than culling, eg by birth control?

Should wolves be reintroduced to the UK (and is it ethical take wolves from their present environment for this reintroduction)?

This is a real situation which is presently being addressed by hunters shooting many deer to 'control' their numbers as they have become 'misfits' in their own ecosystem!