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| Crocodile fatalities expose ethical flaw in environmentalism Posted by Peter Cresswell on 9/29, 3:14pm | ||
| NEWS STORY, BBC: A man is believed to have been killed by a crocodile in northern Australia - the second fatal attack there in less than a week. The 56-year-old man was scuba diving with a friend on the Cobourg Peninsula, in the Northern Territory. In a separate incident last Saturday, Briton Russell Harris was killed while snorkelling near Groote Eylandt. The Northern Territory has 'enjoyed' a three-decade ban on hunting crocodiles that has seen their numbers jump from 5,000 to 70,000, crocodiles appearing in the backyards of suburban Darwin, and a corresponding increase in savage and often fatal croc attacks -- and still the absurd ban has been continued. You might say that these people were killed by an idea; a very bad idea. As I said on my blog in Protecting a predator over a similar ban on hunting sharks, "This directly pits the anti-concept of 'intrinsic values'-- which environmentalists employ to say things should be protected 'as is, where is'--against real human values, such as the value of human life, from which all real value is actually derived..." The argument continued in another post, A new environmentalism: Putting humans first, where I argued for an ethic that puts humans first,.and an alternative to blanket protection was discussed. [In doing so I was guided in part by Tibor Machan's superb book 'Putting Humans First' (sample chapter here).] What's wrong, I ask you, with 'farming' wild animals so that everyone wins, instead of protecting predators and having human beings killed. Fortunately, some debate on that matter has already been joined in Australia following these deaths. Graham Webb, vocal for many years in arguing for the idea that farming animals allows humans and predators to live together, pointed out very sensibly that opposition to ending the hunting ban is "absurd when you have animals eating people..." "How would Melbourne or Sydney people go with crocodiles in their backyards? I can tell you, they would lose their patience very quickly," Professor Webb said. "Nothing is to be gained from being cruel to animals. But our conservation program up here is at stake because landowners have to have an incentive to put up with crocodiles -- it's important that landowners see crocodiles as an asset." | ||
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