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There's one thing mankind intervening to prevent extinction, it's another to CAUSE extinction.
Man adopted the caretaker role (as he really has no choice, because he depends on the very nature he exploits), and that means to protect and preserve what natural resources that are left.
If that means releasing back a native predator into an ecosystem without predators to control the animal population so they won't overbreed (which causes genetic problems; over feeding; and destruction of native plants and animals), then they have too -- since it was mankind that took them away in the first place.
Nature is a delicate balance. From the grass on the ground, to man with a rifle. If each doesn't balance each out, the whole ecosystem crashes. Even hunters today understand this, and probably they're the most involved in conservation in the world, since they know what happens when they don't caretake their prey and the land they live on.
The dollars I spend for a fishing license, for example, is there to help conserve the very natural resources I would fish out of the rivers and ponds. Not just the fish, their environment and food stocks. Our local white striped bass was almost extinct when a 20 year ban went into affect. It was so easy to fish for them, as they loved to lay their eggs around eddies by the dams. Throw a line out there in spring, and the daddies who were protecting the fries, would gobble anything attached. So easy they nearly were wiped out. 20 year ban, and natural resource officers patrolling the rivers and banks helped save them. The result, nature balancing itself, and today fishermen can again fish for them, with strict size and fishing limits.
That's responsible caretaking -- conservation.
But simply releasing an animal into the wild because someone thought "wild is better", shows more than a lack of "compassion", it shows plain ignorance.
Man adopted the caretaker role (as he really has no choice, because he depends on the very nature he exploits), and that means to protect and preserve what natural resources that are left.
If that means releasing back a native predator into an ecosystem without predators to control the animal population so they won't overbreed (which causes genetic problems; over feeding; and destruction of native plants and animals), then they have too -- since it was mankind that took them away in the first place.
Nature is a delicate balance. From the grass on the ground, to man with a rifle. If each doesn't balance each out, the whole ecosystem crashes. Even hunters today understand this, and probably they're the most involved in conservation in the world, since they know what happens when they don't caretake their prey and the land they live on.
The dollars I spend for a fishing license, for example, is there to help conserve the very natural resources I would fish out of the rivers and ponds. Not just the fish, their environment and food stocks. Our local white striped bass was almost extinct when a 20 year ban went into affect. It was so easy to fish for them, as they loved to lay their eggs around eddies by the dams. Throw a line out there in spring, and the daddies who were protecting the fries, would gobble anything attached. So easy they nearly were wiped out. 20 year ban, and natural resource officers patrolling the rivers and banks helped save them. The result, nature balancing itself, and today fishermen can again fish for them, with strict size and fishing limits.
That's responsible caretaking -- conservation.
But simply releasing an animal into the wild because someone thought "wild is better", shows more than a lack of "compassion", it shows plain ignorance.
There are species on the top of the food chain, and the species that rules all we know, is Mankind. Can't remove Mankind from his role, unless Mankind relinquishes that role and no longer be human.
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