[DrCaleb]

Lemmy Lemmy:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

You don't have to turn them into theme parks to make them work.

But they can also be successful as "theme parks" while remaining, primarily, for the benefit of the animal. We took the kids to the Clearwater Aquarium and it was amazing. It seemed to find the right balance between animal preserve and public exhibition, research and education.

I don't know all the details of that place, but from the website, it looks like a rehabilitation and rescue society first and foremost. Something I totally agree with (and I donate to my local wildlife rehab society often).

But places like Seaworld that breed or capture animals to keep in captivity - I don't agree with that.

[Lemmy]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

But places like Seaworld that breed or capture animals to keep in captivity - I don't agree with that.

Nor do I.

[BartSimpson]

Lemmy Lemmy:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

But places like Seaworld that breed or capture animals to keep in captivity - I don't agree with that.

Nor do I.

Sea World is ending that practice.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/ ... ler-whales

$1:

SeaWorld President and CEO Joel Manby said in the same news release, "As one of the largest rescue organizations in the world, we will increase our focus on rescue operations — so that the thousands of stranded marine mammals like dolphins and sea lions that cannot be released back to the wild will have a place to go."

In short they'll continue to rescue sea mammals and those that can't be fully rehabilitated for release will get to live out their lives at Sea World or be euthanized, which also happens.

[BartSimpson]

Now we just need to end the abuse at Jurassic World.

[ShepherdsDog]

Was it Jaws 3 that they enclosed an entire cove and had underwater observation areas? Perhaps this movie idea might be a more humane approach when it comes to cetaceans, sea lions and such that can't be rehabilitated.

I remember visiting the aquarium in Pingtung county in Taiwan. In it they had belugas that had been captured off of Churchill. The damned water was like a bath tub. This has to stop.

[BeaverFever]

$1:

They're only "farm animals" because we've put them on farms. Gorillas would be farm animals too, if we farmed them.

So?

$1:

What is that point though? I'm just saying that, if we're truly concerned with preserving the species, the surest way to do that would be to give it an economic reason to exist. Then people would have a profit motive and, hence, an incentive would protect its environment.

It doesn't need to provide economic benefit to some person in order to "have a reason to exist". Nor is it necessarily up to us to go around deciding what does or doesn't "have a reason to exist". Do you have a valid "reason to exist"? Does a baby? What about the elderly, severely disabled and mentally handicapped? And who gets to decide?


Living things have intrinsic value regardless of whether some asshole human can figure out how to make a buck off of it. This notion that people can just casually destroy anything they feel like if it doesn't generate profit is a perfect example of whey economists get a bad name.
[/quote]

[BartSimpson]

BeaverFever BeaverFever:

Living things have intrinsic value regardless of whether some asshole human can figure out how to make a buck off of it.

And the intinsic value of Variola is what?

[andyt]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

andyt andyt:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

Preserves and parks can work, if people have the will to pay the money to make them work.

FTFY. Mostly they don't, unless you make it a Disneyland experience. And especially not in poor countries unless the rich countries chip in. Instead of raising taxes for that, I guess we can just let the animals depend on charity, just like we do with people. Works out real well.

False. Wildlife preserves, like National Parks, are very simple. Ban any economic activity in the area. No hunting, no fishing, no logging, no mining, no pollution runoff. Deploy things that verify the ban. Wildlife officers, drone overflights, or undersea buoys as the case may be.

You don't have to turn them into theme parks to make them work.

Written from a first world perspective. Try your scheme in the third world. You're not going to save gorillas be creating National Parks, they've already tried that.

[andyt]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Lemmy Lemmy:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

But places like Seaworld that breed or capture animals to keep in captivity - I don't agree with that.

Nor do I.

Sea World is ending that practice.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/ ... ler-whales

$1:

SeaWorld President and CEO Joel Manby said in the same news release, "As one of the largest rescue organizations in the world, we will increase our focus on rescue operations — so that the thousands of stranded marine mammals like dolphins and sea lions that cannot be released back to the wild will have a place to go."

In short they'll continue to rescue sea mammals and those that can't be fully rehabilitated for release will get to live out their lives at Sea World or be euthanized, which also happens.

You seem to approve. Apply the same standard to zoos = no more zoos.

[BartSimpson]

andyt andyt:

You seem to approve. Apply the same standard to zoos = no more zoos.

No more zoos means at least these four animals are doomed:

http://mentalfloss.com/article/27867/4- ... -find-zoos

[andyt]

No more wildlife preserves maybe. As has been shown here, you don't need zoos to save animals, in fact it's the poorest way to do so.

[Thanos]

Cops and prosecutors are investigating the kid's parents now to see if something crooked happened, like some half-assed attempt by them to be able to file a bogus lawsuit against the zoo for being "unsafe", that resulted in the death of the poor animal.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... cuted.html

[andyt]

The boy was heard arguing with his mother, saying he was going in, and her saying no you're not. That doesn't sound like a cornspiracy, just a mother who doesn't know how to watch her son. Dad was not there.

[Lemmy]

BeaverFever BeaverFever:

Lemmy Lemmy:

They're only "farm animals" because we've put them on farms. Gorillas would be farm animals too, if we farmed them.

So?

So what? You're the one that chose the nomenclature.

BeaverFever BeaverFever:

It doesn't need to provide economic benefit to some person in order to "have a reason to exist". Nor is it necessarily up to us to go around deciding what does or doesn't "have a reason to exist". Do you have a valid "reason to exist"? Does a baby? What about the elderly, severely disabled and mentally handicapped? And who gets to decide?

You're drifting into the philosophic, the way it ought to be in a perfect world. If you want to preserve a common property resource (and wild animals are that), there better be an economic reason for that resource to exist. Otherwise humans won't protect it and its habitat. Yes, maybe they should, but history tells us they won't. It's the tragedy of the commons.

BeaverFever BeaverFever:

Living things have intrinsic value regardless of whether some asshole human can figure out how to make a buck off of it. This notion that people can just casually destroy anything they feel like if it doesn't generate profit is a perfect example of whey economists get a bad name.

Don't confuse economists with businessmen. Of course living things have intrinsic value. But that won't protect it. And mostly species aren't "casually" destroyed. Think of Pacific salmon. No one waged war on the salmon on purpose. No one "casually" destroyed their environment. It was an unintended consequence of hydro and forestry development.

Incentives make the world we live in. Having intrinsic value is one thing. Having economic value also only strengthens the probability of a species' survival. My original post was clearly tongue-in-cheek but there was some of truth in it. It illustrates four basic principles in environmental economics: 1. People's choices influence the environment; 2. people's choices have unintended consequences; 3. people's choices are influenced by the potential benefits and costs of each alternative; and 4. people tend to take better care of things for which they feel a sense of ownership and to which they assign value.