Carnivorous mice on the Gough islands, which arrived on ships in the past century, could drive many species of birds into extinction
"Killer mice ambush endangered seabirds' chicks"


I think someone should hunt down those mice and make them into hamburgers. Or hot dogs, it seems like those can be made out of anything.

Of course there's potential obstacles to preventing the extinctions by turning the mice into food: Are mice safe to eat? Would they taste good? Would a lot of greens(who I'm guessing are mostly vegetarians) or anyone else want to eat those mice? Could the mice be hunted efficiently? I've heard of people eating rodents many times, so I think there's a good chance they'd be safe and they can't taste too bad. And that plenty of other people eat rodents could be used to encourage people into eating mousemeat.

This probably isn't the only situation where we could purposely eat one animal to prevent the extinction of another.

I don't know about hot dogs or hamburgers, but cat food would be OK.

Wow, way to slant a poll!

I'd eat them if they tasted good, because they tasted good, not because I give a damn about a bunch of birds...

But you'd have to eat it once to find out whether it tastes good or not.

Wrong! Someone else would have to eat it once!

Deep fried rat is actually quite tasty.

But I'm not sure if getting people to eat them would solve that problem. Rabbits are very edible, but that fact certainly hasn't helped the Aussies in their attempt to get rid of that pest. It might actually backfire: If the mouse eating craze really took off, the mice would then have value, and the Gough islands might become a center for huge industrialized "mouse farms" (run by Tyson, no doubt).

Perhaps a better plan is to just let darwinism take its course. If the birds aren't smart enough to change their behavior or nesting locations, then their species deserves to die off. The mice found themselves in an environment that lacked their normal vegetarian food supply, so they adapted. The birds have had the same amount of time to adapt to not being the food supply, but they haven't. So screw 'em. Eventually the bird population will die back to the point where the mouse population will crash from lack of food, and then the birds can build back up....eventually they'll hit the balance point.

This is just another example of "value decisions" being used in environmental issues. Because the evil, ugly bloodthirsty mice are being mean to the cute fuzzy baby birds we side with the birds. The mice has just as much a right to survival as the birds do. Nature doesn't care which species got their first, or how. Scenarios like this have been playing out for the last billion years or so. If a species like these albatrosses is so specialized and unadapting that the introduction of a single new predator on a single island can kill of their entire species then they were already doomed; if it wasn't the mice now it'd be something else later.

But they're so sweet! We can't let the cute animals die!

Anyway, my sentiments exactly. We should only intervene if it causes a problem for us (it doesn't). What if a flock of large vicious birds arrived and took the albatrosses' food and/or attacked them? Or if other animals there were under pressure to eat meat? Then we'd definitely be messing with nature rather than 'correcting' human mistakes.

The Darwinism argument is perfectly valid, however, there's nothing wrong with wanting to protect cute fuzzy baby birds, either. I think that when trying to be rational we often overlook our own humanity. We are fundamentally emotional beings, and as such we try to protect those things which we value emotionally, whether it be people, pets, possessions, ideas, or even cute fuzzy baby birds. Although all of us may have differing approaches to it, we all want to live in a beautiful world. As human beings we have a great deal of power over what kind of world we create.

I was just listening to a lecturer describe how the only bioregion on the planet that has not been subject to notable selective pressure for many thousands of years from humans who find plants and animals tasty, useful or attractive is Antarctica. This includes supposedly pristine ecosystems such as the deepest reaches of the Amazon.

Not to equate tribal hunting and farming with industrial operations, but the notion of a "natural" baseline just doesn't exist in most of the world. We've always modified the environment to suit us. The problem is not that behaviour, but the rapid and large scale way in which industrial technology allows us to do things for the last 200 years.

So there are ecconomic incentives for this, as long as this extends to mice.



We wouldn't neccessarily need to completely get rid of them. And australia is very big, here we have a million mice on one island, they should be much easier to hunt.



But that could be easily solved by moving the mouse farms elsewhere. Or even by moving on to other dangerous mice. Or by keeping that mouse population at 100 000 or so, and working to shift their diets a little. I don't think farming carnivores is efficient at all.



But if you kept the mouse population down, it would give the birds more time to evolve.

How isn't bipedal apes seeing a potential easy tasty food source also part of darwinism?



It's not about which animals are cuter, mice are cute too. The difference is, this is many species of birds versus one race of giant mice.

The bottom line is that simply deciding we want to eat X species doesn't make X species any easier to exterminate. If we can farm them, we will farm them (and this leaves the wild population unaffected). If we can't farm them, then we'll actually go out of our way to ENCOURAGE their continued existence in the wild.

This whole discussion is based on a silly flawed premise.

It's not a question of how easy it is, it could just as well be very easy, but we're not even trying. And I'm not talking about just eating them, I'm also talking about eating them with a conscious aim of conservation or even protection of cute fuzzy birds: it could be advertised with images of the mice hunting the birds.



Not if hunting them would be cheaper. By hunting I mean any method of getting the wild ones, preferably trapping them large groups at a time.



I'm sure there's many other sources of mice. How would we be able to increase their population if we were eating lots of them?

Mathias you're probably taking this all entirely too seriously, but since the ball is rolling:


Clearly not written by someone who has tried hunting mice. They make a very small target.

The point about hunting them to keep their population down is exactly what I was saying nature will do just fine on its own. There's no need for human intervention at all...just let the cycle run. Keeping the population down by hunting isn't going to help the birds in the long run. It would actually be more educational to see what happens naturally, this island can be a natural laboratory to study behavioral evolution.

Yeah, so? One species of successful mice isn't less valuable than a dozen unsuccessful birds.


And yes, this is a very silly thread. Best to not invest too much intellectual fervor in this one guys.

These are tripple sized. And I'm not thinking mainly of hunting them manually.



Not really, they're hunting many species of birds. They're eating hundreds of thousands of one species of bird, while another species they're targeting has only thousands left.



Yes, let's be in denial that we're not part of the cycle.



I said race, not species. And even then I was being overly generous, they've only been seperate for less than 200 years, and they only have one distinguishing characterstic. It's like comparing dwarfs to neanderthals.

To answer the question (in the subject line) directly: Yes. Organic soy farming is one of the leading causes of deforestation in the world.

Mathias, you tit-for-tat'd every line excpet the most important ones: "you're taking this too seriously" and "this is a silly thread"

You're trolling for yet another pointless argument....go troll somewhere else.

I'm trolling? I was going to ansswer the line you're refering to, but I thought it would be better to withhold the response "I guess you think conservationists are very silly people."

As a vegetarian (moral reasons, 6 years), I'd really like to argue here but I'm having a hard time figuring out what the actual point of all this is... Other than to call folks with different views than yourself "silly" without taking time to examine the most thoughtful ideas out there on the subject.



Anyway, the topic asks if vegetarianism is bad for the environment, so I'll answer that: No, it actually uses quite a few less resources to grow plant based foods than meat.

This is quite true. For land animals, a good rule of thumb is that it takes roughly 10 calories of food to make 1 calorie of animal. To feed a given number of people, it takes about 10 times as much land to feed them with herbivore meat than with crops, and 100 times as much to feed them with carnivore meat (which is why we simply don't eat land carnivores much).

The food chain on land is very shallow and wide because of this ratio. Land is dominated by vegetation, with lots of herbivores and much smaller numbers of carnivores. You don't have to go up the food chain very far to get to the top.

In the sea, things are much more energy efficient, so the ecology is dominated by carnivores--"bigger fish" eating "littler fish", so to speak.

Farming cattle also releases a lot of methane, a greenhouse gas and therefore bad. However, there is much more land available for animals and growing the crops to feed them (as the feed can be of lower quality, less fertile land - and seeds - can be used).

My point is that I think that we should eat the mice that we brought to an ecosystem that can't handle them very well.

The subject was intended to sugest parrallels to the "is environmentalism bad for the environment?" thread.

Getting back to the rat-eating topic:

I think its important that someone address Rusty's argument wrt Darwinism,



I have several problems with this. First of all, the idea that a species can deserve to die off. What did the birds do to you Rusty? Poop on your car too many times? Clearly, the answer is not to advocate the extermination of a species of birds but rather to not park under trees.

*andywww feels guilty about teasing Rusty-who helped make his computer quieter*

More seriously, you dismiss out of hand the value of biodiversity! I mean, we have lots of case studies of what happens when nonnative species are introduced into islands- which is why you can conjecture that the birds are going to go extinct. We don't really need more studies about that. I'd be more interested scientifically in the birds. Their links to the ecosystem of the islands, information about their behaviors, the beauty of their existance etc., in fact so much potential knowledge and natural beauty is dumped down the drain when an invader arrives.

It is ironic that you chastise environmentalists for making "value decisions". Frankly, you make your own value decision, which is that the birds deserve it- that to do nothing is justified by the birds' stupidity. Rather than making such a lazy judgment, I submit that it is better to make reasoned decisions. Frankly, I'd support conservation efforts not because the birds are cuter, or because they have more of a right to survival, but because it makes sense- why would Gough Island want to be overrun by mice anyway? I like waking to the gentle chirping of birds, not the sound of mice running around in the walls. And the world has plenty enough mice running around anyway.

Incidentally, my inital thought upon reading the first entry was that conservationists could promote rat consumption by exporting grilled rat-skewers. Mmm... "Gough-Grilled Rat - Gough is the sound you make when you first try it!"

If the birds taste better than the rats, we should eat them instead.

Who cares if a few inferior species die off? There's no tangible negative consequence to humans if either the rats or the birds go extinct.

Humans meddle in these affairs too much. Take for example the Florida panthers. Their numbers dwindle because of their solitary habits, and rather than let them go extinct, we try and boost their numbers by introducign Texas panthers. The problem with that is, Texas and Florida panthers are different species, close yes, but not close enough for any significant amount of breeding to be going on. So what we've really introduced, is a new competitor for an already doomed species.

I'm sick and tired of people whining about extinction. It's a non-issue. The things we really need to be around, like insects and smaller organisms that break up dead organisms, aren't going anywhere any time soon. Humans weren't around during the time of the dinosaurs, and they went extinct just fine without us being there to help the process.

So then the argument is, without human involvement, would X species have gone extinct? Probably not. But, without the involvement of more successful species (or a comet depending on who you believe), the dinosaurs might not have gone extinct. Humans have just as much of a right to be here as the animals do, and if they can't compete with us or adapt to our presence, so be it.

But methane is also a fuel, so the only thing bad about it is that we're just letting it escape.

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Wow. Americans go nuts when Canadians dip into a healthy population of seals, and you say it's okay to hunt endangered species.



Yes there is, we use rats for testing things on. Now rats aren't at all in danger of extinction, but gorilas are, and apes are very useful for testing (of course, this situation is different because it's people hunting them). And you never know what species will turn out to be useful for something.



That is a very unusual course of action, lots of people freak out about "wolfdogs".



So what? That's not going to stop us once we figure out how to reincarnate species, and that is going to affect us, and it's not going to be simple or ignorable.



Did anyone even mention the voluntary human extiction lunatics?

I don't have any problem with hunting seals. Not at all.

In fact, I would be interested to know what seal meat tastes like.... And sealskin is highly useful.

Anyway, my point is that either the birds adapt by finding better nesting grounds, or they die.

I think it is important to try and preserve wild animals for a number of reasons.
(1) Biodiversity is interesting. There are some extinct animals that our ancestors have seen that I am not able to see anymore.

(2) If we do not destroy a species, it shows that we haven't destroyed an environment. I think of the survival of delicate species like an indicator of how environmentally sensitive we are, and how sustainable our culture is. I would hate to see the rest of the world turn to desert like the middle east just because humans over used the land.

So because you want a more exciting zoo trip, we should hold back progress to a crawl?



Umm, humans didn't create the middle eastern desert. Or, any other desert for that matter. There is a point at which you can look back and say, wow, we really screwed up the environment, I think turning an entire continent into a desert would be that point. Killing off a few species, not really.

It's widely understood that humans are responsible for extensive environmental degradation.

Everything has to start somewhere...

So you don't believe in efficiency and technology and think progress is almost exclusively defined as stronger-bigger-gaudier?

How is making mice into food impeding progress? Or not poaching? And would it be a really big deal to take some slight precautions to not wildly transport species between ecosystems?



So what would you say is the point where we can look forward and say "wow, we're on course to really screw up the environment"?