Are we so selfish as a community that we begrudge other living things the right to eat?
How many corn ear worms, tomato horn worms, aphids, and squash bugs would you like on your garden? Enough to eat more of your garden than you eat? If you’re okay with that, it’s probably because you at least have the option to go buy your produce. That produce comes from someone who controls all of those pests.
The very same thing applies to your meat. I don’t remember what pod cast I was listening to, but a guest was saying that he was okay with with letting wolves eat some game, even if it meant going home with an unfilled tag every other year. I couldn’t help but wonder how quickly his opinion would change IF the only way he could eat meat that year was by filling that tag. The fact is, when we buy meat because we fail to fill out tag, the animal we eat was still raised on a piece of habitat, consumed food that was grown on a piece of habitat, and protected from being eaten by anyone or anything else before we bought it. When predators cause a decrease in tag allocation and/or a decrease hunter success, they also cause the requirement that more livestock be raised and more crops be grown in order to replace that food source for the hunters who failed to fill their freezer with game. Much of that livestock is raised somewhere that predators are controlled. It’s easy to forget about the reality of the situation, but it is very real.
I would love for someone to buy a few cattle and chickens, and plant a garden in the middle of wolf country, avoid putting up any barrier to protect against predators, avoid shooting predators, avoid any kind of pest control in their garden, never consume any food product that doesn’t come from their very own livestock and garden, and see how long they stick it out. Remember, no protective fencing or shelter, no trapping or killing, no control or deterrent of any kind. You can’t “begrudge other living things the right to eat”.
Every piece of food you’ve ever put in your mouth would have been eaten by something else given the chance.
