I agree with that. There is a show on the National Geographic Channel that illustrates this perfectly, called “Animal Extractors.” They show examples of black bears coming into conflict with humans. The usual move is to trap the bear, then upon release, the wildlife agents fire blank rounds to make noise and have dogs chase the bears. The bear gets to stay in his natural territory and hopefully learns to avoid humans. In one case however, a bear broke into a home at night with people sleeping in the home. It was decided the bear was too dangerous to release since it had lost its fear of humans and so it was humanely euthanized.
So they balance out the benefits of the bears and the people, and usually the balance is in favor of the bears. But I believe each case should be judged on its own circumstances, and absolute benefit should go to the people so long as they first take steps to avoid coming into conflict with the wildlife such as securing their garbage and not feeding their pets outside.
Maybe you should consider looking up what strawman refers to before throwing it around in a debate.
As far as this debate goes, I support the automatic killing of any animal that kills a person, that has been shown to be able to learn to see humans as prey, regardless of whether it can be shown that particular specimen has learned to see humans as prey, because the risk of future animal attacks is too great. i.e. bears, tigers, lions.
I support letting animals that mostly kill humans accidentally or very occaisonally go. Letting that animal live will be very unlikely to harm humans in the future. i.e. stingrays, sharks.
Extremely territorial animals like wild boar depends on a case by case basis. For example, a boar whose territory gets turned into someone’s backyard needs to be relocated or killed regardless of whether it has killed or not, whereas I have no problem letting a boar, who lives away from all places humans are likely to go and kills the Timothy Treadwell of the boars, live, since that boar doesn’t really pose more of a threat than a boar in the same location that hasn’t killed. I’m assuming that boars will attack anything in its territory for the purpose of this discussion. I don’t know if that’s accurate, or if a boars orneryness varies enough that killing someone is useful data regarding whether that boar is more or less dangerous than the average boar.
I would argue that most bears in North America (with the excpetion of Polar Bears) fall into the latter category. There are places like Yosemite and the Adirondacks where black bears have gone for generations of being habituated to human contact where efforts are being made to break the cycle. In those cases, the emphasis is on preventing conflicts so it’s not necessary to relocate or kill bears. If it becomes necessary to kill a bear because humans left some food out for example, the hikers will be heavily fined and possibly charged with a crime.
No tolerance policies make little sense when dealing with wild animals. The cases are too complex and the situation too varied.
The impression that I got from the rest of the thread was that some bears (like black bears), would stalk humans as prey if they lost their fear of mankind. If I’m wrong, go ahead and move them to category 2.
It was my understanding that polar bears had no fear of man due to them never having natural predators, and would attack humans without a whole lot of restraint. This would put them in category 3, meaning the riskyness of the polar bear is more dependent on how likely it is to meet a human than on whether it has killed before.
The complexity is kind of why I support zero tolerence. Wikipedia lists 22 fatal bear attacks between 2000-2007 in North America. I am perfectly ok with losing 3 and 1/7 bears a year if it prevents a single bear attack. I suppose it would be better if some of those bears could be saved, but there isn’t a huge margin there.
I just wanted to point out that I heard that the ray in the OP was killed in the same impact that killed the woman. It was pretty much a freak accident, the ray was leaping out of the water as the boat was approaching and there was no time for the driver of the boat to swerve to avoid it. No malicious intent on the part of the animal.
I’m really surprised that no one has noted that the woman was killed by a 2008 Style Death Ray.
No, bears don’t attack humans for food, they attack humans because they associate them with food. People just get in the way of garbage, coolers, bird feeders, etc. It’s not that they view people as food (they rarely hunt and kill large mammals) but they will interact with people while looking for food rather then run away. During those interactions people can get hurt because bears are big and strong.
There was a case in Ontario in the past 10 years or so where a rogue black bear stalked and killed two campers. That bear was destroyed, but it made the news because it’s so rare. Black bears don’t act like this, it’s very odd behavior. Bears have personalities, they are individuals and you can’t make any blanket rules.
I can’t speak on polar bears having never interacted with them.
A ranger in Yosemite once said that the problem with bears in the park is that very smart bears are interacting with very stupid people. The fact is that for 99.9% of the encounters, if the people would follow rules there would be no problem. It’s not the bears fault that people behaved like idiots all these years and that the bears were smart enough to learn how to make it work for them.
I’m OK will killing true problem bears, and the fact is that by the time a bear kills a person they’ve usually gone over the line any number of times. Grizzlys are a different ball of wax, I can’t really speak for them with any experience. They are much more unpredictable but also don’t interact with people nearly as much. Their terrain is more remote and the hikers who see them are responsible for knowing what to do.
I have to point out that, before there were rules protecting animals and educating people about how to get along with them, a hell of a lot more animals were getting killed. That, and a lot of the large predators are already gone now, so there are a lot fewer of them to come in conflict with people. In addition, predators are/were killed if they harm or kill people’s livestock, so the reasons for destroying predators are pretty sweeping
Really, we’re the ones capable of reasoning and avoiding trouble. The onus is on us to do the right thing. When we don’t, animals the ecosystem can’t afford to lose get killed. I wish people could think critically when an animal kills a person and not automatically destroy the animal unless it’s really the only reasonable course of action.
I could have said “false analogy”. However given that: “A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position.” It still seems valid. My argument has consistantly been that the rangers/wardens/etc make the best decisions they can with all the evidence available not, as the argument suggests, that a person being killed by an animal by accident should result in a bias towards the animal being killed.
The problem is that if the victim is killed, you can’t ask the animal why, and there may be no other witnesses.
However, my opinion of people getting mauled in zoos after climbing over walls or defeating safety precautions tends to come down squarely in favour of the animal. Unfortunately currently you can’t charge the person who climbed in the replacement cost for the animal, or for the animal’s medical bills.
Certainly where we are that is exactly what already happens. I’m not sure of the US laws but here’s a Canadian link: http://www.dfg.ca.gov/news/issues/publicsafety.html - A quote: “When evidence shows that a wild animal is an imminent threat to public safety, that wild animal shall be humanely euthanized”. Both Yellow and Red threat levels have steps that only apply if the animal is killed, and the procedures in place do indicate that they throughly investigate before deciding to shoot the creature.
In the case of bears, not only do they get killed, but interacting with humans will prevent them from reproducing. Humans really, really need to do everything they can to leave wildlife alone. I live an hour away from the Rockies; if keeping the wildlife alive there meant that I could never go there again, it would be an absolute no-brainer to me that it’s too bad for me, then - wildlife need their habitats more than I need a walk in a mountain park.
The analogy was pretty close to mirroring Lizard’s position though. It was nothing but a base appeal to emotion, but it wasn’t really arguing against a position that no one took.
Yes, humans should try not to antagonize bears, and most confrontations are human’s fault, but I look at the issue as being about public safety, not about assigning blame or punishment.
If you wanted to ensure the ultimate in public safety, we’d kill all animals that have the possibility of harming us. But we don’t because we recognize the benefits of having diverse ecosystems, the enjoyment we get from observing animals in the wild, and the perservation instinct to keep species alive.
I think everyone agrees that there is a line to be drawn where it becomes necessary to relocate or kill an animal. We’re just arguing about where to draw the line. Does the small safety advantage of killing an animal that has had confrontations with people outweigh the benefits of keeping these rare animals alive? My feeling is there has to be significant evidence that the animal is a danger to humans and that people can’t modify their behavior to avoid interactions with the animal.