The ALF took it upon itself to release 1000+ minks from a mink farm in my state recently. Just turned the little weasels loose in the country at large, with no food and no protection. And now they’re wreaking havoc and destruction, as you can read here.
You’ll see the only idiot who would be quoted in defense of the ALF said "“The amount of suffering that has been prevented by releasing them from cramped cages and freeing them from an extremely cruel death more than justifies a temporary disruption to the ecosystem.” Really? How’s that work? You have traded the deaths of minks for the deaths of birds and farm animals. How do you decide which animal gets to live and which one dies?
And a “temporary disruption to the ecosystem”? God knows the damage these mink will do to the native songbird, rabbit, and rodent populations, not to mention farm animals and pets. Weasels are native to Washington State, but what kind of idiot releases 1000+ carnivorous animals into an ecosystem that may not be able to sustain them?
And I can guarantee that people up in that area are not thinking “Wowsers! Bless that animal-savin’ ALF!” No, they’re shooting every remotely weasel-looking animal they see, including native martens and their neighbors’ cats.
But I guess the ALF only gives a shit about specific animals, and only so long as they’re in captivity. Wild animals, or animals they’ve set loose, are on their own. Stupid short-sighted wankers, and I’m not talking about the minks.
As an ecologist, this appalls me, but I have to admit that it would be poetic justice to see the minks set up a nice stable breeding population in the wild up there and have them create havoc on the scale of, say, the coyote or the Chinese carp.
That’s the whole problem, ALF is not an organised organisation. Anyone who wants to belong is just supposed to go out and DO. So you get the idiots who do this stuff.
Last I heard, all but 100 or so had been recaptured. It was suspected that many of the 100 had become road kill or hawk bait.
What is unfortunate is that the captured animals will be put down. They may have caught diseases and the remaining animals cannot be exposed. Sad.
My favorite bit is how the eco-loons, confronted with the evidence of all the critters being killed by the “liberated” rodents, have changed their emphasis: “But this just proves that formerly-caged animals can survive in the wild! There’s still hope!” :rolleyes:
–another PNW doper, whose conscience and dark sense of humor have one another in a headlock regarding this story
Actually, I’ve discussed the matter with some animal liberation types. The upshot seems to be that carnivorous animals are simply following their nature, and therefore it is okay for them to kill to survive. Hell, cats HAVE to kill, unless they’re getting canned cat food – they require the amino acids found only in meat or they’ll die of malnutrition.
Precisely how we are supposed to have domestic cats without killing other animals to make canned cat food is unclear. Perhaps we are supposed to let them hunt mice or something.
WE, on the other hand, as THINKING animals, should, morally speaking, simply arrange our diets in such a way as to eliminate meat, because we are capable of changing our nature… despite most of a million years of omnivorousness. Precisely why this is is also kind of unclear; apparently, we simply should because we CAN.
Also… there is the matter of the “morality” of vegetarianism vs. the “morality” of destroying other people’s property in order to let everyone know how moral you are, and perhaps force them to be more moral themselves.
A friend of my grandfather’s used to raise the nasty-tempered things. As far as I’m concerned, calling them rodents is too good for the greasy, toothy little vermin.
Utter idiots did the exact same bloody thing near where I used to live in the New Forest (National Park in the south of England). The mink subsequently all but eradicated the already endangered water-vole. Wonderful, just wonderful.
I don’t suppose any of those minks carried the Rage virus? I really don’t fancy having to wall myself up in my apartment to hide from a horde of the infected.
Some friends of mine found a non-harmful way to protest the wearing of fur; they’d go down to the Magnificent Mile during peak Christmas shopping season and make baby seal noises at anyone wearing a fur coat. Just as effective, and nondestructive.
Welcome to Earth, Sorry you had to find out about these few moronic robots who think they are helping but long term they do much more damage to the very system they claim to be helping.
