Please save the tigers

Discussion in 'Earth Science' started by Chatha, Nov 17, 2006.

  1. valich Registered Senior Member

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    Propaganda? Paranoia? Methods of persuasion? False authority?

    Wow! You're really getting off base and off the wall.

    A captive breeding program is not the same thing as having one as a pet. How many scores or hundreds of miles do you have to devote to a captive breeding program? You're not talking about a breeding program at all, but now it seems like you're trying to align yourself to being the same to side with your view? But you're talking about having one inside a small house as a kitty cat - "purrrr" - and that's unrealistic.

    How is what I've been saying "propaganda," "methods of persuasion," and especially, "false authority"? And your authority is?
     
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  3. MetaKron Registered Senior Member

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    For one thing, false authority is that which relies on other than facts or which distorts the facts to support its agenda.

    Paranoia is what you are after when you say that the big cats and other exotic animals are so, so terribly dangerous.

    No, I am not getting off base or off the wall. Your statement that I am is typical of propagandists. Of course you are going to deny that you are spreading misinformation and of course you are going to get in a huff about it. At the same time I am the jerk if I think that I have any such privilege.

    It is not unrealistic to talk about having one inside a house that has been raised by humans. Even with African lions and tigers, the record has been quite good, comparable to the record for keeping horses. No tame cougar has been implicated in any human death, in fact, it has happened with no captive cougar, tame or not. So what are you trying to misinform people about here? Your insistence is getting a little lame. You didn't start out knowing the rate at which cougars kill people, or pitbulls, or pet wolves, or any other animals, but you insist that they are terribly dangerous and should only be handled by "experts."

    I insist that the insistence on "experts" is one more way to screw people out of their rights. There are a lot of easy ways to do that these days. The people who take those routes are unethical and malicious.

    What are you talking about when you say that I am not talking about a breeding program at all?
     
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  5. valich Registered Senior Member

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    Look at yourself.

    You have become so defensive and psychologically entrenched that you immediately perceive any other post to be a hostile threat. Find one post where I have "insisted that they are terribly dangerous and should only be handled by "experts." Look at your own "paranoia" here. And then you become reactionary by overgeneralizing what the person says to attribute your stereotyped view of the opposition to be all inclusive of every one else. No where have I even hinted to suggest anything against having "a pet wolf, or any other animal." Where does all this come from now?
     
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  7. MetaKron Registered Senior Member

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    Valich, you have used enough of the same rhetoric that the animal rights people use that you would have to tell me, explicitly, where your ideas diverge. Otherwise I have no way of knowing that you are not following the same pattern.

    You have falsely accused pitbulls of being killing machines, so that alone pretty much convinced me.
     
  8. Chatha big brown was screwed up Registered Senior Member

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    Good analogy. But you can hardly compare the buffalo to the likes of Tiger? A long time ago the cowboys decided the way to fight the indians was to sadly kill all the buffalos, a very large portion of these animals were exterminated by this logic during the Anglo-American war. However the survival of this buffalos was ensured because we humans have already found a use for them. Tigers are different, carnivores are naturally smaller in numbers to herbivores, which is why Tigers are lower in population. Buffalo are easier to breed because they have already been domesticated, they eat grass( which is relatively cheaper),and their dung is a good source of manure. Societies will always find it in their right mind to create the space and time for game animals than predators. There is 1 cow or sheep to every 10 human on our big planet, 6 sheeps to I human in New Zealand. A better analogy for your assertion will be the gray wolf, they have a lot more similarity to Tigers, they are both loosing their natural habitats and instinct along with it. Americans, Canadians, and Mexicans have done a better job on the gray wolves than what Asians do to Tigers. Don't forget the same can't be said for the Panther.
     
    Last edited: Dec 16, 2006
  9. MetaKron Registered Senior Member

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    The question was whether private ownership has contributed to the prosperity of any endangered animals. Now, Chatha, if you were truly concerned about the prosperity of endangered animals, you would not be using tricky rhetoric to cover up the fact that private owners have helped, and you would not be so lacking in information about this. You don't even know the subject on an introductory level. You only know the propaganda, which has been dishonest from the start.

    The tigers that are kept by private owners in the U.S. may still exceed the number in India. They could just have easily been pure Siberian or Bengal and it would make little difference to the "pressure" on wild populations except that someone who was dead set on getting a pure Siberian could buy one locally instead of having one smuggled in.

    The issue that you should face is the fact that there were thousands of homes for tigers in the U.S., not so many now as there used to be, and everything that you seem to stand for requires you to condone destroying those tigers by eliminating those homes. For whatever reason, "selfish pleasure" or whatever, these tigers had homes and were alive. Now a lot of them are dead because of the people you support, Chatha. All they have accomplished is killing a lot of tigers, just like their enemies.
     
  10. MetaKron Registered Senior Member

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    5,502
    Look at the first article you linked to in the first message in this thread, Chatha. If gorilla babies were available on the open market, whoever is trying to establish their own private menagerie would not have to have poached them, and if the bar were a little lower to possession, animals could have been taken when there were more of them in the wild, even adults because gorillas are very non-aggressive, and there would have been less of the pressure on the wild populations and more saved. All of the "requirements" wind up reducing the productivity and the effectiveness of preservation programs.

    How do we know that the poachers are not working for someone who sees that the species survival programs simply aren't working and who sees that in order to make omelets, you have to break some eggs? There are many people who pretend to be for the animals who would murder a large collection of tigers if the wrong person owns them illegally, so their mirror image might be someone who ignores the laws completely in favor of creating his own preservation program that no one can defund and simply erase with a stroke of a pen.
     
  11. Chatha big brown was screwed up Registered Senior Member

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    There is a difference between private ownership with transparencey and private ownership with no affiliation. Ninety percent of all the private owners in America are affiliated with each other. The real people that are causing problems are the classified "unknowns"; the private partners that promise to be transparent only for them to turn around and stab you in the back. These people end up selling away their Tigers or using it for medicine. I ain't against private pioneers.
     
  12. Chatha big brown was screwed up Registered Senior Member

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    Okay. So what do you propose we do now. What is exactly your master plan?
     
  13. MetaKron Registered Senior Member

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    You seem to have been against private owners through this entire thread.

    I am not easy to convince that this "affiliation" is all that great. One set of affiliated sanctuaries that I know of says "no breeding" which means that they intend to manage the animals to extinction and they intend to see that their affiliates follow that plan, not that they won't "accidentally" breed and trade between them.

    When you talk about the real people that are causing the problems, you need more facts on your side. If you want me to see this as a problem, show me where it reduces the number of living tigers. You've already tried to snow me more than once, Chatha, so I'm not sure I even want your opinion on whether they are living in human conditions until they are slaughtered. By the way, they could euthanize humanely to sell for medicine. The people who get their tiger parts that way can consume the euthanazia chemicals and like it as far as I'm concerned.

    I am not sympathetic to the idea that the trade should be restrained legally because so many of the animals wind up being euthanized or given to sanctuaries. The sanctuaries were not nearly so overloaded with requests before the current spate of bans came about and the organizations behind them refused to take responsibility for the damage that they did.

    These organizations have sets of ethics that call for prior restraint of private owners and that also do not change in response to realities or scientific fact. Yet, they do not respect those people who insist that private ownership is a big part of the answer. They do not consider the idea that private ownership is in itself ethical and good for the animals.

    A lot worse than the few who sell the tigers for parts are the organizations that go to each county government and whine and wring their hands until they get bans on private ownership. That's where they eliminate a few lives here, a few lives there, until all those lives are gone.
     
  14. Chatha big brown was screwed up Registered Senior Member

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    To be honesty I am confused with you. Private sanctuaries have been set up in Asia many times over with no real result, in fact many of the Tigers trafficked are from these remote layaways. Each time the Indo Chinese government gives away Tigers it ends up in the chinese soup kitchen. Private farming in Asia is also responsible for Tiger demand, each time we introdce Tigers to private breeders the economy for Tiger trafficking resurfaces. There is no record of any missing Tiger from well kept Tiger sanctuaries. The problem always seems to start when we give a couple of cubs out to the public. A long time ago anybody could keep Tigers, but the fact of the issue was that we humans have not yet found a domesticated use for them, people bought cubs willingly and ended up selling them away after they were bored with them. This is why the IndoChinese governmet decided enough was enough and tightened their grip on the few well kept sanctuaries. You see, its not about tightening their grip on the Tigers themselves, but tightening their grip on the security of the sanctuaries and administrations concerning Tigers itself.
     
  15. MetaKron Registered Senior Member

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    5,502
    Go back to the bans on "home rule" decisions that exclude private ownership of animals outside of incorporated areas of U.S. countys. Allow breeding. Allow people to be punished for endangering the public only if there is an actual attack. Wherever possible, allow and even encourage the private breeding of endangered species. That part can be under license.

    Completely eliminate restrictions based on the excuse that "they will just be abused or end up dead." All animals end up dead eventually. We get more deaths when we get more lives, live with it. Cases of abuse go up when numbers go up. Live with it. People who sell us the idea that we should stop breeding because of abuse and deaths are selling us a bill of goods. They should shut up. They cause a lot of damage, and a lot more harm than good.

    You're looking for a set of legal restrictions on private ownership and breeding, and I'm not going to give you that. I think that the laws have caused a lot more harm than good, very often intentionally. I am looking for laws that support the freedom of individuals to make their own decisions and on occasion suffer the consequences. Such laws do help. Unfortunately more attention is often paid to local ordinances and state laws than is given to the constitution.

    There is more.
     
  16. MetaKron Registered Senior Member

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    5,502
    But banning the sanctuaries does nothing to stop the poaching of tigers from the wild. It just raises the price. The sanctuaries, the farming of tigers, takes the pressure off the wild populations by providing a cheaper supply.
     
  17. Chatha big brown was screwed up Registered Senior Member

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    We've gone through this before. First, there is very little wild left in India for Tigers, most are in reserves. If they can steal Tigers from guarded reserves they can steal from the private sector too, just a little harder. Second, farming of Tigers was actually set up in China to combat poaching and provide ample supply but the plan proved disastrous and in fact back fired. Farmed Tigers depleted in no time because Tigers in captive breed the same way and time as all other Tigers, it did not improve the situation considerably. Farmed Tigers encouraged traditional medicine and overall Tiger trafficking. As in any market, breeders passed their costs on buyers, prompting the buyer to go directly to the source and poach in the wild, further decreasing the Tiger population. The better alternative was to introduce modern medicine and alternatives to locals, something the officials almost found out too late in China.
     
  18. MetaKron Registered Senior Member

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    OK, Chatha, now you're talking about things that haven't happened yet as if they are history.
     
  19. MetaKron Registered Senior Member

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    It's no wonder we can't deal with animal rights fanatics. Trying to talk to them gives them credibility that they don't deserve.
     
  20. MetaKron Registered Senior Member

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    You know, even if it is true that some tigers will be stolen from the farms, and yes, it probably is, those tigers will be stolen from populations of around a thousand. How many are they going to get, two or three? That takes pressure off the populations still in their natural habitat because the captive tigers are easier to find and there are more of them. Chatha, you are so stuck on obsolete ideas (that were never current) that you can't see the larger truths, like the fact that thieves will go after things that are easier to find and obtain.
     
  21. Oniw17 ascetic, sage, diogenes, bum? Valued Senior Member

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    Embrace the zoos!
     
  22. Chatha big brown was screwed up Registered Senior Member

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    You might be right, but at the moment the few Tigers we have are critical nonetheless. Too often some punk decides he can buy, raise, and breed a Tiger. You can deform the NGO's all you want, but when we all appear in front of the Galactic counsil of Tigers they would always have documented proof of their efforts to save them.
     
  23. MetaKron Registered Senior Member

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    Yes, you would have the documentation. What are you going to do if they say "show us the tigers"? Private owners have the tigers to show until the goverment removes them by force.
     

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