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Tequilx_Wolf wrote

Mediterranean mussels are invasive here since colonisation and crowd out the local black mussels. I forage those for the most ethical B12 and Omega 3 DHA and EPA fatty acids available to me in the way that I live presently.

I'd need specific examples to engage to think about whether I would kill other invasive animals.

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DeletedButArchived OP wrote

Stray cats are hunting several endangered species in my area. While I'm trying to provide a refuge for some of these endangered species I can protect against humans an industrialization to some degree but I can't stop stray cats from hunting them till they are extinct.

Having a small spaces where an endangered species can breed and get basic necessities can have a massive impact in staving off extinction.

What would the correct response to Be? Just take these wild cats and keep them inside 100% of the time? Shoot them ? Giving away isn't a real option as there are way too many cats to get rid of or take in for that matter.

Spaying and neutering 10s to 100s of cats and sening them to a cat refuge of sorts is going to be financially challenging for most people.

While I'm currently in a situation where it is quite unlikely that I'm going to really do much as I'm doing lots of other stuff it does make me wonder, if I'm in a similar situation again what would my response be. I really don't know.

I can't see a propper rewinding effort in my local area not solve the stray cat problem. They fuck up the balance so much that many organisms are unable to exist in cat ridden spaces.

I guess the rewinding answer is intrude a native species which kills cats like cougar or wolves. But is having a wolf maul a cat to death better than shooting It? Sure the cat mauling is better from a rewinding perspective.

The only real humane things from a vegan perspective is let the cats fuck up the rewinding effort and slaughter endangered species in some of the few safe areas for them to live. Contribute to another extinction which just keeps up the snowball effect of mass extinction.

Or take these semi wild animals and force them to be housepets and derive them of autonomy. Or make a kitty ethnostate to ship them off to so they are out of the way.

I'd hate to be in a situation which I likely will be in in the future which seems to only have a bunch of fucked up answers to choose from where I have to pick a response.

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moonlune wrote

An interesting take that I read was that feral/wild cats only hunt for food while housecats are the ones destroying ecosystems for play.

I'd start by neutering all "pet cats", and wait a few generations for nature to adjust. That is, if there weren't other pressures on the prey populations.

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Ennui wrote

I think that’s false. Pretty sure feral cats kill for fun as well.

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existential1 wrote

Invasive, in ecological terms, is extremely complicated. As with most things in life, I tend toward non-action.

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metocin wrote

no creature is more detrimental than ourselves. we caused these problems so who are we to think we can 'solve' them without making things worse? our fuck ups are not an excuse to perpetuate cruelty towards other creatures.

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moonlune wrote

Killing invasive species isn't gonna save local fauna and flora from environmental destruction.

Also half the time "killing invasive species" is a justification by middle aged men for their hunting.

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zoom_zip wrote

but this local invasive species is decimating my potential housing development!

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moonlune wrote (edited )

time to helicopter-spray roundup over your whole local forest. That'll kill'em (:

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DeletedButArchived OP wrote

It isn't but it is still a necessary factor to consider for anyone who is trying to rewild spaces.

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wanderingghost wrote

As someone who has a background in ecology, over the longterm, I think its a losing battle. We've essentially created one giant supercontinent due to how rapidly we travel around the globe and how much we transport. As long as species have a similar climate to colonize(say eastern gray squirrels in Eastern North America to Great Britain), and the means to do so (carried as pets, curiosities, etc), they're going to spread. The best thing in that regard is to at the very least stop making things worse by radically restricting human travel and taking biosecurity from the joke it is into making it into something serious and formidable. I'm pretty hopeless though on this because most folks probably don't want it, and I'm not sure there's a way you could make them want it.

I think its important that we try to unfuck nature as much as possible first though by slowing their spread/reversing it when and where possible, and unfortunately for many innocent creatures, that means eradication. Efforts to control animal populations like white tailed deer (A native non-invasive species that people consider a nuisance nonetheless) in the eastern US through birth control have failed spectacularly. Culling is really the only realistic option. Call it murder if you must, but we shit the bed and its our mess to clean up.

I think an example where the destruction of invasive animal species is readily apparent is in New Zealand with rats eating the eggs of flightless birds. There are no native species of mammals in New Zealand, and so the birds that have adapted to the island have not had small predatory mammals as part of their evolutionary pressure for millions of years. This is true of many polynesian islands. In New Zealand I think there's a real chance of creating isolated pockets as refuge for these species (indeed a small island was actually fully cleared of rats to serve as a conservation breeding area for critically endangered flightless birds), but as I mentioned earlier, once a species has become endemic, its next to impossible to fully eradicate.

I think that we have a moral duty to preserve as many species as possible, where possible. Doing so means tackling invasive species. That often means killing innocents. No real way around that.

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