Monday 1 February 2010

Eat them to keep them

Roger Beattie's weka conservation efforts featured on Close Up tonight, followed by a short debate between Roger and DoC Director General Al Morrison. TV1 doesn't make embedding easy; the video is here. A write-up on it is here.

Apparently I'm not the only one who thought Morrison came off terribly. A call-in poll run during the show had 85% of viewers agreeing that we should be able to farm some of our endangered species.

Morrison had zero argument against Beattie: nothing but emotive appeals to how we don't want to be known as folks who only want to save animals to eat them. And he's the Director General.

For some intelligent discussion of the arguments against farming endangered species in NZ, check Brendan Moyle in the comments here. Moyle points out that they're not very good arguments, but at least they're comprehensible.

Something's wrong when someone like Morrison, who can't point to anything beyond a vague unease, gets the veto over someone like Beattie.

Previous installments on Beattie and endangered species here here and here.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for the reference.

    I'm really thinking that the Wildife Act needs a solid review and a cleanup of the anomalies that have emerged. There's no issue about being in front of the queue for breeding wildlife. Alligators and crocodiles have been managed commercially for years in many countries. And we don't seem to have much trouble breeding and selling native plants.

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