A myna revolution

Thanks to feral thoughts for the tip;

A resident of the town of Orange is speaking out for the much maligned Myna bird.

A proposal to cull local myna bird populations goes against the natural pecking order for one Orange resident. After working with wildlife in Africa and Canada for several years, Terese Kerr says she’s learned human intervention is not the answer even if a species is considered a predator.

“I just believe it’s wrong to kill off any bird, even if you believe it’s a pest,” she said.“I’m anti-hunting and I’ve seen the impact those sorts of things can have.”
…….
Mrs Kerr said it was wrong to refer to certain species as “bullies” when they were simply trying to survive. She said she welcomed all birdlife into her own garden and wouldn’t consider feeding certain species and not others.

“There’s a pecking order, human beings can’t come in and say I don’t want this bird bullying another bird,” she said.

Nativism, or the human preference for one species of animal over another, is a dangerous game of whimsy that is often followed up with inhumane acts of abuse in the name of ‘conservation’.

A fox can be baited with a Sodium fluoroacetate (1080) and die a death of abdominal pain, sweating, confusion and convulsions. But if I fed poison deliberately to a domestic dog I’d be prosecuted under Australian animal protection law. If a cat is living without an owner, it can be trapped and shot with a rifle by local council agents. However, if I was to shoot my own pet cat, I could expect to spend some time in court. And when myna-haters trap and kill birds they do so in ways we wouldn’t accept for other animals and with no veterinary supervision or input whatsoever;

Once in the trap, the myna-catchers favourite topic comes up. Dispatch. No more controversial topic exists in the world of the myna-hater. The favoured method is exhaust gas from the car. No diesels or hybrids mind you, and do it off a cold engine before the catalytic converter kicks in. Pop the cage in a compost bag and shove a tube from the exhaust to the bag and it’s all over in a matter of seconds. The technique hasn’t quite gained the blessing of all the authorities as yet but the myna actioners aren’t going to wait for some soft bureaucrats to get their act together. ref

To further complicate the idea of the worthy-native and the un-worthy introduced animal, is the native who refuses to play nice. In Western Australia, rainbow lorikeets (an eastern states bird who found success in the west) are culled because they’re in competition with slightly more local bird species.

A rat plague of more than two hundred thousand animals that hit Queensland in December last year, caused havoc by upsetting the ‘natural balance’, with the rats stripping vegetation and breeding furiously… but didn’t rate much of a mention because they were a long-haired, native type. However, when a UK celebrity reality show visited Australia, and the participants killed an (introduced) rat and ate it, it caused a stir around the world and the production team was prosecuted by our RSPCA.

Australians value animal welfare regardless of species and seeing an animal killed for arbitrary reasons, or in an inhumane way goes against what the community stand for.

The science of biological xenophobia is finding it harder and harder to continue to carve its place in a modern compassionate society. While it used to be quite fashionable to be ‘anti-introduced animals’, people are starting to realise that trying to use culling as a way to turn back the ‘ecological clock’ to a time before human inhabitation, without actually removing the humans is not only futile, but unethical.

The ultimate goal of the environmental movement is to create a peaceful and harmonious relationship between humans and the environment. To be authentic, this goal must include respect for other species. Tragically, given its alarming embrace of Invasion Biology, the environmental movement has violated this ethic by targeting species for eradication because their existence conflicts with the world as some people would like it to be. And in championing such views, the movement paradoxically must support the use of traps, poisons, fire, and hunting, all of which cause great harm, suffering, and environmental degradation. ref

We must move beyond a place where we arbitrarily deem one animal more ‘worthy’ of life than another, for no reason other than we’d prefer nature to be fair and reasonable. She isn’t and never has been.

I recommend this fantastic piece of writing from Dr Marty Becker; when insight into animal suffering lends itself to compassion for even the ‘lowly’ mouse.

I think we’ve all been there.