While not radical I have to admit to being a little bit of a tree huger. I guess what bothers me is that we keep encroaching into their natural areas and then we kill them for being in the only area that they know to be. It was their land way before it was taken away by us.
I'm a bit of a tree hugger, too. And a hunter. Does that make me a tree hunter? Or an elk hugger? (Elk, I happen to know, do not wish to be hugged)
It's true that all of us live on former wildlife habitat. Just the way it is. Having spent a whole bunch of time in wild places, I'm also very in touch with the truth that wild animals die. A lot. Whether they fall to a hunter's bullet/arrow, or to starvation, disease, or being torn apart by predators, they all die eventually. For good or bad, 'tis the way of the world. Without getting too deep or putting too fine a point on it, that's why I'm fine--even enthusiastic--about
responsible hunting. We're all part of the food chain, and I prefer to be on top of it.
Rocky, very valid point about mosquitoes, which goes exactly with what I'm saying here. I've never killed a lion, but I suspect if I were to do so my emotions about it would be a lot more complex than they are about swatting a mosquito. Lions are magnificent, superb, astoundingly good at what they do. Mosquitoes? I guess they're one of those things: Astoundingly good at sucking my blood, making me itch, and annoying the daylights out of me. But they're still living things, and on the microscopic level, at least, they're still pretty amazing. Weeding the garden, swatting a bug, culling a problem lion...on the management level, it's all kind of the same thing.
But yeah. It's still kind of sad, removing something so beautiful from the flow of life.
