What Gives Us the Right?

Something quick tonight. I was looking at MSN.com today, as I normally do, because that is one of my news places, and came across the following article.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26471839/?GT1=43001

There is something here that bothers me, and oddly enough, B and I were talking about earlier today in regard to wolves.

"But Shirley Kudma, who ranches in the basin with her husband, Donald, said the prevalence of plague confirms the predictions of ranchers overrun by prairie dogs in the past decade. They argued more should have been done to limit the spread of prairie dogs because the hungry rodents strip the ground of grass and leave little for cattle.

'Nature took care of it, didn't it?" Shirley Kudma said. "There's the plague and the prairie dogs, and that's nature taking care of the expansion.'

Ranchers don't want to wipe out prairie dogs, she said.

'I think we want to get along. We want to be able to survive just the same as the prairie dogs want to survive. We don't want to annihilate them. We don't. Just get them under control so they're not sick. Give the ferrets something healthy to eat.'"

Ok, here is my problem with human beings. We seem to think that as long as we are surviving, it doesn't matter what we harm. Who cares if we wipe out populations of animals (once extinct, they are NEVER coming back people), as long as our cattle (that do immeasurable harm to land) have enough to eat and don't get killed.

Back in the day, all of the wolves in the Yellowstone area were KILLED on purpose. ALL of them. Even BABY wolves. Why? Because ranchers were upset that wolves were killing their animals. Well, I'm sorry, but I don't agree with killing an ENTIRE breed/species of animal so that a few heads of cattle are saved. The fact of the matter is that wolves are a very misunderstood animal. But in the long run, they were in the area long before humans, and long before humans were raising cattle. I understand that people have to make a living, but one or two dead animals per rancher a year is worth keeping a beautiful animal alive.

I will give credit to this lady, who says ranchers don't necessarily want to wipe out prairie dogs, but I do not agree that just because she has cattle, that means it is necessary to cut back on the number of prairie dogs. Let them make a comeback. If it wasn't for humans in the first place, they probably wouldn't need to be making a comeback.

You know, we have a pond on our property. We like to keep it looking nice. However, the Canada Goose loves to make a stop at our pond daily. In fact, it's gone up from like 3 to 20 in the recent weeks. They are annoying...they poop everywhere... People have actually told us to shoot them to get them off our property because they are so gross. But...why? We let them stay, or we chase them away. No need to kill. When that starts, I believe things happen that make it hard to take back.

Who knows if I'm really making that much sense (I'm kinda tired). I just hate knowing that humans have had such a profound impact on so many species of animals going extinct...and it seems that some people truly believe humans have a right to make them go extinct. I just don't understand it.