Jan 14 2010
Wildlife Farms: Reflection Post
I am a little confused on how wildlife farms help protect the species. In the book it states that they help raise individual species who are threatened and use their meat or hides in commercial sales. How is selling their products for our profit saving them? Are we not killing them and therefore not helping grow in number? I must be missing some piece about this because it does not make any sense. If someone one could clear this up that would be great!
I believe that despite the fact that the animals are eventually being killed, the purpose of wildlife farms is to reduce the number of killings of the wild-born populations which could place a stress on the ecosystem.
I also don’t think this is used for too many species, more of ones that thrive in captivity and are easy to breed in captivity but hard to reintroduce to the wild. At least, I hope not because then I would think that they would just release these back in the wild.
It seems a bit contrary to fact to raise these animals that are endangered in order just to kill them, but I guess it is just better than removing them directly from the ecosystem.
Syd, you’ve got good responses. I don’t think such a method would ever be used for threatened or endangered species. That would probably be against a national law and/or international treaty. This would be more like raising fish in a hatchery to release in streams. These fish will be a bit easier to catch and will reduce pressure on the native fish (so population does not become threatened). I know with trout, the hatchery fish are sterilized so their genes don’t “pollute” the wild stock.