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miércoles, 20 de febrero de 2013

SHARK FINS: HUMAN INSANITY


Source: Sharkopedia


Text source: YouTube


What Kind of Planet do you want to live on?

When any species has plummeted by 90%, 95%,96% or 99% surely we have a moral duty to protect the numbers that do remain, and help them to recover. Failing to do so is a damning indictment of our species, of our cultures, arrogance and indifference, and an utter betrayal of future generations, who won't have the joy of witnessing the intelligence and majesty of other animals, who have the evolutionary right to exist in their environment. There can be no greater example than the highly intelligent, great and majestic whales, so horrifyingly and savagely slaughtered.

The gap in nature is colossal, unfortunately, and that is just in the last 500 years. In those years, humans have been responsible for the biggest massacre of animals in a minuscule snippet of geological time, and in all of biological life, not through necessity, but through the pure greed of a minority.

How many species are no longer with us, other than stuffed specimens in museums?

What happened to the billions of Passenger Pigeons, almost as many Eskimo Curlews, the millions of Great Auks, the Stellars Sea Cow, the Caribbean Monk Seal, the Labrador Duck, the Thylacine, the White Gallinule, the Bluebuck, Burchells Zebre and the Quagga, the Caspian, Balinese and Javanese Tigers, and recently the Yangtze River Dolphin, the tragic and sad extirpation of too many species of wolves, the unfortunate Dodo, the Black Fronted and Carolina Parakeets, the Auckland Island Merganser, the Heath Hen, and thousands of other birds and species? They were obliterated.

They are all extinct, gone forever. It is shameful that we can be so reckless, so ignorant of the interconnectedness and interdependence of all life on Earth. It is an absolute travesty that the majority are so indifferent to the 200 species going extinct every day, mostly through habitat destruction and utterly unsustainable avarice.

The impacts are accelerating humanity at an alarming pace to a point of uninhabitable ghastliness. And yet the majority are wallowing in a self-imposed denial when all of the consequences of this sadistic exploitation and violence are rapidly charging the dominant culture to self-annihilation.

But the deluded fantasies of limitless growth, production and consumption, completely conceals the destructive damage that are externalities. External to this grotesque economic system that puts zero value on Mother Nature. Services carried out by all ecosystems, in every biome, in the one priceless biosphere that ALL life has to live.

Yet even in the last fifty years a huge number of animals have perished at the hands of humanity, other Tigers, Lions, Leopards, 90% of the largest fish, Tibetan Antelope, all kinds of Bears, Elephants, Hippos, Turtles, Pangolins, and of course, the leviathans which have been profligately pillaged. Tragically this is just scratching the surface.

Once again the Ivory trade is booming, White Rhinos are being brutally butchered for their horns, and for nothing more than pseudo traditional medicinal claims. They are just the glamorous species.

Now it's the turn of Sharks to be plundered in their millions, just for a bowl of tasteless soup, a status symbol and over inflated egos, and they've been around 400 million years and evolved into over 400 species, stretching the very definition of what a shark is. For that they deserve admiration, not decimation.

Habitat destruction unfortunately wipes out species across all biomes. The sooner we realise that Homo sapiens (man, wise...really) do not own the domain of planet Earth, the better off the rest of life on Earth will be.

What I find incomprehensible and totally indefensible is the continued exploitation of animals, any animals, mainly for the whims of the fashion industry or so called traditional medicine, or cultural rights, the exponential growth of meat consumption or even worse, despicable 'trophy hunting'.

John Muir, the heroic naturalist said...

''everything is connected to everything else''.

It begs the question...

What will the consequences be of this egregious assault on the interconnectedness and interdependence of biological diversity?

If we do not change course, then we can guarantee that it will be a slow motion catastrophe.

Will humanity ever shake off the shackles of insanity?

A BIG thank you to Aljazeera English for reporting on so many environmental issues. A priceless contribution to conservation.




                                                              Uploaded by mettasutta67




Link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB6pej8GtqY

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