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Animal rights isn’t a philosophy of “cute and cuddly” animals. It has just as much to say about the rights of snakes, lobsters, and toads to exist in this world as it is about animals such as the panda — which just so happens to be the symbol of the World Wildlife Fund, a hunter/conservation group that dishonestly uses pictures of cuddly animals to raise money from people with compassion for animals so that WWF can use the funding for activities such as supporting trophy hunting in Africa and the massacre of seals in Canada. However, animal rights is NOT and has never been about species, but about individual beings who struggle to live and suffer to die, as we all do. The author of this shameful article would have readers believe that birth control drugs and implants don’t work in deer and many other species, when the primary cause of deer overpopulation is state wildlife departments charged with producing an overabundance of deer and other “game” species so that hunters have plenty to kill and the public loses its sympathy for the creatures because of the very overpopulation designed by game managers. He would have readers blame rapidly diminishing numbers of wild horses for the habitat degradation and depletion of water resources caused by the grazing of livestock on public lands. He belittles kind people for having qualms about persecuting non-native species who never asked to be taken from their native habitats and implanted in a new environment. If conservationists were truly serious about preventing the proliferation of non-native species, they would have been pushing legislation to prevent the trade in wildlife for the pet industry, and they would deplore the captive-rearing and release of non-native “game” birds for shooting as much as decent people do. Trap/neuter/return of feral cats COULD work effectively in eliminating cat colonies via attrition over a period of around five years if there were funds enough to sterilize a minimum of 70% of the cats and if all newcomers were also sterilized, with tame cats and all kittens taken to shelters for possible re-homing; but it is also true that TNR will not work if so-called cat rescuers and shelters turn the responsible practice of TNR of feral cats into a cover for abandoning homeless tame cats onto the streets so as to eliminate the risk of them being euthanized for lack of proper homes. Compassion for animals need not and should not be narrowly “parsed out” in ignorance of nature, but nature is not static but rather constantly changing, and with nature imperiled because of ignorance, apathy, greed, and cruelty of the human species, it is arrogant and unwise to suggest that hunters and game agencies know better than animal rights activists what species will be able to exist in what ecosystems even 20 years from now. And unless humans are willing to work towards a new and humane relationship with the creatures with whom we share this earth, instead of viewing them as potential plunder as we have always done, there is ilttle hope for our beautiful world.
http://www.takepart.com/article/2016/04/07/deer-cull-animal-rights?fb_action_ids=10156777840640506&fb_action_types=og.comments

When Animal Rights BackfireSaving the ‘furry’ animals—despite science—can devastate ecosystems.