@anemone @sun @SlicerDicer @barrett @ambiguous_yelp

Let's take this conversation down a different avenue.

@ambiguous_yelp, what is your opinion on e.g., deer hunting? Kangaroo in Australia?? If we are to stop killing them to control their populations, we have a rather large problem on our hands.

In the USA the insurance companies in cooperation with the DNR (Department of Natural Resources -- our gov pals involved in nature) share data on herd sizes and are a major driver behind deer hunting in the midwest. Bag/tag limits (number you're allowed to kill) are calculated every year by estimating how successful hunters will be and how many we need to kill. Insurance companies pay to ensure more get killed.

"Need" is the key word here.

If we don't deal with them they do massive destruction to crops and they cause a lot of damage when they're hit by cars. Sometimes killing people.

Most of these deer are processed into food but that's not relevant. What's important to understand is that we cannot peacefully coexist with many different wild animals because they spread disease and cause destruction. I wish we could, but we just can't. There's too many of us and we've invaded and destroyed their homes. There's nowhere for them to go.

So what do we do about this? Depopulate the planet? A massive restructuring and migration of society unlike anything ever seen before?

Killing animals just to kill animals is bad. This is why I don't hunt anymore. I don't need the meat, so I don't hunt. This was passed down to me from my dad. I was not allowed to hunt what I wasn't willing to eat (and pay for processing of the meat, in the case of deer, which can be a few hundred dollars at the butcher).

There is no clear solution to this problem. The world is complex. We need nuance when discussing these things. You can't look at the world as being binary black & white / right & wrong.