BARLEY'S BOVINE BLOG @bovineblogger - Tumblr Blog

hi! you can call me barley!

🍎 26 years old, it pronouns, aotearoa/nz based

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(header by @bat-connoisseur, icon by @dandydingo)

A frustrating part of the mainstream vegan “love all animals and protect the environment” mindset is the fact that things need to die in real-life ecology all the time but deer hunting season makes icky feelings and carp culls aren’t cottagecore

spontaneousmusicalnumber

The vegan “any animal death ever is morally wrong” mindset doesn’t hold up when:

We don’t have any of the large predators we used to (black bears, mountain lions, or gray wolves) but still retain large deer populations. If nothing is removing animals, they’ll quickly overload the carrying capacity of the environment and have massive losses to starvation and disease that can also pass on to livestock. Human hunters replace the large predators that our landscape can no longer support.

It’s kinder to euthanize an un-releasable hawk rather than try to find it a permanent home with humans. Wildlife rehabs have extremely limited space and resources and are usually run entirely on donated money and volunteer time. Only a few are large and stable enough to care for permanent residents long-term, and those spots are few and far between.

An invasive species poses a danger to threatened native wildlife. I will admit- Australian possums are adorable. But not in New Zealand, where they’re an invasive species that eats the eggs of ground-dwelling birds that previously had no such predators. The landowners I worked with replanting native bush, all native Maori, had no qualms about setting the dogs on them.

I don’t know how to end this except. Sometimes things just gotta die and acting otherwise just isn’t a realistic expectation.

spontaneousmusicalnumber

Highlights from the notes over the past 6 months include a lot of angry vegans saying “you’re blowing things out of proportion, no vegans actually think like this!” and a lot of people who work in conservation and education saying “Every day. I have to fight people who think like this.”

As a bonus this post was originally inspired by the vegan who called me racist for saying we should kill invasive species

#info

glitchphotography

Cash Cow // Deluxe Paint IV, 2024. (Portrait of Viatina-19 FIV Mara Móveis, the world’s most expensive cow as of May 2024)

bovineblogger

FUCKA YOU!!!!! HOSES YOU DOWN!!!!!!!

bovineblogger

(sound on)

naderalanqar2007

I was sitting in my residence yesterday when four very heavy missiles struck the central Gaza Strip. The ground shook beneath us from the force of the explosion. Indeed, Gaza is witnessing the most documented and most denied genocide in history.

subnitida

Akino Fuku, Swamp, 1991, Hamamatsu City Akino Fuku Museum of Art

herbcitty

@bovineblogger some art for you, Barley! =)

#<33

wizardarchetypes

People leaving comments on my posts about Indigenous knowledge as a science and its relationship with Western science like, "I know Indigenous knowledge is extremely valuable and important, but I only trust verified science." You're just racist. I'm not going to be polite.

Today, many scientists acknowledge the troubling attitudes that have long plagued research projects in Indigenous communities [...] But some Indigenous groups feel that despite such well-intentioned initiatives, their inclusion in research is only a token gesture to satisfy a funding agency.

That's you. You only want tokens for optics. You can't say, "I respect Indigenous knowledge but—" No, you don't respect Indigenous knowledge. Western science is not the only "real" science and your attempts to argue otherwise are racist. There is no argument.

wizardarchetypes

It's like I'm talking to a wall. All the time when I discuss my work as a wildlife & fisheries biologist, I discuss what I have learned directly from Indigenous people in my everyday work yet it's so clear that so many people hear that and think I'm bringing it up for what reason? To appear somehow progressive?

Has everyone just believed this whole time that I bring it up for optics?

Everyone nods, "of course he mentions Indigenous people," because they believe it would simply look bad for me if I didn't.

In fact Indigenous knowledge is a constant topic of conversation and point of reference when I discuss my work as a scientist who uses Western science because my work is useless without it.

I work with endangered species which are endangered solely due to continual colonial violence against people and the land. I can follow the Western scientific method all I want and publish 100 papers on how to fix salmon populations—and get nowhere without Indigenous knowledge and sovereignty.

Indigenous knowledge is not an afterthought to reference as back up to Western science. Believe it or not, we can and should lead any number of scientific projects with Indigenous knowledge.

You need to change how you regard Indigenous knowledge on a fundamental level.

hearthfire-heartfire

bagele chilisa's book 'indigenous research methodologies' was published in 2019, btw. it's focused on decolonizing current western research practices, but obviously to decolonize you have to understand how and why indigenous sciences deserve consideration in the first place, and what counts as evidence when we look at a body of research.