Kind of tone deaf to say “I don’t know why these super strict laws exist to protect wild animals in the United States I didn’t ask for this” when cattle ranchers are successfully pressuring Trump into removing Bison from federal lands as we speak.
We can argue about raising Bison for human consumption instead of cows on federal land all we want, but by all accounts we are missing like 25+ million bison because of their wholesale slaughter over the past few hundred years. They do serve an important ecological function.
You…don’t know why laws exist…to stop people from killing eagles and wolves and bison and coyotes and turtles in the United States?
I’m listening to these podcasts about how private homeowners/landowners can do more to make their lawns better for native wildlife, and one new thing I’d never heard until recently before was plant a bunch of local berry producing bushes. So much is about planting flowers for caterpillars to munch on for birds to eat, or flowers for pollinators.
So why berry producing bushes? Because we killed off bears.
Bears used to eat huge amounts of berries and fish, shit out the seeds, and spread berries around the US just like birds do. Except we killed like 99% of the bears, and we’re doing our best to exterminate the birds as well.
Who thinks of a bear as a creature that distributes seeds (and also technically fertilizer from eating hundreds of pounds of fish a year and then pooping farther inland).
Stupid shit you don’t think about, like missing bears roaming around the whole US, have changed our environment in ways we’re still figuring out.
It’s one thing to not know why a law exists. Totally fair. We should question why something was written.
But it’s another thing entirely to assume a law was written specifically for you as an individual, and if the law isn’t serving you right here right now, then the law is stupid.
