Animal rights advocates—and others—went into furious conniptions because Sarah Palin authorized wolves to be shot from helicopters as part of Alaska’s animal management program. Some ever—erroneously—claimed she did the shooting. She did not, but left that unpleasant task to professional hunters.
I wonder if the same explosive reaction will be exhibited, and expletives uttered, by the usual suspects about the Feds’ plan to kill feral pigs from helicopters. From the San Diego Union Tribune story:
When it comes to controlling the spread of feral pigs in San Diego County, the public hunting effort isn’t doing the job. That has led federal agencies to launch an ambitious program that will use cage traps, corral traps, federal hunters with guns and dogs and even shooting from helicopters to exterminate the area’s population of wild swine. Officials see the pigs as a threat to fragile ecosystems and public health and safety. Environmentalists worry about the damage wild pigs will do to the county’s sensitive habitat, much of it rebounding from Southern California’s catastrophic wildfires of the last decade.
Proper wildlife management is legitimate, and killing animals in the process is sometimes necessary. If you are for animal rights, you must oppose because killing feral pigs is morally equivalent to killing people.
But animal welfarists and environmentalists can support the action. Otherwise, entire ecosystems can be thrown completely out of whack. That’s what Palin did in Alaska and what the Feds are doing in California.
