ken wrote:

Culling the herd is never pretty, whether it's deer in Northern
Michigan, seals in the St. Laurence, Cattle on the prairies, or
chickens in British Columbia. But the specialists in the field say it
must be done to prevent even greater tragedies. Greenpeace loves the
images of white big-eyed babes and it does wonders for its
fund-raising. The true story is a little different. The depletion of
cod stocks in the Atlantic has left no room for the increasing seal
population, which feed on cod. And if all the cod are gone, the seals
would starve anyway, much like the deer herds in Michigan. There is no
evil
here, just tough choices between rebuilding a declining resource, and
facing the wrath of bleeding-heart liberals. As Trudeau said, "Let 'em
bleed." Amen.

That may all be quite true, but as far as th ecod stocks go, the
overfishing by Spain and everybody else in the world who comes here
takes a lot bigger toll than the seals. I honestly don't think there is
enough knowledge about the food chain in the ocean to jump to ANY
conclusions.

For a dumb example, is there ANY possibility that seal excrement feeds
lower life forms in the ocean? If a bacteria that USED to feed on these
droppings was in turn the food for something that the cod ate, then
reducing the seal population may be a bad thing.

I don't know if there is ANY validity to that last paragraph, but until
more work is done, nobody knows if it's true or not. We shouldn't be
blindly going into places where even the angels fear to tread.

If we HAVE to guess about environment changing actions, shouldn't we err
on the side of caution?



mike