To save the endangered northern spotted owl, biologists have begun killing barred owls, a more widespread and aggressive bird that has invaded the former species’ territories in the U.S. Northwest. Once a barred owl enters a spotted owl’s range, it can out-compete it for food by being less picky and often aggressively kicks it out of its roost by repeatedly harassing and even “body-slamming” it.
Ecology is about balance. And balance dictates that something has to die in order for something else to live. We like to play God and decide which species is to live and which is to die. We are against evolution. We are against balance. And we will pay the price…
PS. And no, I did not even refer to the fact that we call two owls as “different species”… Hehehe…
If you are saying that we should not prevent the elimination of a species due to selection, I am not sure I agree.
There’s a very good chance that the reason the larger owls are moving into that area is due to our influence on their natural habitats.
The natural, does not go against evolution - whatever that would mean - choice is likely not on the table.
This is why I called it selection in the first sentence and not natural selection.
Humans are causing all sorts of species to disappear, directly and indirectly. Those who do not like this may in fact do things like what they are doing in the article, retaining diversity. To not intervene means that the OTHER intervensions of humans will decide who goes extinct. Natural in the sense of not having to do with human effects is no longer available.
If you think that’s going against evolution you don’t fully comprehend evolution. We humans also partake in that process by conducting artificial selection.
It’s worth pointing out that animals don’t care about their own species- preserving the existence of a species is something we do for ourselves, or because of some higher moral order that we are aware of and they are not.
As someone else already pointed out, it looks here like you’re somehow thinking of humans as external to nature. You think it natural for some owls to kill other owls, and yet unnatural for humans to kill owls. Humans are part of nature, too.
Additionally, ‘going against evolution/nature’ is being presented as somehow innately bad. I don’t agree. There may come a time when humanity, in order to preserve the traits we find worth preserving in humanity, must take the reins and guide it’s own evolutionary future [0]. This idea may not be in vogue – nature is commonly seen as the over-arching ‘good’, when in fact it’s at best neutral and quite possibly hostile.
I would have to say leave both owls alone. The aggressive owl may or may not cause the extinction of the other or it may force a behavioral change. Either way its nature and not the first time. Humans might be to blame but, it still is a natural occurrence other species have caused similar occurrences.
Fleas down here are becoming immune to many human made toxins. They have become susceptible to natural toxins though.
The surviving owls will be the same as before but, better able to survive challenge.
Is this good or bad? Or just natural?
The darwinists would probably claim it is good or natural when a stronger or just plain more aggressive destructive animal takes out a more peaceful one.
Some people who think they are darwinists might. But a darwinist would be just as impressed a bird that gets its food by eating things off a large mammal who benefits from the cleaning
as they would be with an aggressive predator. Whatever the route to surviving is equivalent. Turd eaters, decomposers, the bacteria in your gut helping you digest, the tiny organisms that joined other organisms and are now our mitochondria, plants that benefits from being eaten and having their seeds shit out elsewhere and so on.
I say that the ecosystem needs protection, and that it didn’t all “evolve” for millions of years.
There are extreme differences in strength and resilience from one species to another. Most species are not “strong”, or “fit”.
Originally, nature had guardians and engineers, when the bio diversity and species amounts were at their very highest.
Without help, the ecosystem just gradually simplifies and degenerates.
So, evolutionary theory of the strong surviving may only entail a false logic based on recent evidence of the system, not considering those earlier guards?
I got to get a better computer. What I meant to say, Dan, was that the association between Nature, and evolutionary theory has been closely aligned with the best of possible worlds,that the earlier safeguards have been either ignored, or perhaps discounted.
If you could explain your guardians and engineers I would appreciate it.
From the smallest to the largest this is a predator prey world. That includes plants as predators(not just carnivorous plants) as well as microscopic organisms as predators and prey
Small populations of super advanced post humans. It’s more likely in my mind that they perfected the ecosystem before they were forced to leave. Either that or maybe a god-like-guy did it.
Ok, If this is true then it would stand to reason that they left because they had set things up so that the world no longer needed them. Situations of direness would work itself out. Again predator prey world with life and death, extinction evolving. If a species is weak it would be a natural occurrence. Our protection of it could cause ecological issues just as noninterference might. Its a coin toss. If there were planners they would have prepared for these issues on a large scale. If they did not then they were not that superior.
