The ethics here are within Bella’s mind, not within the wolf’s.
Excellent reply. Upvoted. But there several problems with the position you are staking out. One is your over-the-top claim that it is more ethical to hunt a human. Agreed, the wolf has more value as a carrier of biodiversity, but that is not the only kind of value to be considered.
A second is your acceptance of “scarcity” as the word for the characteristic making the wolf valuable. As if the value arises by the same process as does the value in a rare coin. Supply and demand. No, actually the wolf is valuable as a carrier of information. Killing one of only a handful of wolves probably extinguishes several dozen alleles from the species gene pool and greatly increases the risk that the entire species will be extinguished. At least in Washington State.
And therein lies your third mistake. If you had been quoting wildlife populations in the entire Pacific Northwest, including B.C., then they might mean something. But the last wolf in Washington state has almost no biodiversity value if there are still plenty of wolves in Idaho or in Canada. Conducting a wildlife census based on human political boundaries makes no sense at all.
Excellent reply. Upvoted. But there several problems with the position you are staking out. One is your over-the-top claim that it is more ethical to hunt a human. Agreed, the wolf has more value as a carrier of biodiversity, but that is not the only kind of value to be considered.
A second is your acceptance of “scarcity” as the word for the characteristic making the wolf valuable. As if the value arises by the same process as does the value in a rare coin. Supply and demand. No, actually the wolf is valuable as a carrier of information. Killing one of only a handful of wolves probably extinguishes several dozen alleles from the species gene pool and greatly increases the risk that the entire species will be extinguished. At least in Washington State.
And therein lies your third mistake. If you had been quoting wildlife populations in the entire Pacific Northwest, including B.C., then they might mean something. But the last wolf in Washington state has almost no biodiversity value if there are still plenty of wolves in Idaho or in Canada. Conducting a wildlife census based on human political boundaries makes no sense at all.