Quote:
Originally Posted by mikeo2
How many of you shoot gophers? I bet ZERO of you keep the gophers to eat or use as bait and its pretty damn hard to release a dead gopher. Suckers are the gophers of the fish world, sure they are a part of the ecosystem and provide food for predators, some people see them as a nuisance and other people see them as one of god's creatures.
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That's a good point but typically, gophers are on private land and the removal of them serves a definite purpose (like protecting crops/livestock) and therefore livelihood. It also presents the fact that as the owner of the land, the property owner has every right to benefit from it and protect it according to how he sees fit. I would see no issue with regulating the shooting of gophers on public land, by the way.
However, the comparison is basically apples to rocks because it's so different. Alberta waters are for the most part public waters and we all have a degree of stewardship and stake in them. A better comparison would perhaps be the killing of ducks in the tailing ponds of Fort Mac. Why the outrage? Because the ducks are seen as your own property, and that's because they are -- the tailing ponds were killing our own property. In the same way, killing fish just because is you killing my property and vice versa.
And then held against the historical precedents set by the wanton destruction of the buffalo, passenger pigeon, hawks/falcons, bull trout, pike, burbot, etc, and one gets a sense of how foolish and irresponsible it is. Four of that list are practically extinct and it's because of this type of irresponsible attitude.
I don't mean it as a judgement. What I raise is the facts: suckers are native and trout for the most part aren't, so the latter is the interloper. Wanton destruction is short-sighted. This is a public resource and private individuals have no right to regulate a public resource as they see fit. Etc.