Have you ever smelled an orchid that smells…barnyard?
People who ‘love nature’ but violently hate their native coyotes, spiders, snakes, and scavengers are fake.
Here’s the thing about the post. You don’t have to love or even like every animal. You can dislike things! Humane, intelligent pest control is fine and necessary. This isn’t the issue and never has been.
It’s violent, blind hatred and hypocrisy that’s the problem. People who gush over foxes and owls and hawks but want coyotes and snakes dead in the next breath. People who will rescue prey from predators because predation is mean. People who find it appropriate to leave sadistic comments on pictures of spiders or snakes someone is appreciating or owns. People who insist on labeling species as ‘good’ or ‘evil’. This is the sort of behavior that bothers me.
People who only appreciate nature when it’s aesthetically pleasing to them and want to destroy the parts they find ugly and unpleasant don’t truly understand or love it. They love an ideal that isn’t actually representative of reality.
Okay I was going through the notes and I Really have to say. Some of you people don’t understand how ecosystems work. There is literally no such thing as a “useless” or “pointless” species. That is not how this even remotely works. Every species on this planet is the result of billions of years of evolution.
Just because you don’t know something’s role in the ecosystem does not mean it exists just to annoy or scare you. You are not the center of the universe. Evolution does not exist for your benefit or detriment. That’s not how this fucking works.
Just because you think flies are useless because you can’t be bothered to learn about them does not mean they shouldn’t exist. Just because you think wasps don’t do anything because you can’t be bothered to learn about them does not mean they don’t play an vital role in the ecosystem.
Flies are scavengers and pollinators. Wasps are predators and parasites and pollinators. There is no such thing as a “useless” or “pointless” species, it’s just that you’re ignorant. Your lack of knowledge is not the fault of the species you’ve decided to hate.
Learn about the species near you, research the ones you think are useless, and learn that your fucking perception of the world does not equal how the world actually works.
No gods damned species spent the entire history of life on this planet evolving just to annoy or scare you. There is no such thing as a pointless species, only ignorant people.
If you want something to hate look into the invasive species in your area
I don’t think it’s really productive to hate even invasive species. They’re not acting out of malicious intent, they’re just living their lives as best they know how. They don’t really have the ability to understand the harm they’re doing to their non-native environment, and even if they did, they’d still be stuck doing what they need to do to survive. They’re not there by their own choice any more than any other creature chooses when and where it’s born.
That’s not to say that they don’t pose a threat to the environment they’ve been introduced to and don’t need their populations controlled. I just don’t think hate or projections of morals need to be part of that. Incorporating how people feel about certain invasives is how you end up with some species being treated like exceptions or, on the flip side, getting aggressive control measures that harm other native species.
Something I think a lot of folks also don’t realize is that even native species can be invasive
Deer are an excellent example. Deer are a native species in the US, but when we removed wolves from the environment (because of that whole aforementioned blind hatred thing, I might add) the deer population exploded uncontrollably - yes, even with human hunters trying to keep the numbers culled - and has absolutely devastated the ecosystem as a result
Nothing is ever black and white. Ever. You can’t remove one species and not expect a devastating cascade - they’re ALL important
