Dear Dreama,
Firstly I would like to apologise for the tone of my last post that was in response to you in the PETA kills... thread. It was blatantly antagonistic and had little regard for you and for that I am very sorry.
The information that you provided was *gold*. I read the entire pdf and am thoroughly convinced that CO2 *is* a painful death and definitely not the humane approach that it is touted as being. I was having my doubts about it due to knowing that the body responds to slight increases in CO2, but does not respond to decreases in O2; therefore a device that absorbed CO2, but introduced N2 (inert) would be *preferrable*.
I will contact PETA with regards to this matter.
On the whole topic of killing - I personally hate it. At the same time there are situations that require "management" that need ethical and humane methods of euthenasing - as distressing at that is.
We have a situation in South Australia where man introduced koalas onto and island that is now being deforested by the burgeoning population who are destroying their own habitat as well as that of the other dependent species. It is a complex problem since the population there is free of the clyamidia that is in the mainland population, as well as not being easily rehomed in new territories. We advocate neutering but there is a population of 10,000+ on the island and it is increasing; there is the possibility that many animals will die a painful death due to exhausting the habitat, not just koalas. This is a *natural* process but very distressing. They are safe for now as no political gov't will address the issue by culling - which in the end may be the hard but most responsible answer.
At no point do I say that these things are easy to think about, let alone make decisions on.
What to do about the mice issue raised? I don't know! It's all distressing. I did not say that they should all be killed - and agree that that would be a simplistic option. It is not, however, something that I suggested.
Cats have a very bad name in Australia, because they have characteristics that are unknown in this landscape except in the Quoll - a marsupial cat carnivore equivalent. The difference is that Quoll have a slow reproductive rate - typical of Austrlian species since we have a barren landscape and ancient fragile depleted soils.
Anyone releasing even a spayed cat into the wild would be considered in Australia of being a criminal - there are possibly hefty fines for dumping of animals - but entirely apart from the grose neglact of the cat itself - they are natural killing machines and depopulate large areas of all animals smaller than themselves. The largest threat to the Australian Lyrebird is cats - after human caused habitat destruction of course.
I am glad to hear that you are involved and active in your support of your ethics.
Edit: details of my current activities removed.
The thread is closed - I am sorry that I have not been able to post this publically there but if you wish it you can do so as it is an apology.
Warm regards, Alistair.
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