Quote:
Originally Posted by noodle creek
Come on man, comparing a mullet and minnow to a whooping crane is ridiculous. Mullet and minnows are baitfish and are extremely important. You know better than that.
Tell me what kind of environmental downfalls we will have if we whooping cranes go extinct.
I'm all for whooping cranes if they can make it, but if not it's not a huge deal. I'm for spending money on habitat that supports multiple species of birds, mammals, and fish. Yall have gone out pretty far on a limb trying to justify the existence of a dang crane. I'm all for private funding of this, but back to the reason the thread was started, it's just ridiculous that this is news worthy with the way the country is going right now.
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I just, I don't even know how to respond to that. Where did you get that I was comparing a crane to a mullet? I was talking about nongame species. I was talking about the economic value of species, and how nongame species are percieved to have no economic value. Mullets and minnows have no direct economic value, but they are valuable in the sense that they provide food for other economically valuable species.
Go back and read it again before you misquote me, fella. I said nothing about cranes in that, and was no way insinuating what you
assumed I was saying.
It's never a huge deal, until one day it affects something the majority is in favor of. If ducks were dwindling to only several thousand, or deer, or turkeys, all hell would break loose to save them. But when its a species that people
percieve to have no economic value, they get all up in arms over it.
Why are whooping cranes in danger? Because they were over hunted. Why did they hunt them? I don't know, probably because they tasted good. Who are any of you to say that with restoration efforts this species won't have a season on it again. No one has a problem with the black bear restoration, because they will have a season on them eventually. There is a season on sandhill cranes in Texas, who is to say we couldn't have one on Whoopers one day?
I have never, EVER, suggested that there will be some environmental issues happening if the whooping crane goes extinct. It is not a species that another species or a habitat relies on. But they do occupy habitat that waterfowl utilize, so if this population had all the protection of the ESA, there would be A LOT of waterfowl habitat preserved because of this bird's presence.