There is a major point here, that you touched on Kowari, that not many may have picked up on,possibly including yourself.

Wildlife, such as kangaroos etc. stand a much greater chance of survival if they are able to be assigned value and can be able to be protected by property rights and managed as other assets are. That way their "owners" (managers, custodians, stweards, whatever) can protect them and be able to demand fair compensation from trespassers (poachers, illegal hunters, polluters, whatever).

If in one way they can be turned into an eco-tourism asset as has been suggested by Macropodlady, great! I think this would be an excellent way to go. I get the feeling however, that this may not work for all parts of the country. But 'farmers' (managers, whatever) don't kill all their herds at once. They manage them so that they ensure the survival of their assets. Domestication is not required for 'farming', eg. honeybees aren't domesticated, fish are not domesticated.

But the main point is that proper value needs to assigned to these animals, and management dollars can then be assigned to protect them. If they remain priceless (esp. in an ideological way), they remain worthless to a system that requires managment funds to be accounted for.

Reply to comment by Col Rouge:

I guess what is ethical and what is not is open to debate. Some consider contraception and passive euthanasia unethical, others do not. As for vegans imposing their views on others: what about all those hypocritical, puritan values that people are punished for "offending", such as swearing, nudity, trespassing etc? On the other hand, victims of bullying, ridicule, mobbing and financial scams are not offered any protection, and solicitors are not willing to represent them in court. If, however, the victims fight back, they are punished very severely. In the 1970-s and 1980-s, it was not unusual for the teacher to ridicule a person who liked animals in front of the whole class. I guess that kind of terror is accepted by society, whereas if animal rights activists protest against an individual vivisector, that is regarded "terrorism" (by the same police that are responsible for Aboriginal deaths in custody!)

As for animal rights activists being "feeble minded, sentimental or a small minority", that contradicts the claim that they "impose their values on others" since it takes a certain strength and intelligence to be able to change public attitudes and rethink the way things are done.

As for us being out of touch with reality, how did I manage and have the courage to return to a country at war in 1992 and serve in the army? Or achieve school marks and incomes in the top 5%, both in Australia and in Croatia? I also started recycling, including post-consumer plastics (HDPE, LDPE, PP) in 1990, before they had recycling codes, by calling the factories that made the products, asking who manufactured the plastics and what type they were, and then finding factories to accept them (they had to be as clean as pre-consumer plastic). Today, recycling is mainstream. In addition to my own activism, I donate to large professional organizations in Australia, the USA and the UK. In Croatia, I find it possible to combine a career, investing, and activism, which was difficult in Australia.

Here is the crux of the matter as to why opinions are so disparate. This is from Albert Einstein as quoted in ‘Quantum Reality, Beyond the New Physics' page 250.

"A human being is part of the whole, called by us 'Universe'; a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely but striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.”

Some folks aim for this ideal, others don’t even know of its existence.

Jonathon

It strikes me that the vegans pushing their barrow are doing so with a near-religious fervour, with an arrogance and superciliousness which leads one to think that they beieve themselves to be a more highly evolved form of human being.

The reality is that humans (and a very large number of animals in the natural world, not just cats) are omnivores. Our digestive tracts are designed to process many different kinds of food. Ditto bears, foxes and pigs. Even honey-eating birds indulge in the occasional insect to get the protein they need. To suggest that the vast array of species in the animal world can exist as "vegans" suggests that the brain of the proposer is on another planet (called "Vega").

I note too that the only "vegan" bear, the Giant Panda, was once a carnivore/omnivore (and have the teeth to prove it) and because of its diet spends a huge proportion of its waking hours eating or digesting bamboo. The koala's brain has actually shrunk over evolutionary time since how many brain cells are required to eat leaves half the day then spend the other half sleeping and digesting?

Humans evolved the large brains we have because we are meat eaters. Vegans and some vegetarians present themselves as "higher forms" of humanity yet their brains and digestive systems are those of meat-eaters.

In response to comment from Viking13:

Veganism has nothing to with religion, but to do with one choosing to be ethical, moral and considerate to the world and environment that we live in. In fact I would associate eating meat with being more religious and in keeping with the delusional superiority ideals found in the bible and underlying causes of war.

Felines are the only animal in which their body systems physically need meat to survive. However the majority of other animals require eating meat for survival purposes due to meat being their available food source in their environment i.e. bears, foxes and pigs. Human body systems are designed to only eat meat for survival purposes in the absence of alternative food sources. There are enzymes in meat that the human body physically can’t break down which evidences the better suitability of a vegan diet. Man has developed way past the point where they need meat to survive, now meat is eaten for pure greed purposes (because it tastes good and they can!). Without the consumption of meat, in the presence of a balanced diet man would continue to thrive intellectually. The essentials for brain development are also found non-meat products.

And viking13 you have some misconceptions regarding koalas. They are intelligent animals. They play a vital role in our ecosystem. That role is to process a particular leave (a leave only consumed by koalas), and due to the inedibility of this leave they require a lot of sleep in order to digest it. Loss of the particular role that koalas play would have a devastating impact on the ecosystem. They do not sleep a lot because they are unintelligent due to their vegan diet.

While it is possible in our society to live a healthy life as a vegan, I wouldn't claim that it is natural for us - while not an expert I spent a number of years looking at the literature and doing a thesis on women and iron.

Humans have been adapted to a hunter/gatherer life style for the greater part of our evolution. I don't think many hunter/gatherers would have said no to a bit of tasty herbivore on the plate - non I know of.

Shifting to agriculture was a bit of a disaster for us (especially for women's health) in a way. We had more children, had them earlier, our population levels went up which meant we got more infectious diseases and our parasite loads went screaming up because we were staying put, and we often degraded our environment. Women in third world countries are dying in the thousands still from this combination and from the linked iron deficiency. They also often get access to the iron rich meat last in society. Like it or not, it's harder to absorb iron from plant sources.

So while we can get away with it here because of our rich and varied diet and good health, it's not a good choice (choice is often not there for third world women) for many of the world's poor.

So nothing natural about being vegan. If being vegan has any moral superiority, well maybe if you are eating animals kept in factory conditions. Personally I don't have any problem with munching on a roo that probably had a pretty good life, I feel it's much better than eating a cow.