If they were born and raised in captivity their odds of survival are pretty low. Like someone who always lived in a large city and never went camping being dropped off in Alaska odds of survival.
Rehabilitation only helps so much without the actual experience of growing up with other members of their species in the wild.
Edit: Of course the adults in the wild are the ones that survived until adulthood so I still lean towards attempts to rehabilitate and release, just noting it isn’t as simple as releasing.
Why not let the rules of nature decide? Unlike human society, that lets the weak rule the strong, only the strong may survive in the wild. That is natural selection.
It’s not natural selection if we yanked them out of the natural order and kept them from acquiring the skills necessary to survive in the wild in the first place.
People always say this as some sort of “gotcha” statement, but what we do to them is clearly very different from their normal life cycle and something we have the will to stop doing or somehow make up for the damage unlike other natural events like volcanoes erupting or meteors striking.
How different is it than ladybugs and aphids, except for we (think we) have the will to do better than our nature demands? Also, I think I made it pretty clear that I don’t think that stance does our species credit. But I would say the outcome is very natural, even if natural isn’t exactly desirable.
Why not release them?
If they were born and raised in captivity their odds of survival are pretty low. Like someone who always lived in a large city and never went camping being dropped off in Alaska odds of survival.
Rehabilitation only helps so much without the actual experience of growing up with other members of their species in the wild.
Edit: Of course the adults in the wild are the ones that survived until adulthood so I still lean towards attempts to rehabilitate and release, just noting it isn’t as simple as releasing.
True
Their odds of survival in the wild are higher than being euthanized by a billionaire in an animal hostage crisis.
Captive animals don’t always do well being released in the wild.
Why not let the rules of nature decide? Unlike human society, that lets the weak rule the strong, only the strong may survive in the wild. That is natural selection.
It’s not natural selection if we yanked them out of the natural order and kept them from acquiring the skills necessary to survive in the wild in the first place.
If you consider people as part of the natural order, then it is in fact natural selection. This isn’t a commendation of our place in nature.
People always say this as some sort of “gotcha” statement, but what we do to them is clearly very different from their normal life cycle and something we have the will to stop doing or somehow make up for the damage unlike other natural events like volcanoes erupting or meteors striking.
How different is it than ladybugs and aphids, except for we (think we) have the will to do better than our nature demands? Also, I think I made it pretty clear that I don’t think that stance does our species credit. But I would say the outcome is very natural, even if natural isn’t exactly desirable.
because it’ll still cost money to move them to like Newfoundland or whatever.
This is Marineland, in Niagara Falls, you can’t just “release them” unless you want 30 Beluga whales going over the falls.
Plus releasing them is just killing them. They’ll likely die in the wild.