RP - "Giants in Twilight"

[jordan179]

I wrote this three years ago, thought I'd repost it.

"Giants in Twilight"They stand in twilight

Comments

[eric_hinkle]

Nice piece of work. Did you ever seek publication for it?

[jordan179]

No -- maybe I should, there probably are places that will publish animal or ecology-themed poems. It's been pre-published here, of course.

[chocolate_frapp]

I love your gorilla poems. I don't think you read me this one before.

[jordan179]

Why, thank you. Um, well I like elephants too! :)

[chocolate_frapp]

we should go to the SF zoo sometime!

[steltek]

I value animals, too -- the one I love most is the African lion -- but I believe that human interests must come first. (Sometimes short-term interests must be subordinate to long-term ones, of course.) I am also a hunter, but I hunt for meat and I frown on hunting animals you have no intention of eating, and I especially despise poaching for ivory or trophies. But if, for example, there is a village in Africa managing their local elephant population by protecting it from poachers and selling a reasonable number of expensive licenses to hunt them for sport to rich foreigners, I cannot defame those people for using a natural resource to help lift themselves out of poverty, especially when the impact will be a net positive for the local elephant population. (As a matter of fact, there are some regions in Africa beginning to do precisely this

[jordan179]

The main problem I see with hunting elephants now, knowing what we know, is that we have growing evidence that they are very intelligent -- on the order of the nonhuman great apes. That makes killing them for reasons other than defensive ones morally rather dicey.

Another problem is that poachers are killing them faster than they are breeding, so if we keep it up, they may go extinct in the wild. Elephants are very slow-breeders, practioners of a high-k strategy on the order of our own. (In fact, their gestation period is longer than ours).

[steltek]

I can see that. And personally, I would not kill an elephant because I don't think they're any good to eat, they're too hard to kill compared to game animals in the same habitat, and like you, their intelligence would give me pause. For the same reason of intelligence, I dislike the idea of killing even our own less intelligent domestic companion animals like dogs and cats, other than in self-defense. On the other hand, in the example I described, the wardens who supervise hunts on their local elephant populations (and protect that investment from poachers) are, indirectly, hunting elephants to provide for their own families.It is difficult for me, as a human, to tell other humans that they must stay in poverty for the sake of non-humans, especially when they are making a good faith, profit-motivated effort to protect their populations by managing when and how they may be hunted. I believe we must see to the needs of our own kind first, that we must protect human life above even the most intelligent animal life. I am not sure that

[benschachar_77]

These terms you use to discuss reproduction strategies, high-k and high-r,where do they come from and where can I learn about them.

[melvin_udall]

I'll give you a quarter if you'll disable those god forsaken adult content warnings.

I'm just saying.

[melvin_udall]

I don't think he can, from what I understand the higher-ups at livejournal did it at the request of some people who found Jordan offensive.

[jordan179]

Ooh look, it's a brave anonymous sniper! What's your name, brave anonymous sniper?

[jordan179]

Ok, should be disabled now. Tell me if it isn't, ok -- I'm pretty sure I entered the change properly.

[polaris93]

I love that! It's like something out of Lyall Watson's Elephantoms: Tracking the Elephant (http://www.amazon.com/Elephantoms-Tracking-Elephant-Lyall-Watson/dp/0393324591). There is vast wisdom in elephants, but damned little in us any more.