Playing God

(Photo borrowed from article linked below)

This morning I read an article that I found disturbing. I've seen it many times before with different animals, but the story is basically the same. We (humans) mess up a habitat which causes something to go awry within the ecosystem. Then we try to fix it, but really have no idea of the implications of our actions. Then we think we have the right to eradicate one animal, that we decided is somehow the bad guy and doesn't belong, while going out of our way to protect the one that we claim is unfairly being predated and needs to be saved. We compound one wrong by slapping another one on top of it.
This time it involves whales and seagulls. Apparently in Argentina there was an explosion of seagulls due to copious amounts of trash left exposed in landfills and by humans. These particular seagulls are special in that they discovered (about 10 years ago) that they could snack on right whales when they surfaced to breath. So in addition to eating week old french fries and garbage, they also dine on fresh whale meat. It's called adaption, and it's a remarkable, and beautiful thing that life does. It wasn't so bad (for the whales) when the population was small, the whales could stave off a few birds, and the birds got a good meal. But now it is a different story. The birds are many, and not only do they attack adults they also attack the infant whales, creating open sores that are prone to infections. Now the whales are in trouble. Now the gulls are "bad".
The attacks are so intense that whale watching trade has gone down because people are "horrified" to see the birds converge upon the whales as they breach the surface to take a breath.
So what are they going to do? Shoot the seagulls. Can you believe that? There is actually a plan to spend a hundred days following the whales and shooting every seagull that tries to take a bite.
This makes me angry. Not because I don't feel bad for the whales, but because I do feel bad for the gulls. They aren't doing anything wrong. They are doing exactly what any animal in a position of overabundant food  source and no predation would do. Expand and multiply. For crying out loud WE do it, as can been seen by the 6 billion people that inhabit our planet. Should we start shooting people because we take advantage of other animals? We are worse than the gulls.
And it makes me angry that instead of immediately implementing a plan to cut down on the trash left in the open (which would quickly bring the population back into equilibrium, and which they are planning but not till later), they opt to just shoot a bunch of innocent birds.
I think this is not only irresponsible, but just plain stupid. The article I read made the gulls seem like the villains, and the whales like the victims. But that's not true. WE are the villains. The whales and the gulls are both victims. Maybe the gulls a little more so since they will get no sympathy from those of us who get to play god.

For the full article click HERE.