VEGETARIANS SURPRISE

At this point in my blogging career I can be fairly sure that most of my readers know that I am a vegetarian.  Using the method of throwing out the extremes and averaging the remaining figures, it appears that vegetarians represent 15-20% of the US population.  That does not include vegans. Most people do not know the difference between a vegetarian and a vegan.  A vegan will not eat anything that comes from an animal - no butter, milk, cheese, etc.  There are two types of vegetarians.  There are those who are vegetarian for nutritional reason and those who are vegetarian for spiritual/religious reasons. Some of those who are vegetarians for nutritional reason will eat fish because of its nutritional values. The spiritual/religious vegetarians cover a broad spectrum. This group does not eat "sentient beings".  I'm sure you've already guessed that the definition of "sentient being" is problematic. So the behavior of this group of vegetarians covers a wide spectrum from those who will eat some seafood because they define it as non-sentient to those who literally sweep the ground ahead of themselves with a broom to avoid stepping on an insect. I fall somewhere in the middle. I avoid killing insects but at times I feel I have no choice. I don't get involved in the definition game, so I just don't eat any seafood.

Now one would most likely conclude that vegetarians are a rather innocuous group.  Most carnivores probably say "hurrah for vegetarians. That's more meat for me." A lot of people like to make fun of us, but it's generally unoffensive and good natured, so we either laugh, ignore it or hand it right back. Vegetarians seem like the perfect conservationists.  It makes sense since we don't want to kill any animal and want to preserve life.  But what if it turned out that the vegetarian actually might contribute to a potential environmental crisis?

A great number of sources say that vegetarianism is growing in the US. As I said, I used the throw out the extremes and average the rest to arrive at the number of vegetarians in the US.  I found the low of  2.6% to a high of 38%. Those are the extremes. I admit to not liking Gallop Polls. They take a small sample, almost never distributed across the country, and try to generalize the results to the entire US.  They came up with the 2.6%. You can not take a sample of 1,014 adults and generalize the results to 316,000,000 people spread out over 3,626,328 square miles!!!  Obviously it went out with the absurd. The study claiming 38% added three group together, again putting it in the realm of the extreme.  I believe that the resulting average is a bit low - 16.5% - but I can live with that. I can live with that especially since that isn't really important. The point is that this number is growing and appears to be growing rapidly.

So what kind of environmental crisis could the growth of vegetarianism cause?  As the numbers increase the demand for meat decreases. What is the potential long-term impact on the feed lots? What might be the long-term impact on natural wildlife?  Obviously this isn't going to happen overnight, but is there any sense in waiting until we have a problem? We have eliminated predatory animals across much of the United States. By eliminating the natural predators, deer and other animals are not only growing in numbers even with hunting but could be facing a crisis - starvation, etc. - if human hunting for food were to decrease.  We have also removed a great deal of natural feeding grounds along with the predatory animals, so we have thrown natural balance totally out of whack.

Red lines indicate food corridor prior to Interstate 

Before I-164 was built less than a quarter mile from my home I had deer, fox and a host of other animals on my property. The deer and the fox are totally gone. I own the right-of-way of an old trolley line that has food and shelter for a number of animals. The interstate cut this resource off for the animals, confining them to a small strip of land along the Ohio River that floods almost every year.

Obviously I am not a hunter and I don't agree with stalking and killing another living creature, but I don't condemn those who do hunt, especially those who hunt only what they are going to eat. There is little doubt that the human animal started as a gatherer and moved into being a hunter-gatherer. Our physiology confirms that we are omnivores. But at some point we started moving from hunting for food to hunting for pleasure and began to over hunt and exterminate entire species of animals.  I purposely do not use the term "sport" because my experience, although lacking any statistical backing, is that most "sport hunters" eat what they kill. They may enjoy the hunt but that's no worse that a farmer who enjoys tilling the soil. Would that mean the gardener or small subsistence farmer is a "sport farmer"? It seems that "sport" has almost become an economic/tax law term; viz. if you don't need to hunt to eat, then you are hunting because you want to hunt instead of buy your meat and that makes it a sport. I know quite a number of hunters who abhor trophy hunting and killing without reason, or what I am calling "pleasure" hunting. Often time these "sports hunters" are far, far more environmentalists and conservationists than non-hunters. Nevertheless, because of the human animal's historic lack of conservation and uncontrolled killing of predatory animals, we have become dependent upon hunters to control animal populations.  That is sad.

Here are some ideas to think about.  Even as a vegetarian who is a vegetarian because I do not want to kill other living creatures, I would much prefer that, if you feel compelled to eat meat, you hunt and eat what you kill. If you can't do that, many hunters would be happy to share or you can buy locally raised animals. In other words, avoid feed lot animals which flood the market place with meat filled with chemicals. And being so packed into an area that you spend your entire life standing up, has to count as cruelty. Because you are raising an animal to kill for food doesn't mean that you have to be cruel to it. Ending feed lots would not only create a better balance of supply and demand but it would be much healthier for the carnivore.

http://opossumsocietyus.org/faq-opossum/

Hunting groups have a great influence upon what is killed. I would suggest that it is to everyone's best interest that we stop killing animals that are considered a nuisance or just not necessary. We may not have figured out the purpose of the mosquito, but most of us can realize that every other creature on this planet has a purpose, and by destroying them we are destroying ourselves or the lives of our progeny. Take, for example, the opossum. It may seem like a useless animal to some people, but it is one of nature's garbage collectors like the vulture. Scavengers play an important part in a healthy world and the control of disease.

The care and maintenance of our wilderness is an important means of creating a win-win situation for all creatures.  We need not only to permit the return of the predators to their natural habitat but provide for sufficient wilderness so that they do not conflict with humans. This means not destroying any more of our wilderness. Wilderness is not a renewable resource. Thankfully, if carefully done, predators can be reintroduced. There have been several very successful projects of this sort. This permits the return of the natural balance of nature.  It doesn't mean the end of hunting. We could actually expand our protected areas so that there is a fringe along the wilderness that would permit hunting. This would not only help protect the predatory animals by keeping them even farther away from human development but would provide the hunter with abundant game.

Last, but not least, we would do well to copy a project that Pamela and I saw on several occasions in the west.  Earth bridges are built across highways and interstates.  Sometimes tunnel like areas are created along known animal trails, but the bridge seems to work best because there is no sense of being confined so the animals can cross the wide grassy areas almost without awareness of the highway. This permits the animals to move along natural migration corridors and to reach important food resources.

Perhaps the vegetarian really isn't going to cause an environmental crisis, at least not in the US and not in our life-times. Nevertheless the consideration of such a scenario gives us plenty of food for thought.  To protect our magnificent land and preserve its bounty as well as its beauty for generations to come, we need to be proactive.  We need to find the common point with others who might not totally think as we do and work to protect our children's birthright.

One last vegetarian cartoon . . . .