Extermination of East End Deer: Reinforcement of speciesism predicts the future of humanity

Deer, horses, badgers, sharks, coyotes, wolves, geese, stray dogs, free-roaming community cats, and many other species have a common bond: they are the victims of culling - mass execution.

No animal is safe from senseless slaughter, the brutal fury of the human animal when human interests are infringed upon. Governments worldwide institute mass executions of animals to control populations, prevent the spread of disease, and prevent attacks on other species including attacks on humans.

Mass slaughter of animals is an irrational and barbaric response, a futile attempt to control nature. When our killer instincts rule, we reject rationality, intellect, scientific data, and the technology and tools we possess to confront and solve these issues humanely.

Ultimately, mass execution of animals reinforcesspeciesism - the unjustifiable, prevailing, overwhelming, and underlying basis of all injustices. The presumption that some human animals are more worthy of life than other human animals and the notion that the human animal is above all non-human animals is a clear indiction of our inferiority and inability to use our full capabilities to create a more compassionate and sustainable world.

The human animal is a predator by choice. The decision to cull and exterminate non-human animals en masse aligns with pre-existing, established, systematic violence toward animals.

In the United Kingdom, the badger cull is supposed to reduce the incidence of bovine tuberculosis. These are the same cows bred into a lifetime of butchery for human consumption.

In the United States, where hunters are allowed to shoot deer for sport, trophy, and meat, the cull of deer is a continually popular solution to reducing deer populations.

In Australia, an aerial cull of horses, shooting horses from helicopters, is considered a humane method of controlling wild horse populations. There is a looming possibility that this same inhumane solution of culling is on the brink of coming to the United States.

In the Pacific Ocean near the Hawaiian Islands and La Réunion in the Indian Ocean, some believe culling sharks will control populations and reduce shark attacks. In addition to being fished for the glorification of human triumph and consumption, sharks are subject to the cruel practice of finning.

And now, Romania. It is tragic, that four-year-old Ionut Anghel, was mauled to death by a pack of aggressive stray dogs in Bucharest. The circumstances regarding the thousands and thousands of stray dogs and the thousands and thousands of resulting dog attacks and dog bites in Romania is out of control.

However, the coming mass killing of stray dogs clearly emphasizes the speciesism and irony of President Traian Băsescu’s remark, also reiterated by Prime Minister Victor Ponta, “Humans are above dogs.”

Bloodshed and death is the easy fix that does not fix anything.

If we continue to allow the mass execution of animals, we set a standard for the future acceptance of violent bloodshed as the answer to all of our problems.

If we as a collective people continue to easily endorse mass execution of animals as a first response to every animal crisis, we will never be able to set a precedent for more effective and peaceful means of resolving human-animal conflicts.