| | This is what I call random protection of low numbers. They see a animal race decline, due to human progress, and then call it "endangered" species. However, since they have no real affection for the animal itself and they are not going out there taking responsibility for the animals they want to keep, they tend to forget that animals don't distinguish between lovely humans and food.
This wouldn't happen, if those people were really interested in the species and the animal on a caring basis, rather than only a supposed moral high ground. It is easy to rescue a predator species from the interior of a court room, but to go out and care for what you have done is not part of the contract. Or at least, this is what I find so amazing about the whole business. Bans on animal hunting often provoke only a dramatic increase in population until it shakes the whole ecosystem in an unforseen direction. Whale hunt is an excellent example, where government bans are not tolerated in some countries and despite constant claims of enviros that whales are a dying race, they are still around. Despite constant hunting from Norway or Chinese fisher men, they aren't exstinct yet. I have even seen a few whales near the Californian coast. Those whale hunters have a vested self-interest in this huge animals and therefore, they would rather sink their boat than fish the seas empty.
Of course, there are also black sheeps among whale hunters (as it is with all of mankind) and to protect good whale hunters from bad ones, there should be some kind of property right on whales. You can't do a property right on a part of the sea, because whales are wandering animals, who easily swim hundreds of sea miles in a few months.
Property rights on sea and on sea animals is still a concept in its infancy, but certainly one that should be taken seriously.
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