h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I think we are pretty much in agreement az. I mean, I eat a lot of meat (Thanks to Dr. Atkins) but I don't go out and butcher my own cattle - I just think it is hypocritical to be against all forms of hunting and still eat meat, as some people I know are. I have one friend who is a vegetarian, but feels he could eat meat if he did the hunting and will only eat fish he catches himself. My problem I guess is with people who think steak and pork chops comes from the freezer and not from Bossie and Babe.
I do not agree with methods that are cruel (idiots who hunt deer with large handguns or bears with bows for example) nor trophy hunting. I would consider myself a conservationist in that I think a lot of places need to have stricter limits on the number of animals killed by hunters and very strict penalties for poaching.

Glad we can have these sorts of discussions and be civil about it without jacking up the rhetoric. all 'round!

az

I have to say that I agree with pretty much everybody's comments here (except for the bits about explosives for gophers). I don't eat much meat myself, not because of any particular moral qualms but mainly because I don't particularly like most types. I confess a distinct fondness for bacon and for tinned corned beef and prosciutto. But I can't say that I ever eat the stuff without remarking to myself on whence it comes.

Also, when I've ben considering the present BSE situation in Canada and the accompanying border closure, I wish someone would take the bull by the horns and say now is the time to replace the unsustainably large Canadian cattle herd with an ecologically more appropriate and smaller bison herd. When I buy red meat, I make a special effort to buy bison simply because it just doesn't seem to make sense to me to raise bloody big non-native ruminants when there are bloody bigger native ruminants available.

And, on the subject of gophers: I think it is ridiculous that golf course grounds crews are sent out all over north america to slaughter the little beggars simply because a nice old lady doesn't like the things. Frankly, exterminating them from golf courses is simply hunting for empty aesthetics, like the trophy head on the wall. And, the gopher killing is cleaning out the bottom of the food chain on some of the few remaining green areas in urban areas of the continent. Might as well just pave the place with astroturf.

to return to gophers again, I think your idea of leaving areas of long grass in the rough is a good one. The course my parents live near uses live traps I think, or has in the past, though with limited success.

Not mowing out-of-play areas saves money (wages, fuel, equipment maintenance) as well as wildlife. It's not actually my idea: it's part of this little program http://www.audubonintl.org/programs/acss/golf.htm

Am I wrong in thinking that golf courses are typically places that a) use far too much water and b) disrupt the natural wildlife in the area?

Yes, this also happens when places are ploughed over to build new residential sites, but golf? This has always seemed a somewhat 'elitist' sport to me, when one considers not only the price of a decent set of golf clubs but also club fees, etc.

Do people *really* have to golf? I mean, all things considered . . .


az

I think you're right to an extent, Az. There are golf courses in places that they just don't fit (deserts) where they are a drain on the water resources. In many areas, however, they are often the last refuge of wildlife that has been chased there by urban sprawl (Urban sprawl also disrupts the natural water system, increasing runoff and mucking up the water table). There have been independent studies done which show that golf courses act as filters for surface water: water flowing into a golf course is more poluted than that flowing out.

But, when all is said and done, most golf courses are ecologically untennable (greens are generally gardens of stressed marsh-grass at the top of hills). Golf is becoming less and less an elitist game, however. Certainly in North America, it has become very much the game of the common person. Of course, the common person of North America is, in some ways, the pampered elite of the world.

Personally, I'm really sick of golf. I'd be happy if I never saw another golf course.

hi anhaga,

Well, ALL golf courses in Andalucia are a total drain on the very 'iffy' water supplies we have here.

When I first moved to Seville it was at the end of the worst drought they had experienced in years and we not only experienced water shortages but the tap water became totally undrinkable. Even showering in the quickly recycled river water was very unpleasant.

But this wasn't a scratch compared to what the smaller villages in the south went through, when households were only allowed two or three buckets of water a day for all their washing and eating needs.

I don't know what happened to the hundreds of golf courses in southern Spain at that time but I have a hard time imagining that they went dry.


az

I think it's ridiculous when people put golf courses (for example) ahead of water resources. Here (Alberta) there is a token effort by the government to manage surface water (mainly so that oil producers can pump it down their wells were it's gone forever)

During our recent (ongoing, but few realize that) drought, I was forever amazed by golfers asking "how come the course is so dry?" I would respond "well, there hasn't been significant precipitation in about five years . . ." to which they would invariably respond "don't you have city water?"

I hate defending golf courses, but here's the North American facts: compared to fertilizer, pesticide and water use and abuse by homeowners on their lawns, Golf Courses are fastidiously eco-friendly. Golf courses in most jurisdictions are heavily regulated (rightly so) while home owners spray and spread and drown their lawns with poisons with absolutely no control. I once had a man come to me in the early spring (ground still frozen) and say "I put some fertilizer down on my lawn last week and it doesn't seem to be comin along yet. Should I put on more?" I asked him how much he'd used and he told me. In a single application that guy had given his lawn more fertilizer than we give a green in a year. I told him to wait a while. I didn't tell him that absolutely all of the fertilizer he put down had since been washed into the groundwater by his obsessive, excesive watering; that none of it had actually gotten to the plants.

Personally, I think the retail sale of lawn-care chemicals should be banned. And I'm sick of golf.

Anhaga, there are golf courses in deserts? How bizarre! My mother who was from a fairly upper class family, said that the two most boring sports in the world, bar none, were golf and cricket. (I gather when she was younger, she used to have to accompany her parents and watch..) Plus, she was a Scot, and they invented golf..

just as an example:

http://www.lasvegasgolfadventures.com/Desert_Pines_Golf_Club.php

and speaking of boneheaded hunters...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-4629746,00.html

"Wisconsin's deer and human gun hunting season started Saturday and lasts for nine days."

So, where's the problem?

They always lose a few hunters to accidents (usually booze-related) and there's often a few that get lost and freeze to death, but I think this is the first time I've heard of a firefight

Must be Al Qaeda.