Thanks go to the Fish & Wildlife Branch for picking up the (dropped) ball and ending McGuire Lake fishing. Would that they – and other promoters of this environmentally disruptive folly, including S.A. Council – had proactively never let it begin in the first place; but they did.
At least it’s over, so let all supporters of our community’s little lake be vigilant and ensure that this intrusive, turtle-threatening nonsense never happens again!
Many of us grounded in the here-and-now – the 21st century – recognize that principle of ecology, which states that in nature, “everything is connected to everything else.”
Many others, like pipeline promoters, climate change deniers, algae bloom contributors, and perpetual economic growth zealots, to name just a few of those outside the 21st century loop – obviously do not.
Similarly, not enough of us grasp the corollary of this ecological ‘connectedness’ principle – namely that in tinkering with nature, you can never do only one thing.”
Given its name, we might have hoped that the Fish and Wildlife Branch and fish and game groups would have understood this potential for possible collateral harmful impacts of fish-stocking and fishing on the lake and its resident turtles.
But they did not, and the risks of stocking and fishing doing more than one thing at McGuire were overlooked, harming the little lake and its turtles.
Todd Hooper’s (Observer) reaction to McGuire’s fishing closure illustrates beautifully the ethically flawed world view in the whole fish-stocking, fishing and disrespect of nature narrative.
By stating that “It was only one turtle…” and “I know there were a lot of kids down there having fun,” he really says it all – that our own “fun” totally and exclusively trumps everything in nature, including turtles – and presumably fish, plants, any hunted wildlife and all else.
And how disconnected from nature is that ?
Tom Crowley
