The Nova Scotia Cod

[carlip]

I have been listening to the podcast from episode 1. I am lucky enough to have a job that I am able to wear headphones for most of my 10 hour shift, needless so say I cover a lot of ground in that time. I recently hit on the enviromentalism series and while it all made sense and sounded based in logical proofs, yet there was one thing that I could not stop wondering about.

Yes I accept that the government, UN, Canada and otherwise, messed up the cod reserve. The basic message that I got was that governments cannot manage commons goods and that sort of thing is best left to the free market. One can safely say that in the 16th and 17th century there was a more free market like economic and political climate over natural resources. Ignoring the "kings" animals rules,  how could the crown really know that someone was poaching anyway?"We drove them together into one place in such a manner that we could catch them with our hands, and when we held one of them by its leg, and that upon this it made a great noise, the others all on a sudden came running as fast as they could to its assistance, and by which they were caught and made prisoners also." - Lost Land of the Dodo: The Ecological History of Mauritius, Reunion and Rodrigues, 2007

They must have been good eating and seems to require little effort to trap, so the question begs, if fisherman had realized that keeping the cod population up was a good thing, why did people of the same era not realize this for the dodo population? Both had free market conditions, yet the dodo went extinct.

[FreedomPhilosophy]

The American buffalo was also driven to extinction, although I think government programs encouraged over hunting in that case. Much of the wildlife (and prior human population) of New Zealand was killed and eaten by the influx of the Maori so history is very mixed on this issue.

Some people just seem to like to kill things.

[ribuck]

I think in the days of the dodo, there was not much understanding of the consequences of species extinction.

I think that's how humans accumulate knowledge. People can't live their lives evaluating hypotheticals; they need to see the consequences first-hand. As the song goes, "You don't know what you've got till it's gone".

It's the same with engineering: the knowledge of how to build better bridges arises mostly from analysis of previous bridge failures.

Only in the past few decades has there been enough awareness of the consequences of species extinction that the motivation exists to do something about it.

 

[J-William]

 

"We drove them together into one place in such a manner that we could
catch them with our hands, and when we held one of them by its leg, and
that upon this it made a great noise, the others all on a sudden came
running as fast as they could to its assistance, and by which they were
caught and made prisoners also." - Lost Land of the Dodo: The Ecological History of Mauritius, Reunion and Rodrigues, 2007

 

Well, one thing I'd observe. The Dodo did not last long enough that anyone built their life and livelihood around catching and selling or eating the dodo. They were more or less killed off by tourists who had no incentive to preserve the species.

Also, they were not very nice people, and presumably children raised without violence wouldn't be amused by killing naive defenseless birds. I think that answers for dodo vs. cod.

The important question is whether we will save future dodos by having governments or freedom? I suspect that governments will make it illegal to profit off of or sell rare or endangered species. I say this, because that is exactly what they do! In africa certain big animals are "protected" by governments on large reserves. These animals are poached and not doing well. Others are privately (or at least tribally) owned and can be put to some economic use, and their populations are thriving.

[JamesP]

One big difference between the dodo and the cod is that the people who hunted the dodo to extinction were not in a social structure that pushed back against overhunting.  They would be more akin to the Mongol Horde than to a series of fishing villages.