>>50472Thank you for your compliments and for identifying the species.
>>50495Because you triggered my precious feelings. But I'm willing to learn here. Perhaps I have not considered this well.
>Invasive species need to be eradicated as soon as they are encountered.
For the sake of argument, let's assume this is true. I'd say it's a stretch to argue that shooting at random græy squirrels, even if done in a coordinated, organized fashion, furthers this goal. But more importantly, even if it did, the effectiveness of this method would still have to be weighed against the extreme discomfort you'd be causing in your victims compared to presumably less painful methods (like, I don't know, perhaps trapping and euthanizing?) or even to taking a kannmannixmachen.jpg attitude.
Unlike plants, these invasive animals can feel pain. So if you can't stop them without causing lots of suffering, it's probably not worth it, even in cases where biologists expect a takeover of newcomes to cause the extinction of several indigenous species.
The "amount" of pain inflicted before your method would appreciably slow down – let alone reverse – the undesired change of an environment would be so much that it wouldn't be worth it. Especially because the squirrel displacement currently under way is happening so slowly and – compared to your method – pain- and bloodless that it's not like you're stopping a terrorist group from torturing children to death. It's just one tribe of cute gatherers (and occasional bird killers) disappearing because a slightly less cute newcomer tribe of gatherers (and occasional bird killers) has "unnaturally" entered an environment that's already far from its "natural" state before the arrival of humans. It's not something that would justify what you've considered doing.
>Are you also one of those people who think racoons are cute
Yes.
>and therefore should be lured into settlements and treated like pets?
No, and I don't think anyone says that
should be done, but I don't understand what that has to do with this. I'm not asking anyone to lure invasive squirrels into settlements and treat them like pets because I think they're cute.
>>50482>the more coldly rational part
I don't understand what "rational" means here. What's "rational" about painfully killing someone because they are (while unaware of it) part of a change you don't like, a change that doesn't threaten you in any way? How is violently taking up the cause of red
squirrels against a competing
squirrel species something "rational" for a
human? This doesn't sound any more "rational" to me than would, say, a human feeding (or shooting) græys or raccoons to relieve stress (nothing of which I'd advise), or a human deciding to stop tying their happiness to the degree of stasis in a biological environment unless it affects their own survival.