It is up to us

It never ceases to amaze me how some people can be so callous. A colleague told me that he had recently consumed turtle eggs. When I said that turtles in Malaysia were endangered and we shouldn’t be eating their eggs, he said that the eggs were cooked anyway so it was too late. If everyone thought like him, it is goodbye turtles!

Supply and demand. Basic economics. If there is no demand, there will be no supply. So if people said no to turtle eggs, the unscrupulous sellers of these eggs would realize that they are not worth their time, effort and money, and would not supply turtle eggs.

Then he says it is no different from eating chicken eggs and if I want to be so emotional about it, I should stop eating chicken eggs. The difference is, chickens are not endangered. We have chicken farms where chickens are bred for the purpose of consumption. They are not in danger of becoming extinct.

Then he says the statistics are questionable as most of these statistics are supplied by the West. The West had killed enough animals and now that some of them face extinction, they tell us Easterners to protect and conserve to justify their guilty conscience.

I do not think that the statistics are wrong. But assuming for one moment that the statistics are wrong, SO WHAT? What is so wrong about protecting animals in the wild? So what if the West had been guilty of annihilating most of our wildlife? Do we have to follow in their footsteps? Why don’t we show them that we are better than them, that we actually care about our fellow inhabitants of this world?

The hands that are killing the animal kingdom are the very hands that can save and protect them. Whose side are you on?