Canis lupus hominis

Posted in working dogs, working retrievers | Tagged black swan, German wire-haired pointer | 6 Comments

6 Responses

1. on June 24, 2011 at 12:51 pm Bridget

   Oh I can’t help smiling when I see a German! They are very fine, very intelligent, very funny guys.

   
   
   • on June 25, 2011 at 10:47 am Suhail

     And quite headstrong, needing lot of everyday exercising, high watchdog and protection abilities.

     
     
2. on November 18, 2011 at 6:13 am Shannon

   That is awful. The NZ black swan was genetically very close to the Australian so the re-introduction was never a bad thing. The NZ swan was a subspecies of this very bird. Many Black Swans migrate to NZ naturally and are thus considered native. Black swans mate for life, so its partner will now never mate or breed again. I have a GWP dog and there are black swans local to where I live. They are a beautiful, graceful bird that my dog has been trained to leave well alone. I refuse to hunt them and so should everyone else.

   
   
   • on November 18, 2011 at 8:09 am retrieverman

     These are introduced swans.

     The native subspecies is extinct.

     
     
   • on November 18, 2011 at 8:12 am retrieverman

     In the United States, we would have no virtually no native waterfowl had it not been for waterfowl hunters. The habitat these species prefer is generally not what is commercially viable.

     There is nothing wrong with a sustainable hunting program for native species. Indeed, it is the hunter who work hard to improve habitat for all species.

     This is not an animal rights blog.

     
     
   • on November 18, 2011 at 8:18 am retrieverman

     This is the exact same argument that feral horse advocates use in the United States. The modern horse actually did exist in the United States and Canada during the Pleistocene. But it went extinct with all the other megafauna.

     Is the feral horse a reintroduction?

     I say no, because although we don’t know why the modern horse– and all the other New World horses went extinct– we think that climate change played a major role. Climate change altered the habitat significantly. Even if human hunters did play a role in their extinction, we know that the land simply cannot handle vast herds of horses.

     Yet our federal government regards them as a kind of native species– for very dubious reasons.

     
     

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