Is it necessary? Darting and tagging wild animals

Amongst the goings on of Saturday evening, and a few rounds of The Simpson's Cluedo, I saw a snippet of a programme on ITV about certain animals that risk becoming extinct. Maybe it was called Extinct but the programme itself is not really what I'm posting about.

The bit that I saw involved that blond-haired woman, who is famous for wagging her rear in front of the camera as she ran with a television crew in hot pursuit. Anyway, enough about Anika Rice as she is not what I'm posting about either.

What I would like to know is how on Earth is chasing, traumatising, darting and mucking about with Polar Bears going to help them? Why must humans feel the need to "manage" and control everything? Can not a single wild Polar Bear, or any other wild animal, be allowed to go about life without humans darting them, pulling them about, and putting irritating tags or collars on them?

That's a good question. I like Polar Bears and would like them to survive for the future. However, do the Polar Bears care or would they just like to go on minding their own business? The fact is, I don't know.

Well if the darting and tagging provide minimal interruption and discomfort to the animal and the data gathered from the tagging leads to a better understanding of the animal then maybe it can help. Who knows I guess...

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Originally Posted by nitromaster

What I would like to know is how on Earth is chasing, traumatising, darting and mucking about with Polar Bears going to help them?

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Well, it's like this .... if a scientist knows where an animal goes, when he's there, what he does while there and so on, ecologists can then make sure that place is available to that animal at the right times and full of the right food, nesting or whatever materials.

It helps stop town planners stick flat roads in where otters need to cross land for example. On a larger scale it helps make sure we don't leave dangerous rubbish about when the magestic herds of wildebeast are wandering the plains :D

It's the sole reason somebody worked out raptors are killed by some pesticides (now banned because of it) and how some unrelated Red Kites were captured and bred from for near Corby (or so a Red Kite blokey once told me).

It's not that stressful to most species tagged, according to some research thing I once read. Mainly prey animals like seed eating birds and small fish have problems with it. If I'm remembering right the large cats, rhinos and some little monkey dealt with it best, but it was years since I read the item and they may tag things differently now or something.

Quite handy to tag an animal liable to eat humans, too :p :