Photo: Eric Cheng / Sea Shepherd.
Captain Paul Watson raises some thought-provoking questions during an interview with Treehugger. Here are a few highlights, but read the full (and fantastic) interview here.
- “A ranger in Zimbabwe shot a poacher who was about to kill a black rhinoceros. Human rights groups said, ‘how dare you take a human life to protect an animal.’ I don’t really understand the contradiction. If a man ran out of Barclays bank with a bag of money, and I shot him in the head, you’d call me a hero. How can you tell me protecting the heritage of the nation of Zimbabwe is worth less than a bag of paper? Again, it’s how you look at it.”
- “I think it’s a far more noble endeavor to risk your life to protect and endangered species or a threatened habitat than some oil well in Iraq. It all comes down to what our priorities and values are.”
- “We get criticized because people say we’re inexperience and non-professional, but three people have died in the Japanese whaling operations and they’re so-called professionals. We haven’t had any serious injuries and certainly haven’t lost anybody. Why do I have non-professionals? Because you can’t pay people to do the things that my volunteers do. That kind of passion can’t be bought.”