Humans can’t reasonably save all wildlife from natural predation, no matter how cute the offspring are. Left in the water, the injured animal would soon have been finished off by its preditor species. It’s a cruel world.
Yes, but why fine the man for an individual act of kindness. This is about power, control and money.
It’s just a basic mark of humanity to try to help an injured animal. Sometimes dangerous yes, and of course it’s usually doomed to fail, but you can’t go through life like a savage Hutu.
I am reminded of a story:
A man was walking down the beach. In the distance, he saw a figure who appeared to be dancing, just above the waterline. As he got closer, he saw that it was a girl that was picking stuff things and tossing them in the water. he asked her what she was doing, to which she replied, “I am saving starfish that are stranded and going to die, because the tide has gone out.”
The man looked at her, then up and down the seemingly endless beach. He said, “You know the beach is so big, and there are so many of them that you won’t make a difference.”
She smiled a beautiful smile, bent down picked up another starfish and looked at it. She tossed it back in to the water and turned to the man. “I made a difference to that one,” she said as she turned skipping down the beach to find the next starfish.
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While this story is supposed to address charity, and freely giving to those in need. I think it could also aptly speak to Conservationism, as well. As good stewards, we help when and where we can. “Environmental” laws are good intentioned. It’s been proven that they are wrought with unintended consequences, and adhering to them dogmatically, does not, in most cases serve the cause of Conservationism in the end.
And to be quite honest, in this specific case, I think it is a matter of the government thinking that it knows better than anyone else, because the problem isn’t that they tried to help the seal, it is that they didn’t call a government agency first, so it could decide whether to assist or not..