Keep in mind that Europeans have hunted species to extinction simply for hats. People are people. Where I live in Japan, the Japanese worlf is extinct (less than 100 years ago). The Japanese river otter is extinct (only about 15 years ago). The river eel (unagi) is going extinct and so the price at the restaurant has gone up like crazy (like about $60 for a single eel). Let me emphasize: everybody knows it is going extinct and yet they are still eating it. You've got blue fin tuna being sold at auction for $3 million for a single tuna -- because it is going extinct.

And before you say, "Oh those pesky Japanese people don't care about the environment", these are the things I know about because I happen to live here. Before I moved the US removed quotas from Pacific salmon in retaliation for Canadian softwood lumber prices! The idea was to destroy the fish stocks so that the Canadian fishing industry would be hurt and they would agree to increase prices for softwood lumber. It took something like 10 years for the returning salmon counts on Vancouver island to recover.

We (collectively) suck at this stuff. The more we point our fingers at those pesky Chinese or those pesky Japanese or those pesky Portuguese (don't get me started about the Grand Banks) or those pesky Americans, the more we abandon the idea that we need to work together.