5 ms·

Well, the non-city people don't want endangered species. Reintroducing wolf packs has ruined elk hunting, made pets unsafe, made kids unsafe, and caused problem

by burfog 8y ago

Well, the non-city people don't want endangered species. Reintroducing wolf packs has ruined elk hunting, made pets unsafe, made kids unsafe, and caused problems for livestock. Since city people tend to love wolves, it looks like we have a win-win solution here. I have a feeling though, that city people will have a change of heart upon walking into a subway restroom and suddenly facing a wolf pack.

devoply 8y ago
We should farm and eat endangered species to save them. That's the only way of incorporating endangered species into our economic system. We can export wolf meat to the Chinese. Imagine a chain of restaurants selling endangered meat because of the ecological benefits of eating organic AAA grass-fed endangered meat and maybe it's even low in saturated fat as a bonus.
- beaconstudios 8y ago
  that would help to prevent the animals from going extinct but it wouldn't replace the ecological effect that the wild animals had. Having a wolf farm (to the extent you could even domesticate them) would not help with the deer population explosion from lack of wolves.
- pvaldes 8y ago
  Lets suppose that our endangered species is a screw. Just a normal screw. The cheapest one. We could mass produce screws, coate it with gold and put them under a glass bell in our main hall. This would assure that everybody knows what kind of screws we had in the past, but they are just curious useless pieces of metal at that state. The real problem is that this screw was doing something in a bigger machine, and if we remove random pieces in a machine there is a fair possibility that the entire system will crash until we return all the pieces again in its correct place. But ecosystems aren't your common kind of machine. They are alive flexible machines and they will try to regenerate aiming for the next lower point of equilibrium available, much like a rock falling a few meters from a mountainside. Having lost a part of its "potential energy", the machine will start producing different things. Typically fewer and of lesser value, often noxious or defective products: They could start producing fireforests, dust storms and thorns por example instead water, fruit and wood. Ecosystems don't care. Even worse, at this point there aren't more slots that could fit again our screw. The machine has mutated and will spit its former spare-parts. Can't be reversed unless you burn huge lots of money and invest thousands of years on it. If you find that the new situation is bad for you (as often is), you are screwed for the rest of your life, and also your sons and grandsons.
kwhitefoot 8y ago
> made kids unsafe, That's what anti-wolf people say here in Norway even though there isn't a single report of a wolf attack on a human in Europe in centuries and that there are only 30 wolves in the whole of Norway. So do you have any objective evidence?
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  Not wolves per se and not Europe, but when I lived on a remote military base in California, coyotes were known to kill pets and we were told there had been three attacks on children in the previous 5 years, so don't let kids go outside alone after dark. This was probably in a safety briefing given to my ex who was in the army. They didn't attack adults who were walking alone at night, but they would attack smaller creatures, such as pets and kids.
  - smackay 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyote_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyote_attack has a wealth of information on the topic. It seems likely that the attacks are due to animals becoming habituated to being in close proximity with humans and is probably exacerbated by being fed.
    - newman8r 8y ago
      Yeah a lot of people are clueless about coyotes. I have some land in the desert and one of my neighbors actually feeds the damn things, it's insanity. He Also tried to claim that coyotes don't carry rabies. Needless to say he does not have internet access. They're the biggest coyotes I've ever seen and they're not fearful of humans.
    - justin66 8y ago
      The sure-fire solution to the problem of intrusive coyotes is a bit ironic. They're extremely difficult to cull anywhere because they normally roam very far. When they move into an urban area a cull isn't much of an option anyhow. The solution that nature provides to coyotes, and many intrusive species, would be (ahem) to introduce wolves. Coyotes get some pretty mixed signals about whether an area is worth the risk when people try to drive them away but nevertheless keep livestock or trash nearby. The presence of wolves is unambiguous.
pvaldes 8y ago
> made kids unsafe Thanks god we have babysitter ticks now.
drb91 8y ago
You are hugely exaggerating the impact of wolves on anyone but farmers (there’s likely legit discussion to be had here) and elk hunters (who cares?).
- jaegerpicker 8y ago
  Most states in the US already compensate farmers for wolf and grizzly bear predation. Hunter's elk success rate has slowly but surely trended upwards consistently over the last 20 years in most states. Here is an example from Montana, I haven't looked up data from other states yes but according to what I have read it's a similar trend. https://github.com/jaegerpicker/MontantaElkHunterSuccessRate/blob/master/ElkHunterSuccessRate.ipynb https://github.com/jaegerpicker/MontantaElkHunterSuccessRate... Also you should care about Elk Hunters if you care about conservation at all in the US and Canada. Virtually all conservation of North American species comes from hunter based organizations and 90% of all money for conservation comes from hunting and/or fishing organizations. In fact the national park system was started by hunters as was the Sierra Club. Without their support wildlife conservation in North America and Africa would collapse quickly.
  - drb91 8y ago
    > Virtually all conservation of North American species comes from hunter based organizations and 90% of all money for conservation comes from hunting and/or fishing organizations. What does funding conservation actually look like? Blowing up coal plants? I’d imagine conservation would mostly look like preventing humans from entering the area at all.
    - codyb 8y ago
      A lot of it is things like national parks, estuaries, and forests. Hunters tend to be huge proponents for conservation since they like to hunt. Most people are tremendously bad at supporting tax dollars going towards the total prevention of their entry, and people taking hikes and camping is very healthy. I understand it's a nice idea to have human free zones, but it doesn't seem particularly realisitic to me, and small amounts of foot track don't seem troubling to me either. All those big game hunters that kill lions kill the old ones and pay big bucks to do it. That money goes towards conservation. Edit: but also, what a weird imagination. Conservation as acts of domestic terrorism. I guess that's what the imagination's good for!
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

by burfog 8y ago

devoply 8y ago

We should farm and eat endangered species to save them. That's the only way of incorporating endangered species into our economic system. We can export wolf meat to the Chinese. Imagine a chain of restaurants selling endangered meat because of the ecological benefits of eating organic AAA grass-fed endangered meat and maybe it's even low in saturated fat as a bonus.

beaconstudios 8y ago
that would help to prevent the animals from going extinct but it wouldn't replace the ecological effect that the wild animals had. Having a wolf farm (to the extent you could even domesticate them) would not help with the deer population explosion from lack of wolves.
pvaldes 8y ago
Lets suppose that our endangered species is a screw. Just a normal screw. The cheapest one. We could mass produce screws, coate it with gold and put them under a glass bell in our main hall. This would assure that everybody knows what kind of screws we had in the past, but they are just curious useless pieces of metal at that state. The real problem is that this screw was doing something in a bigger machine, and if we remove random pieces in a machine there is a fair possibility that the entire system will crash until we return all the pieces again in its correct place. But ecosystems aren't your common kind of machine. They are alive flexible machines and they will try to regenerate aiming for the next lower point of equilibrium available, much like a rock falling a few meters from a mountainside. Having lost a part of its "potential energy", the machine will start producing different things. Typically fewer and of lesser value, often noxious or defective products: They could start producing fireforests, dust storms and thorns por example instead water, fruit and wood. Ecosystems don't care. Even worse, at this point there aren't more slots that could fit again our screw. The machine has mutated and will spit its former spare-parts. Can't be reversed unless you burn huge lots of money and invest thousands of years on it. If you find that the new situation is bad for you (as often is), you are screwed for the rest of your life, and also your sons and grandsons.

kwhitefoot 8y ago

> made kids unsafe, That's what anti-wolf people say here in Norway even though there isn't a single report of a wolf attack on a human in Europe in centuries and that there are only 30 wolves in the whole of Norway. So do you have any objective evidence?

DoreenMichele 8y ago
Not wolves per se and not Europe, but when I lived on a remote military base in California, coyotes were known to kill pets and we were told there had been three attacks on children in the previous 5 years, so don't let kids go outside alone after dark. This was probably in a safety briefing given to my ex who was in the army. They didn't attack adults who were walking alone at night, but they would attack smaller creatures, such as pets and kids.
- smackay 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyote_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyote_attack has a wealth of information on the topic. It seems likely that the attacks are due to animals becoming habituated to being in close proximity with humans and is probably exacerbated by being fed.
  - newman8r 8y ago
    Yeah a lot of people are clueless about coyotes. I have some land in the desert and one of my neighbors actually feeds the damn things, it's insanity. He Also tried to claim that coyotes don't carry rabies. Needless to say he does not have internet access. They're the biggest coyotes I've ever seen and they're not fearful of humans.
  - justin66 8y ago
    The sure-fire solution to the problem of intrusive coyotes is a bit ironic. They're extremely difficult to cull anywhere because they normally roam very far. When they move into an urban area a cull isn't much of an option anyhow. The solution that nature provides to coyotes, and many intrusive species, would be (ahem) to introduce wolves. Coyotes get some pretty mixed signals about whether an area is worth the risk when people try to drive them away but nevertheless keep livestock or trash nearby. The presence of wolves is unambiguous.

pvaldes 8y ago

> made kids unsafe Thanks god we have babysitter ticks now.

drb91 8y ago

You are hugely exaggerating the impact of wolves on anyone but farmers (there’s likely legit discussion to be had here) and elk hunters (who cares?).

jaegerpicker 8y ago
Most states in the US already compensate farmers for wolf and grizzly bear predation. Hunter's elk success rate has slowly but surely trended upwards consistently over the last 20 years in most states. Here is an example from Montana, I haven't looked up data from other states yes but according to what I have read it's a similar trend. https://github.com/jaegerpicker/MontantaElkHunterSuccessRate/blob/master/ElkHunterSuccessRate.ipynb https://github.com/jaegerpicker/MontantaElkHunterSuccessRate... Also you should care about Elk Hunters if you care about conservation at all in the US and Canada. Virtually all conservation of North American species comes from hunter based organizations and 90% of all money for conservation comes from hunting and/or fishing organizations. In fact the national park system was started by hunters as was the Sierra Club. Without their support wildlife conservation in North America and Africa would collapse quickly.
- drb91 8y ago
  > Virtually all conservation of North American species comes from hunter based organizations and 90% of all money for conservation comes from hunting and/or fishing organizations. What does funding conservation actually look like? Blowing up coal plants? I’d imagine conservation would mostly look like preventing humans from entering the area at all.
  - codyb 8y ago
    A lot of it is things like national parks, estuaries, and forests. Hunters tend to be huge proponents for conservation since they like to hunt. Most people are tremendously bad at supporting tax dollars going towards the total prevention of their entry, and people taking hikes and camping is very healthy. I understand it's a nice idea to have human free zones, but it doesn't seem particularly realisitic to me, and small amounts of foot track don't seem troubling to me either. All those big game hunters that kill lions kill the old ones and pay big bucks to do it. That money goes towards conservation. Edit: but also, what a weird imagination. Conservation as acts of domestic terrorism. I guess that's what the imagination's good for!

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]