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The climate impact of wild pigs greater than a million cars
- coder4life 5y agoThere are 1.4 billion cars out there causing climate impact, and we're freaking out on wild pigs
- unearth3d 5y agoWell article does speak of continual disturbance of 36000km2 to 100000+. I see their damage here NZ, at scales where it makes growing pasture and animals difficult.
- kokanator 5y agoThis is easily solved by providing hunting opportunities. Simple effective and people will pay for the privilege. Or if you are not against spending money, a bounty will solve it even faster. ( if this is truly and issue to be concerned with )
- majormajor 5y agoAccording to this, the hunters in the US can't keep up: https://www.popsci.com/feral-pig-problem/ https://www.popsci.com/feral-pig-problem/ > To wipe out a population, you need to shoot 60 to 80 percent a year, says Mayer, but recreational hunting can only cut their numbers by about a quarter. These aren't anti-hunting liberal states, either. But apparently that's only made it worse, historically: > But even when state officials encouraged sport hunting for the explicit purpose of curbing the tidal wave of pigs, it’s backfired. Hunters love to shoot them so they transport the animals to new areas. Even when the new hunting spots are fenced properties, the swine are notoriously good at digging their way out and escaping. See also this older article: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/a-plague-of-pigs-in-texas-73769069/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/a-plague-of-pi... > And yet wild hogs were barely more than a curiosity in the Lone Star State until the 1980s. It’s only since then that the population has exploded, and not entirely because of the animals’ intelligence, adaptability and fertility. Hunters found them challenging prey, so wild hog populations were nurtured on ranches that sold hunting leases; some captured hogs were released in other parts of the state. Game ranchers set out feed to attract deer, but wild hogs pilfered it, growing more fecund. Finally, improved animal husbandry reduced disease among domestic pigs, thereby reducing the incidence among wild hogs.
- post_break 5y agoThey do that here in texas. Actual automatic machine guns, helicopters, huge traps that can catch 40 at a time. They are still blowing up in numbers. They breed too fast and too often. It's a real problem even with no bag limit.
- Y_Y 5y agoWhat if we promised to pay for every hog tail that someone brought in?
- throwawaysea 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive#The_original_cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive#The_origina...
- kokanator 5y agoThere are currently bounty programs in the US for coyotes [0]. They have worked for several species including invasive species [1]. Great link though. Very interesting historical events. [0]https://wildlife.utah.gov/predator-control-program.html https://wildlife.utah.gov/predator-control-program.html [1]https://www.grandviewoutdoors.com/coyote/cash-for-coyotes-do-bounties-work https://www.grandviewoutdoors.com/coyote/cash-for-coyotes-do...
- kortex 5y agoAnimals other than Humans and their livestock are practically a rounding error when it comes to mammalian mass on land. I'm not too concerned about the climate impact of wild pigs. https://xkcd.com/1338/ https://xkcd.com/1338/
- reidjs 5y agoCan we change the title to: Climate impact of wild pigs less than 0.001% of car impact edit: I’d also allow: Climate impact of cars greater than 1000x the population of wild pigs
- kokanator 5y agoThere certainly are bigger problems to solve than this one. The article almost reads like, "We need a good reason to allow the reduction in nuisance wild pig populations."
- reidjs 5y agoSeriously. Just say “wild pigs destroy $X of crops per year”. Tying them to carbon output is either ignorant or manipulative.
- anigbrowl 5y agoYes, it's very manipulative. 'You care about the environmental impact of cars, don't you? Well we're not going to do anything about that but you should help us out with our problem instead.'
- jokethrowaway 5y agoWhat bothers me the most about cars is pm pollution ruining our lungs and giving us cancer Pigs should be much better in that regard
- anigbrowl 5y agoRight? I noticed a rapid and significant improvement in air quality when the lockdowns were first implemented last year. I can't say I like feral hogs as such but potentially being killed by a wild boar seems like an acceptable tradeoff.
- t0mbstone 5y agoSo they are going to complain about some pigs digging in the dirt with their noses, but not even talk about the millions of square acres of dirt that are getting tilled and turned over by tractors every growing season? This is sensationalist and misleading.
- MisterTea 5y agoNever mind the thousands of humans killed by cars PER DAY.
- Glavnokoman 5y agoBut that is actually good for environment.
- aaron695 5y agoI know noone on HN cares about the environment, it's all about CO2, but in case anyone pops in, if you could use carbon credits to eliminate pigs, and this is a ok amount of carbon credits combined with rural money (pigs damage crops (which also increases crop size) and other funding, it could make a big deal to the environment. Drones and infra tech are changing things a bit. It's still very hard for elimination. But it could be a ok little moon shoot. Drones were tried with the recent mouse plague - https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/03/are-poison-packed-drones-the-answer-to-eastern-australias-mouse-plague https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/03/are-p... Australia has no native hoofed animals. So they damage a lot. An issue that is being seen is these introduced animals are becoming an important part of culture. Pig hunting is big deal for rural youth. Similar with the beauty of wild horse. Complex. I think with pigs, because the hunting community is the same as the farming community, there would be very good support.
- superjan 5y agoAccording to wikipedia, they have been around since early pleistocene, about 2 million years ago. So their contribution has been part of a sustainable equilibrium for that long.
- kledru 5y agoThe study is actually titled "Unrecognized threat to global soil carbon by a widespread invasive species". So perhaps they aren't part of the equilibrium on some continents. The title of the news item is silly though as if suggesting that we should kill off the whole species and build another million of cars.
- gmuslera 5y agoThe carbon emitted by pigs is the one that already belong to the carbon cycle, depending on the kind of carbon (CO2 or methane) may stay more or less in the system but there is nothing new there. The cars (or if you want, their fuel), on the other side, brings new carbon to the table.