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The land can sustain them fine, that's just what it's like to live near bears. Tons of places are like that - you get used to it lol don't worry. There was a To

The land can sustain them fine, that's just what it's like to live near bears. Tons of places are like that - you get used to it lol don't worry. There was a Tom Scott video on work folks are doing to develop bear resistant trash cans and the like: https://youtu.be/Xn_O2li_jpk?si=BUPxDOxXaOJdxC_v https://youtu.be/Xn_O2li_jpk?si=BUPxDOxXaOJdxC_v It's funny (and sad) that wildlife has been so thoroughly decimated in parts of the world that people are so shocked by such thoroughly mundane things but it's an important reminder that ecological restoration work must involve working with locals and understanding the cultural forces at play to make these projects a success. Including making sure that externalities are accounted for and that the people in the area share in the benefits (economic like tourism, cultural like restoration of culturally significant animals and ecosystems, environmental depending on the intrinsic value people give to preserving the environment, etc). I'm seeing it in the replies to this thread - it's easy for folks in places like the American West to be dismissive of concerns like these but the idea that the wild is worth preserving is frankly a relatively recent one. If you just assume that obviously everyone values bears being alive while the other person just assumes that everyone values eliminating or at least suppressing bear populations to never have to deal with them everyone is just going to walk away assuming the other person is crazy

mistrial9 3y ago
> the idea that the wild is worth preserving is frankly a relatively recent one not entirely inaccurate, but an important distinction. People who had pre-industrial cultures (and probably some relationship to wild places) were systematically conquered and their lands taken, by militarized industrial civilizations.. this happened at various times in various places in the last 500 years. There are no places of note left that have not been treated this way. So a preservation relationship to wild places among the civilizations established by military conquer, is relatively new.. agree
- vikramkr 3y ago
  Good point. The core of what i'm trying to get at with that statement is - in many of the regions where ecological restoration is a topic of conversation, stakeholders with power over restoration would only recently have begun to interact with the idea of ecological restoration being valuable in a way they have to take seriously (people have been fighting for the environment forever, but people with power to influence that caring about it is going to be novel), and are often coming from a perspective where the opposite, the exploitation of the environment as a desirable goal for mankind, has been mainstream for a long time.

mistrial9 3y ago

> the idea that the wild is worth preserving is frankly a relatively recent one not entirely inaccurate, but an important distinction. People who had pre-industrial cultures (and probably some relationship to wild places) were systematically conquered and their lands taken, by militarized industrial civilizations.. this happened at various times in various places in the last 500 years. There are no places of note left that have not been treated this way. So a preservation relationship to wild places among the civilizations established by military conquer, is relatively new.. agree

vikramkr 3y ago
Good point. The core of what i'm trying to get at with that statement is - in many of the regions where ecological restoration is a topic of conversation, stakeholders with power over restoration would only recently have begun to interact with the idea of ecological restoration being valuable in a way they have to take seriously (people have been fighting for the environment forever, but people with power to influence that caring about it is going to be novel), and are often coming from a perspective where the opposite, the exploitation of the environment as a desirable goal for mankind, has been mainstream for a long time.