In defence of the wolf
theconversation.com
theconversation.com
There can also be unintended consequences to human culling, besides long-term genetic changes. There's one example of when they started culling a elephants in Kruger National Park. The Park had too many elephants and so they had to kill some of the herd. However, they tended to kill only adults, leaving a lot of juveniles around. The problem is that, once juvenile males reach adulthood, they leave the family herd and hang out with an older male. The older male teaches the younger males about surviving in the wild. And, importantly, self-control. Male elephants periodically go through an extreme spike of testosterone (called musth) that can cause very aggressive behavior. The young males learn from the older male to control themselves. If there aren't any older males around, they don't get this knowledge, and will be prone to violence. After that culling, there was a large spike in incidents of these rogue elephants attacking villages and rhinoceroses. In short, culling can change the behavior of the animal population immediately and for the worse. Not sure how relevant that is to white-tailed deer, but it's something to consider.
The video ("How Wolves Change Rivers") states that humans had previously failed to control the deer. You could pay more humans hundreds of millions of dollars a year to patrol every one of these areas. Or you could simply let the wolves do it.
https://www.denverpost.com/2019/06/03/wolves-coyotes-predato...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/06/0...
A possible argument would work like this:
1. Why not automate it by having drones hunt excess deer?
2. Why build drones when there are perfectly good natural ones, such as wolves?
But some people find it to be a fun activity to kill wildlife and thus the whole culture of huntsman persists. People pay for the recreation of hunting. It actually makes some communities money - private citizens cull the deer while paying for the privilege.
2.Having humans hunt the deer is preferable because they obey laws, don’t scare people, wont eat the farmer’s animals and, again, we also get to keep the meat.
And I don't think there are people clamoring for venison. If you have friends or family that enjoy hunting, you can get quite a bit of venison for free. The best cuts are tasty, if your processor is good the summer sausage or hot sticks will be good, but I ate ground venison sloppy joes and chili not that many times before I personally never want it again.
> Having humans hunt the deer is preferable because they obey laws, don’t scare people,
Hunters are scary. Not that Hunters as people are scary, but I would avoid wilderness where I know there to be hunters active, even if I am wearing blaze orange. Accidents happen. Probably more often to the hunters themselves than to strangers, but they do happen.
How do you feel about wolves?
Exploit natural resources in a space created specifically to protect natural resources from been looted is perverse. If you kill deer and use its meat, suddenly Yellowstone is turned into another meat farm. There are thousands of meat farms but only one yellowstone. Soon, somebody will start pushing to chop some old trees to manage correctly the wood supply. There is no return from this ideology. Human greed is endless
Wolves with access to wild preys and stable groups will eat only a small percentage of domestic animals. If we pay local hunters for removing deer meat, we'll need to pay again a second time to the same hunters/farmers to compensate the increase in cattle deaths or to kill the sudden excess of wolves. With luck the same cow will not be reported as killed and re-killed again by wolves 5 times in its entire life (Paying the same animal several times has happened before).
Result of doing things complicated having a simple solution: You'll need to pay more taxes
We have the technology for spying millions of people day and night, managing home lights and closing doors from thousands of miles of distance. Why professional farmers (that do not have another thing to do in their journey as keeping an eye on their cattle), are still unable to watch for their animals, and keep them safe at night? Wolves can't open a padlock.
Because wolves are much smart for this job and provide benefical collateral effects in a miriad of ways that humans can't; and they do it 365 days a year. Is like comparing traveling in bullet train with a wheelbarrow.
So gameskeepers are receptive to the idea although sheep farmers are concerned.
https://www.conservationjobs.co.uk/articles/wolf-reintroduct...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/08/wolves-s...
The fact of the matter is we have long /wanted/ their response be to kill all the scurrying rats and tiny birds weren't exactly a concern compared to not dying.
Most rodent control in the modern era comes from modern building techniques and materials, as well as waste disposal networks, that keep rodents out of our buildings and away from human sources of food. Go to a neighborhood with well maintained buildings but no cats and you'll find fuck-all rodents. Go to a neighborhood with run down buildings and a million cats, and you'll find a billion rodents.
The excuses made for cats seem to nearly always be characterized by a lack of critical thought. Saying that is probably considered controversial, but so is the toxoplasmosis hypothesis.
The objective function that most human beings use is not "what animal kills rodents most efficiently", but "what animal kills rodents most efficiently and poses little harm to human beings most of the time". In my experience, most stray cats will likely run away from children and most stray cats will likely not initiate attacks against children. On the other hand, most stray dogs are more likely to do both of those things. As a result, cats get a pass for being less efficient rodent killers than dogs because they are also less likely to harm human beings.
See, I disagree. I do not believe that killing rodents is a serious consideration for most modern cat owners. There are cheaper, more efficient and lower maintenance methods of exterminating rodents than cats. Most cat owners own their cat as a pet and think nothing of letting it terrorize the neighborhood birds because it's cute. Talk of rodent extermination is a post-hoc justification for their behavior.
And face it, every bird pair has half a dozen chicks each year. Next year the bird population is about the same. That means, most new birds are going to die in the first year. Cats are just a part of that.
Same can be said for humans.
I assure you that I don't "fear" coyotes (or wolves for that matter, when I've been in wolf areas) as if they were a threat to my own life. I don't think "mortal fear" is a factor in anyone's thinking about coyotes? There may be something to TFA's claims that this is a factor with respect to wolves...
So wolves returning feels to me like a sign that we're doing something right, giving more space for wild animals.
But it's undeniable that it also comes with some challenges. Wolves might be welcome in the Oostvaardersplassen, but I don't know how they should ever get there. Instead, they're in areas where farmers and shepherds graze their sheep.
In South Carolina, state Sen. Stephen Goldfinch (R-Georgetown) is foregoing science for a call to arms. Goldfinch, who declined to comment for this story, told WMBF News in Myrtle Beach that killing coyotes should be South Carolina’s top priority.
“The state’s perspective is every coyote needs to be a dead coyote. Trap them, shoot them . . . however you want to get rid of them,” Goldfinch said. “. . . This is now about going to war with the coyotes.
When predator control comes up I always find myself wondering- sorry, which one was supposed to be the bloodthirsty killer?
(I realize the Goldfinch quotes reference coyotes, but it's all the same story)
If wolves were more prey than predator populations would decline very quickly.
A wolf wouldn't think twice about killing a human.
"There have been only two verified documented deaths from wild healthy wolves in North America"
now as the list demonstrates "verified...wild healthy" leaves a hell of a lot of wiggle room but even then lists are not long.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_attack#History_and_percep...
This sentiment is appealing, but there's little backing it. Humans have always shaped nature, and regardless of people, ecosystems are dynamic (1). We should be asking ourselves what sort of world we want to live in, and what we want our impact to look like. We should not harken back to a pre-human influenced time that never really existed. (Most restoration plans don't plan on restoring ecosystems to a fully pre-human state, but rather to some time where humans were present, but not as numerous).
We should instead say things like "this ecosystem was better 300 years ago, and we should try and return to something closer to that". That's wholly different from the narrative of natural being everything but human. It does, however, force us to qualitatively analyze what we're doing. Instead of saying "we changed it, now we have to restore it", it forces us to think about what the costs and benefits of restoration are.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_ecology#Human-media...
The problem is that can be a decades or centuries long endeavor. So in the meantime, striving for a pre-human or early-human stable state is often beneficial for us, even if it isn't optimal & even if we can't draw the cost-benefit table yet.
Tell that to Antarctica, or to Everest, or to the vast oceans. Until the last century mankind's presence was slight. We lived in the nice places that we convenient for us. Now we live everywhere, or at least our trash does. The idea that humans are part of the natural world, that we need not curtail our behavior because we were put here too, is quasi-religious dogma promoted by climate deniers. Humans are different. We have abilities vastly beyond any other species. That comes with responsibilities, responsibilities that cannot be sidestepped by declaring us just another mammal looking for food.
Without humans, almost everything would be covered by forests and swamps, not the wide range of biomes we now find, with open fields, grasslands, and patches of forests. Many local insects, birds and plants need these. Our responsibility here is not to stop, but to keep everything in good condition (not like now where there is far too little slack in the system and no space left for this wildlife).
Also, "guard llamas".
Makes me wonder if they are really just furry camels.
Actually I compare guns to bicycle helmets. I only consider using either one of them in very specific and uncommon situations.
Coincidentally, I read the following study which only considered the use of pistols, and only incidents that were reported, in the defense from a bear attack. 37 incidents since 1987.
https://www.ammoland.com/2018/02/defense-against-bears-with-...
Also, the US has more hunters. Hunters are more likely to be attacked since they often are sneaking up on bears.
Bears really aren't dangerous. There's tons of sightings and encounters around here, almost no attacks. For the few attacks that happen, bear spray is pretty effective. Guns are overkill and aren't even allowed in the parks around here.
If you do encounter them, back away slowly (don't turn your back), they'll pretty much always also go the other way. I've encountered plenty in the backcountry, usually at fairly long distances and they always move on.
Also note that this applies mainly to BC, Alberta, and south of US. They do get slightly more aggressive up north due to having less easy food sources. Also, black bears are a different story, as are polar bears.
But for most of us for most of our uses of the woods, we're better off learning to be kind of noisy kind of constantly.