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Comment by amadeuspagel | Hacker News Reader

Wolfs are predators. A wolf kills about 20 deers every year. I understand that some people feel it's romantic to have these animals roam around, but to congratulate yourself on your empathy for allowing this to happen really is obscene.

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This is the natural order of things.

Without predators deer/boar/etc populations explode and need controlling through hunting. This is exactly why hunters are unhappy where wolves have come back: the wolves eat the animals the hunters want to shoot.

Why is it more natural for wolfs to kill deer then for hunters to kill deer and wolfs?

Somebody has kill deer to avoid overpopulation.

Humans kill deer for sport, wolves kill to eat them. Also wolves have a very positive effect on the ecosystem as whole. Just look up what happened in Yellowstone (of course you won’t)..

Humans also eat deer. What positive effect do wolves have on the ecosystem, other then killing deer, which humans could do just as well?

the reduction in grazing pressure from deer, and the fact that deer avoid wolves gives trees the chance to grow. Deer eat the shoots of trees, and so enable a more reach ecological system to be sustained.

Wolves do a better job of culling the sick deer (or cattle)

I’m sorry, are you trolling? I told you it had a positive effect on the whole ecosystem and that human hunters can’t replicate that (I won’t waste time describing this here just for you to ignore it, you can read it up)

The deer population in the US, at least the eastern US, has been increasing since the mid-1930s. Largely this is because farms--where one might hunt--have been replaced by suburbs, which offer shelter and gardens. Because the overpopulation of deer is harmful to the vegetation, the US Park Service employees hunters every winter to shoot deer in Rock Creek Park at night.

Lotka–Volterra equations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotka%E2%80%93Volterra_equatio...

This is an online simulator.

https://sites.google.com/site/biologydarkow/ecology/predator...

It is a bit tricky to find the interesting combinations of the settings

Very handy in Scotland where there are far too many deer.

Venison, venisoff. As Mr. Miyagi never said.

So let’s destroy all natural ecosystems and turn everything into farmland, managed forests or parks?

Also (unless your comment is sarcasm/trolling) you do know that somebody has to kill those deer anyway (why is it any better if humans do it for sport) to avoid unsustainable population explosion

There is no natural ecosystem in central europe, if natural means untouched by humans. The question is not whether to destroy any such ecosystem, the question is whether to destroy the ecosystem of people who have farmed, hunted and herded there for millenia.

> the ecosystem of people who have farmed, hunted and herded there for millenia.

Not it’s not. They have already disappeared. Modern industrial farming has little to do with what people have been doing there for millennia. You can blame tractors, fertilizers, pesticides etc. for destroying traditional farming communities.

Anyway, not that relevant because saying that wolves pose a existential threat to farmers is silly. The insignificant damage they case can be mitigated by using fencing, guards dogs etc. in combination with compensations provides by the state.

> Not it’s not. They have already disappeared. Modern industrial farming has little to do with what people have been doing there for millennia. You can blame tractors, fertilizers, pesticides etc. for destroying traditional farming communities.

That's not how these communities themselves see it. They've adopted this technologies, and they haven't adopted wolves.

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