Live data from Hacker News

Protect the last of the wild

nature.com

81–90 of 123 posts

Re: Protect the last of the wild

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Then after the forest service or BLM phds have fucked things up >The PhD environmentalists came to dominate the forest service What forest exactly? Because this reads like a really bad forwarded email. Most BLM "PhD's" are from the area they're protecting. They don't shift them around all over the country. Like, I'm not even sure what lead you to think that. Your arrogance is not as good as someone else's knowledge.…

> Most BLM "PhD's" are from the area they're protecting. Citation needed. In my experience this has not been the case, but I was on national forest land, not BLM land, so there may be a difference in management practices. > "I've lived here my entire life, so clearly without devoting any actual effort to studying the ecosystem I know what's best because hey, the trees look pretty good to me!" That's not at all what m…

BLM -- Bureau of Land Management?

Re: Protect the last of the wild

#82
post #20

Problem here is that developed world has destroyed it's wilderness long time ago, used that land to produce food and resources, but now we demand that others don't do the same. Why don't we instead create a wilderness by giving up on our local agriculture land? Nature takes back the land very quickly and if you limit hunting and repopulate the animals you'll quickly have a full-blown wilderness back. It doesn't have…

> Problem here is that developed world has destroyed it's wilderness long time ago, used that land to produce food and resources, but now we demand that others don't do the same. So why not pay those countries to leave their wilderness wild? It would be like saying: "You know, we really screwed up, and you guys are the only ones who have some of this precious wilderness left. We'd like to pay you to preserve it."

It would be nice, but many countries struggle to even get funding approved to help other people who are starving. Nationalism is a huge barrier.

Re: Protect the last of the wild

#83

Having grown up with a national forest as my literal backyard, its amusing and sad to hear so much nonsense spewed in this thread. Yes, we need to protect the wild, and inculcate respect for it in those that live in and visit it. My issue is with the naivety of proposed "solutions". One of the best examples I can give, though I have many, is this: my grandfather was a logger and firefighter in this forest in the 70s.…

your points are fine. people don't understand we live in a dynamic ecosystem. if we have been active in the forest doing things for a long time, it will get used to this ,and the whole ecosystem of the forest will adjust to it. like you said, if it stops, as your example, an infestation of some insect or plant which is generally kept in check by the human interactions might ruin everything.

humans are natural, and their interactions generally are also natural, and nature can deal with nature just fine...

on another note: people seem to think they dominate this earth all over, but most of the earth is uninhabited and a lot is still unexplored. if you want to 'save' something, go after big corporations who do things on 'unnaturally' large scale. not forestry services and loggers who are doing it small scale. they are the people who know things and should be listened to, their experience is invaluable, more important than some phd paper or science project from some dweeb who has hardly seen a naturally grown tree in their life.

completely agree with your points thanks, that happens only very rarely on here! :D

Re: Protect the last of the wild

#84
post #59

Having grown up with a national forest as my literal backyard, its amusing and sad to hear so much nonsense spewed in this thread. Yes, we need to protect the wild, and inculcate respect for it in those that live in and visit it. My issue is with the naivety of proposed "solutions". One of the best examples I can give, though I have many, is this: my grandfather was a logger and firefighter in this forest in the 70s.…

Opposite perspective time. Dr. So and So sometimes is a local. A local who has hard data collected fairly regularly since ~1950 that shows that Chesapeake oyster/blue crab/whatever populations have been in steady decline due to a combination of over-fishing, and massive increases in nutrient levels due to runoff. And yet many water-men resist any sort of limits on catch and fishing methods tooth and nail. You are pro…

for example your idea on over-fishing. this over-fishing is generally done by the larger fishing companies. local fisheries have incentive to keep the population in check as they cannot just migrate to another fishing area. that means that over generations those locals will have learnt a lot about this very thing. usually bigger business is a bit more careless, as they generally have more options to go to if one is depleted.

That spiecies are declining due to human impact is a bit of a tough conclusion to draw and i'd like to see how specifically this is proven. Not to say that this doesn't happen, but people are often quick to judge eachother and look at human impact on things, all the while spieces have been going extinct and new ones have been rising up from long long before humans were around.

this study and data since 1950, most likely looks at the impact of fisheries on the area. no doubt. but did it look also at the time before fisheries to see what was happening tot the population then? Is there a good baseline made? I'm pretty sure they won't have the same data pre-fisheries and compare the two, but only look at the data they gathered while the fishing was already going on.

Don't take this as an attack on your opinion, i'm a bit skeptical on anything really, and don't disagree that humans ofcourse in areas have negative impact on nature due to their disregard of it. It jjust pains me to see a lot of small local businesses getting hurt because some studies point to them as a source of a problem while often these studies are fairly shallow. even 50 years of data has potential to be a 1-sided data collection, aimed at proving a specific point instead of trying to show data which might prove OR disprove it. (in a lot of these situations it's practically impossible to gather good baseline data to compare to, as human interactions have been present from before the data collection started, i am aware of that.)

Re: Protect the last of the wild

#85
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We evolved to adapt to our environment and we are not some kind of 'final form' that we are stuck with forever, we are still evolving. And people are able to extract nutrients from plants just fine. Also the two incisors do not have to determine anyone's diet. Now if you don't want to be be a vegetarian fine but don't tell me it's impossible because that's just not true.

> We evolved to adapt to our environment and we are not some kind of 'final form' that we are stuck with forever, we are still evolving. As a species we are evolving, as an individual you are not. You can argue that humans might become herbivores in the next few 10,000 years, but don't expect to see it in your lifetime. I also would argue that the individuals who are trying to consciously work against where we've evo…

Individuals can and do evolve, and then they pass that on to their children, that's how evolution works. Biological evolution is a very long and slow process, technological evolution is not. That's why our teeth are a poor indication of what we should be eating because of this revolutionary thing called cooking. Our teeth are records of our past evolution, not rules for our future or current evolution. The claim that vegetarians have higher rates of cavities is total bullshit. They actually have better dental hygiene.

Re: Protect the last of the wild

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Then after the forest service or BLM phds have fucked things up >The PhD environmentalists came to dominate the forest service What forest exactly? Because this reads like a really bad forwarded email. Most BLM "PhD's" are from the area they're protecting. They don't shift them around all over the country. Like, I'm not even sure what lead you to think that. Your arrogance is not as good as someone else's knowledge.…

> Most BLM "PhD's" are from the area they're protecting. Citation needed. In my experience this has not been the case, but I was on national forest land, not BLM land, so there may be a difference in management practices. > "I've lived here my entire life, so clearly without devoting any actual effort to studying the ecosystem I know what's best because hey, the trees look pretty good to me!" That's not at all what m…

>Citation needed.

Where are your citations for anything you've said?

Re: Protect the last of the wild

#87

Having grown up with a national forest as my literal backyard, its amusing and sad to hear so much nonsense spewed in this thread. Yes, we need to protect the wild, and inculcate respect for it in those that live in and visit it. My issue is with the naivety of proposed "solutions". One of the best examples I can give, though I have many, is this: my grandfather was a logger and firefighter in this forest in the 70s.…

>One of the best examples I can give, though I have many, is this: my grandfather was a logger and firefighter in this forest in the 70s. During my lifetime though, the PhD environmentalists came to dominate the forest service, and as logging waned they stopped listening to the old timers about how to take care of the forest. My grandfather would try to tell them they needed to let loggers thin the forest out, and to…

> This is just flat out false, anti-science disinformation. Fire suppression as a policy started in the 1930s and actually reverted in the 60's and 70's.

No it's not. I didn't say fire suppression as a policy started then. I said they stopped listening to locals for advice about, primarily, the control burns, and the needs for forest thinning. You are attacking an argument I never made. Strawman fallacy.

Re: Protect the last of the wild

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Then after the forest service or BLM phds have fucked things up >The PhD environmentalists came to dominate the forest service What forest exactly? Because this reads like a really bad forwarded email. Most BLM "PhD's" are from the area they're protecting. They don't shift them around all over the country. Like, I'm not even sure what lead you to think that. Your arrogance is not as good as someone else's knowledge.…

I've worked with the BLM many times out West and your characterization does not comport with my experience. For example, during my many interactions with BLM in rural Nevada, an astonishing number of the local employees were New England natives that had recently graduated from environmental science programs. True locals were rare. (It was strange -- even the old timers that seemed like natives originally moved there…

Can you provide a concrete example of this happening? Location and timelines would suffice.

Re: Protect the last of the wild

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My naive impression is that the safest bet for survival would be to improve our technological mastery to a point where we can create near-closed and self sufficient ecosystems for small populations that they can be fully in control of, like deep space habitats. Such habitats should be able to support life inside indefinitely and be able to produce new habitat. And we need to make sure that we can maintain a high leve…

Wouldn't the materials needed to build and maintain such environments ultimately have to come from nature?

Sure, but ideally that nature could be outside our biosphere so that we don't depend on it.

Re: Protect the last of the wild

#90
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most BLM "PhD's" are from the area they're protecting. Citation needed. In my experience this has not been the case, but I was on national forest land, not BLM land, so there may be a difference in management practices. > "I've lived here my entire life, so clearly without devoting any actual effort to studying the ecosystem I know what's best because hey, the trees look pretty good to me!" That's not at all what m…

BLM -- Bureau of Land Management?

Correct.
Post reply on HN