California’s mountain lion faces ‘extinction vortex’ • Hacker News Board

Re: California’s mountain lion faces ‘extinction vortex’

#31

Post by wycy » Wed, Jun 26, 2019, 2:51 PM UTC

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #27

wycy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how is "threatened by extinction" an "extinction vortex"?

When a population is isolated or bottlenecked, there reaches an event horizon where inbreeding causes too manty defects for the population to survive even if one were to curb outside predation/killing. The article points several times to the increasing isolation of the populations and the threats that giving them protected status would require development to take isolation of population in care when developing.

That still just sounds like regular extinction to me. "Event horizon" or some other "cliff" type of nomenclature is fair too in light of the inbreeding effect of very small populations. But "extinction vortex" sounds like they wanted to pick a scary sounding word for hype.

For "vortex" to actually be fitting I'd expect some kind of circular process: perhaps a feedback loop, wherein some process is causing extinction which increasingly leads to more extinction. Like how melting ice leads to warming, which leads to more melting ice, etc, might be fair to call a "warming vortex".

Re: California’s mountain lion faces ‘extinction vortex’

#32

Post by sehugg » Wed, Jun 26, 2019, 2:57 PM UTC

setr wrote: post #6

What the hell is an extinction vortex? The article refuses to define it, despite scare-quoting the term itself.. >“Individual lions face horrible deaths from car collisions or rat poison, while their populations become increasingly isolated and inbred in ever-shrinking islands of habitat hemmed by freeways and sprawl.” Is this it? It doesn't really fit the name that well..

I found this WWW page with the Google: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_vortex

It's a boundary below which specific feedback mechanisms accelerate extinction, fragmentation of populations being one condition.

Re: California’s mountain lion faces ‘extinction vortex’

#33

Post by slips » Wed, Jun 26, 2019, 3:01 PM UTC

malvosenior wrote: post #12

> In addition, large-scale residential and commercial development could be prohibited or limited in mountain lion habitats within a region covering roughly a third of the state. It seems like something has to give. In particular, we can't have reasonable housing prices, a healthy mountain lion habitat and increased immigration and population (especially in California). Those three things are directly at odds with eac…

I doubt reasonable housing prices will come with more development, especially in California. That's just the tag-line to get approved so you can start bilking renters/home owners. In this case, I'm for preserving the non-human entities.

Re: California’s mountain lion faces ‘extinction vortex’

#34

Post by aurora72 » Wed, Jun 26, 2019, 3:03 PM UTC

supergauntlet wrote: post #24

Fjolsvith wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In California, of all places!

California is full of the worst kinds of "crony capitalism" (that is, regulatory capture, a feature and not a bug of capitalism unfortunately), what do you mean?

I mean deforestation devitalization denaturalization devastation of nature of any kind for any purpose whether for capitalism or some other thingism.

Re: California’s mountain lion faces ‘extinction vortex’

#35

Post by aurora72 » Wed, Jun 26, 2019, 3:05 PM UTC

edhelas wrote: post #4

aurora72 wrote: post #2

My favorite OSX version and my favorite animal. It's an incredibly agile animal. The animals are taking their toll from the insatible greediness of wild capitalism.

Not sure if you're trying to link OSX and capitalism there.

No. The Lion and M.Lion OSX are really good. Maybe the best I can link are the BSD and some craftmanship on top of it.

Re: California’s mountain lion faces ‘extinction vortex’

#36

Post by komali2 » Wed, Jun 26, 2019, 3:06 PM UTC

everdev wrote: post #10

paulcole wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mountain lions can pose a real threat to small children, so literally, pick up your kids with you if you see a mountain close by. While not awful advice, it's also vastly overblowing the true (nonexistent) danger mountain lions pose. Mountain lions are one of the smallest threats imaginable to anyone, small children included. 99.99% of people will never ever ever even be fortunate enough to see a mountain lion in t…

I live in CA near Santa Cruz and we have had mountain lions in our backyard. I've seen them close up and was not scared for the reasons you mentioned, it wanted to be seen. I had a slightly scarier incident where I was hissed at from thick bushes by a mountain lion that I couldn't see, but I left and the lion did not follow. It's extremely common in our area for lions to attack and kill small dogs and livestock. For…

>Bears used to be common in the area too, but were hunted to extinction hundreds of years ago and the ecosystem adapted and survived.

I think we have different definitions of survived... The bears certain didn't, and that to me is an extraordinarily terrible environmental impact.

Re: California’s mountain lion faces ‘extinction vortex’

#37

Post by iron0013 » Wed, Jun 26, 2019, 3:08 PM UTC

wycy wrote: post #31

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a population is isolated or bottlenecked, there reaches an event horizon where inbreeding causes too manty defects for the population to survive even if one were to curb outside predation/killing. The article points several times to the increasing isolation of the populations and the threats that giving them protected status would require development to take isolation of population in care when developing.

That still just sounds like regular extinction to me. "Event horizon" or some other "cliff" type of nomenclature is fair too in light of the inbreeding effect of very small populations. But "extinction vortex" sounds like they wanted to pick a scary sounding word for hype. For "vortex" to actually be fitting I'd expect some kind of circular process: perhaps a feedback loop, wherein some process is causing extinction…

If only semantics could prevent animals from going extinct.

Re: California’s mountain lion faces ‘extinction vortex’

#38

Post by hoorayimhelping » Wed, Jun 26, 2019, 3:13 PM UTC

bloak wrote: post #15

Can any Californian say something about the relative frequency of the various names for this species? I'd never heard the term "mountain lion" until recently (I think I first encountered it in a story by Annie Proulx) though I've known the word "puma" since the 1970s. Apparently they're also known as "cougar" or "catamount". I probably came across the term "cougar" some time this century, and the term "catamount" a f…

I live in LA and grew up in Florida. Mountain lion is almost exclusively said out here. Back in Florida, it seemed like a mix between cougar and mountain lion, with some people saying puma. I think I've only heard an Appalachian Mountain hipster use the term catamount in conversation. I think there's a college sports team whose nickname is the catamounts.

Re: California’s mountain lion faces ‘extinction vortex’

#39

Post by smallnamespace » Wed, Jun 26, 2019, 3:14 PM UTC

wycy wrote: post #31

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a population is isolated or bottlenecked, there reaches an event horizon where inbreeding causes too manty defects for the population to survive even if one were to curb outside predation/killing. The article points several times to the increasing isolation of the populations and the threats that giving them protected status would require development to take isolation of population in care when developing.

That still just sounds like regular extinction to me. "Event horizon" or some other "cliff" type of nomenclature is fair too in light of the inbreeding effect of very small populations. But "extinction vortex" sounds like they wanted to pick a scary sounding word for hype. For "vortex" to actually be fitting I'd expect some kind of circular process: perhaps a feedback loop, wherein some process is causing extinction…

If you look at the Wikipedia article, the term 'extinction vortex' has been used since the mid-80s.

It might interest you to know that there is an analogy between black holes and vortexes, as the latter are used as physical models of the former: https://www.nature.com/articles/nphys4151#affil-auth

Re: California’s mountain lion faces ‘extinction vortex’

#40

Post by aeorgnoieang » Wed, Jun 26, 2019, 3:20 PM UTC

supergauntlet wrote: post #24

Fjolsvith wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In California, of all places!

California is full of the worst kinds of "crony capitalism" (that is, regulatory capture, a feature and not a bug of capitalism unfortunately), what do you mean?

> regulatory capture, a feature and not a bug of capitalism unfortunately

That seems pretty uncharitable. Would you agree that mass murder is a 'feature and not a bug' of communism?

The fact that you're aware of 'crony capitalism' would otherwise imply that you're aware that the cronyism is not considered a feature.