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Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

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Re: Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

#231

Post by abhiminator »

joejerryronnie wrote: post #223
phaser wrote: post #23

Here in Santiago, Chile, where many neighborhoods are in complete lockdown, a wild Puma was seen roaming the streets[1]. This was their natural habitat before the city was established, and many of them still live in the mountains, which are not far from the busiest streets of Santiago. https://www.france24.com/en/20200324-wild-puma-captured-in-d...

I live south of San Jose up against the mountains and our neighbors will post pictures once in a while of mountain lions drinking out of the swimming pools in their back yards. It’s more common in bad drought years.

Are you anywhere near Joseph D. Grant County Park?

Re: Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

#232

Post by elliekelly »

thdrdt wrote: post #157

There are multiple documentaries about "What if people suddenly leave earth?". All those movies show how fast nature will take over. Within 10-14 days animals will be walking everywhere. So I am not surprised we see animals moving into cities. And it is also true a lot of animals are already around but are very shy. So we don't notice them but they are already around.

Can you recommend a good one? (Or two? I’ve suddenly got lots of time this weekend...)

Re: Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

#234

Post by look_lookatme »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #127
russell_h wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it’s worth, there aren’t thought to be any brown bears left in California; the closest ones are in Washington or maybe Idaho.

This is largely a matter of local lexical confusion. In the US, "brown bear" can mean two things: a black bear with a brown coat ( ursus americanus ), or a grizzly ( ursus arctos horribilis , which makes me giggle every time). Across the pond, "brown bear" probably means ursus arctos arctos , a cousin of our own more foul-tempered beasties. But when a Californian says "brown bear", usually they just mean a brown-coat…

> But when a Californian says "brown bear", usually they just mean a brown-coated black bear (https://bear.org/black-bear-color-phases/).

Well that's confusing. Whenever I hear brown bear (in hunting contexts, etc) I assume grizzly.

Re: Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

#235

Post by camillomiller »

spodek wrote: post #135

What we think of wild nature is nothing compared to what used to exist. Schools of fish so dense they would bring boats to a halt in the middle of the Atlantic. North America had more large wildlife than Africa. Whales as far as the eye could see all day long. Walruses in the Thames in London. I did a couple video essays on what I learned from a wonderful book The Once and Future World : My video essays: https://yout…

Do you think that halting our activities for a few months will have a significant effect on wildlife growth?

Re: Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

#236

Post by mwaitjmp »

nroets wrote: post #210
crazygringo wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure exactly what those quotes are referring to, but many reports of European settlers to the New World, while technically true, were greatly misleading. Prior to arrival of the Europeans, the continent was full of Native Americans who lived in an ecological balance with wildlife. When the Europeans arrived, the diseases they brought wiped out 90+% of the indigenous population, according to some estimates. By…

Native Americans arrived less than 80,000 years ago. That's a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. They were not the natural predators.

I believe the accepted period is around 15,000 years ago, possibly slightly earlier.

Re: Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

#237

Post by JensRex »

bolasanibk wrote: post #209
spodek wrote: post #135

What we think of wild nature is nothing compared to what used to exist. Schools of fish so dense they would bring boats to a halt in the middle of the Atlantic. North America had more large wildlife than Africa. Whales as far as the eye could see all day long. Walruses in the Thames in London. I did a couple video essays on what I learned from a wonderful book The Once and Future World : My video essays: https://yout…

This is an npr article on the size of fish caught by tour boats. You can see the size reduce over the years. https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/02/05/257046530/b...

Unblocked: https://archive.ph/mVxhG

Re: Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

#238

Post by jsjw7sbw »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #160
gowld wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This thread seems to be confusing climate change / carbon (dioxide) with local pollution. climate change / carbon (dioxide) and carbon taxes are about long-term temperature change due to C02 concentration and the effects of that. COVID-19 isn't changing that in 1 year. Local pollution is caused by burning gasoline and factory smoke.

I was talking both. They're related - local pollution does local damage to the environment; climate change is bad because it does damage to the environment everywhere simultaneously. I don't expect COVID-19 to show up too strongly in temperature graphs, but I hope some of its effects show up somewhere with large enough effect size that we have a statistically significant dip in the chart to point to as direct evidenc…

Why does global warming damage the environment everywhere?

Re: Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

#239

Post by netcan »

crazygringo wrote: post #190
monktastic1 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of a quote from Charles Eisenstein. He cites The Once and Future World and then channels Steve Nicholls in Paradise Found : "Atlantic salmon runs so abundant no one is able to sleep for their noise. Islands “as full of birds as a meadow is full of grass.” Whales so numerous they were a hazard to shipping, their spouts filling the entire sea with foam. Oysters more than a foot wide. An island covered by so…

I'm not sure exactly what those quotes are referring to, but many reports of European settlers to the New World, while technically true, were greatly misleading. Prior to arrival of the Europeans, the continent was full of Native Americans who lived in an ecological balance with wildlife. When the Europeans arrived, the diseases they brought wiped out 90+% of the indigenous population, according to some estimates. By…

It's possible that there was a temporary bloom in bison and/or a few other species during the formative period of American inland exploration. The populations were hunted out so quick after this that it's hard to know how temporary this was.. if it happened at all.

But those quotes are about a lot more than one iconic species. Overall, the picture is accurate.

Re: Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco

#240

Post by billfruit »

gota wrote: post #194
dntbnmpls wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passenger pigeons, bison, wolves, etc. Here is an interesting map of the historic and current grizzly bear ranges. https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/historical-and-current-gri... It is truly amazing how nearly completely we wiped the continent of wildlife. Many of our teams are named after the animals we wiped out. Florida Panthers, Jacksonville Jaguars, California Golden Bears, Michigan Wolverines, etc. > Whales as…

Oh, wow! For anyone that can't see the picture - the historical range shows grizzly bears past Texas and well into Mexico

And Jaguars were one time to be found with in territory that is presently USA.
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