Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bill to kill up to 90% of Idaho wolves heads to governor

apnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 41 posts

Re: Bill to kill up to 90% of Idaho wolves heads to governor

#21

Post by mgarfias »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #14
roflchoppa wrote: post #7

We should not be interfering with key-stone species.

Humans have been interfering with key-stone species for millenia. Lions used to be relatively common throughout the Middle East, but it seems during the Neo-Assyrian Empire were hunted to extinction. I believe the Romans drove a lot of animal species in North Africa to extension because of the circuses. We need a much more nuanced analysis than just don't interfere with a key-stone species.

Don't forget the native north american horses, or mammoths or other megafauna that the native americans hunted to extinction.

Re: Bill to kill up to 90% of Idaho wolves heads to governor

#23

Post by jjeaff »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #13
hindsightbias wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legislators and people on the internet know better than scientists.

Or they have different values. One of the things politicians say is "we are going to follow science" to avoid making a value decision. Science can tell you the risks/benefits/tradeoffs of a decision, but you have to ultimately make a value judgement about the best course of action. Science can tell us various things about what the wolf does and what its loss or population reduction is expected to do within a certain…

As you said, both sides can follow the science and make different value judgements. Unfortunately that rarely seems to be the case.

For example, the pandemic, it seems most people agreed that shutdowns and masks were acceptable to save that many lives. However, politicians did not make the trade-off argument. They generally just challenged the science completely. First, that the pandemic was even real, then that it was deadly, then that shutdowns helped and that masks helped at all.

So yes, arguments of values can be made, but it seems rare that these frank discussions actually happen in politics. At least not in public.

Re: Bill to kill up to 90% of Idaho wolves heads to governor

#24

Post by sliken »

crygin wrote: post #17
fasteddie31003 wrote: post #9

I have mixed feelings on this. Humans modify their environment to benefit themselves. We eliminated the Grizzle Bear from California and I kinda think that is appropriate. I do believe predators benefit the ecosystem to a point. Using this same logic, would humans benefit if we had predators hunting us? I bet a lot of the pro-predator rhetoric comes from people living in urban areas with little connection to rural li…

Smaller towns here in the northwest that have developed suburbs over the last decade or two are overrun with deer, because coyotes have been displaced. It's a real problem.

Er what? Coyotes don't eat deer.

Re: Bill to kill up to 90% of Idaho wolves heads to governor

#25

Post by abstract_put »

sliken wrote: post #24
crygin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smaller towns here in the northwest that have developed suburbs over the last decade or two are overrun with deer, because coyotes have been displaced. It's a real problem.

Er what? Coyotes don't eat deer.

What would keep a coyote from killing deer (particularly young deer)? I'm not sure where abouts you are, in Eastern Ontario coyotes eat deer. A quick search shows multiple sources that support the same dynamic in various places in the US as well.

Re: Bill to kill up to 90% of Idaho wolves heads to governor

#26

Post by spfzero »

paulmd wrote: post #16
zabzonk wrote: post #11

And yet here in the UK we are thinking of reintroducing wolves, as has already been done with beavers.

they did. we paid a lot of money to reintroduce wolves. you did, your taxes did. https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/news/2020-01-14/25-yea... https://www.idahopress.com/postregister/farmandranch/idaho/w... same thing in michigan. it's emblematic of how the culture has shifted far to the conservative. environmentalism is out, the farm lobby is powerful, and now we'll straight-up shoot the wolves we spent so much ti…

Well it’s the ranching lobby rather than the farm lobby, unless wolves have started eating corn. And ranchers have been killing wolves in the west for hundreds of years, so it’s not a new culteral shift.

Personally though, I think if you want to start a sheep ranch in an area where wolves have lived for thousands of years, I’m not going to feel too sorry about what happens. You’d be smarter to pick a different place.

No one’s reintroducing them into new habitats, just their legacy habitats.

Re: Bill to kill up to 90% of Idaho wolves heads to governor

#27

Post by sliken »

abstract_put wrote: post #25
sliken wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Er what? Coyotes don't eat deer.

What would keep a coyote from killing deer (particularly young deer)? I'm not sure where abouts you are, in Eastern Ontario coyotes eat deer. A quick search shows multiple sources that support the same dynamic in various places in the US as well.

Heh, ok, I stand corrected. My impression was that was it was mostly wolf and mountain lions that eat deer. I dug around and found a few studies that mentioned that heavy snow let to more coyote deer hunting.

Then several other studies that tried to tease out if coyotes cause additive predation (increase in mortality rates) or compensatory predation (killing deer that would die anyways). Found a summary of the related research papers claiming "None of these studies found any evidence that coyote removal caused an increase in the deer population." another two studies found "Removal studies with white-tailed deer populations also show that coyote removal does not affect overall population growth."

Seems like the general conclusion is that coyotes have stabilizing effect on deer herds, which seems about right from a healthy ecosystem point of view. Similarly wolves help stabilize various populations, even of distant species like song birds, beavers, trees and other plants.

Thanks for the correction.

Re: Bill to kill up to 90% of Idaho wolves heads to governor

#28

Post by tjs8rj »

paulmd wrote: post #15
adamcstephens wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ranchers don’t like it when wolves kill livestock.

that's the long and short of it, idaho is a super conservative state (which generally resent environmentalism) with a powerful farm lobby. https://www.idahopress.com/postregister/farmandranch/idaho/w...

My gut reaction to “conservatives generally resent environmentalism” is that it’s wrong. I know you mean from a policy standpoint, but the people who live most in nature, who feel most at home outside concrete jungles and actually experience the environment are overwhelmingly conservatives.

I wonder if it’s liberals and conservatives looking from different vantage points. Liberals see massive cities and sprawl and call it too much, conservatives surrounded by fields and trees and nature say some more industry couldn’t hurt.

Re: Bill to kill up to 90% of Idaho wolves heads to governor

#29

Post by spfzero »

fasteddie31003 wrote: post #9

I have mixed feelings on this. Humans modify their environment to benefit themselves. We eliminated the Grizzle Bear from California and I kinda think that is appropriate. I do believe predators benefit the ecosystem to a point. Using this same logic, would humans benefit if we had predators hunting us? I bet a lot of the pro-predator rhetoric comes from people living in urban areas with little connection to rural li…

How was eliminating the Grizzly Bear (Brown Bear) appropriate? It was a matter of removing a competitor, it had nothing to do with human safety. It was done soley to improve the profit margin for ranchers.

The Grizzly is on the California state flag, it’s a symbol of the state, and it’s an embarrassment that the legislature of that state looked the other way as it was killed off.

Re: Bill to kill up to 90% of Idaho wolves heads to governor

#30

Post by spfzero »

sliken wrote: post #24
crygin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smaller towns here in the northwest that have developed suburbs over the last decade or two are overrun with deer, because coyotes have been displaced. It's a real problem.

Er what? Coyotes don't eat deer.

They do eat young deer.
Post reply on HN