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

Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 136 posts

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#51

Post by wyager »

J3yjg52 wrote: post #8

you haven’t had fun on this planet until you've gone hunting for invasive hogs in florida or texas. stars, night observation devices, suppressed semiautomatic rifles. regardless of your stance on guns or killing things almost as smart as humans, you should give this fun and useful activity a try sometime. you’ll learn some skills and make solid friends along the way.

I used to help friends manage destructive hog populations on TX farmland. It was really crazy. I remember a few years back people on twitter were ragging on some guy for saying he needed an AR to kill "30-50 feral hogs", acting as if that was some sort of insane fictional scenario, when in reality he was being perfectly veracious.

I haven't helped with hog control in 5+ years, but I'm interested to see how it's changed with the proliferation of NVDs and thermal optics. It would have made our jobs a lot easier, but the equipment was much more expensive back then - no one I knew at the time had better than gen2 technology.

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#52

Post by wyager »

propagandist wrote: post #12
J3yjg52 wrote: post #8

you haven’t had fun on this planet until you've gone hunting for invasive hogs in florida or texas. stars, night observation devices, suppressed semiautomatic rifles. regardless of your stance on guns or killing things almost as smart as humans, you should give this fun and useful activity a try sometime. you’ll learn some skills and make solid friends along the way.

It sounds like a great way to earn the company of fellow psychopaths. The ecological need is easy to understand, but turning it into a "sport" tells you a lot about the caliber of people we're living with. The people engaging in this activity are worse than poachers; at least poachers kill to earn a living.

I hear where you're coming from, but there's definitely some sort of weird carve-out in human psychology that allows people to simultaneously be compassionate towards animals while also being OK with killing them. Most hunters I know (who don't do it out of necessity or anything) are very morally upright people, and many of them are good friends to animals (conservationists, rehabbers, etc.).

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#53

Post by BurningFrog »

The whole concept of "invasive species" makes me a bit uncomfortable.

For one thing, preserving the purity of a local ecosystem is not the same thing as preserving the purity of your local human race, but it's not entirely different either.

Also, an the world becomes more and more connected, it's a battle doomed to be lost. And those battles, as much as we might wish otherwise, should not be fought.

Also, the idea that new species "destroy" ecosystems is really flawed. What they do is change ecosystems. With a new species, an area finds a new balance after a while, and life goes on.

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#54

Post by echelon »

exhilaration wrote: post #11

Fogg spears two hundred creatures, in two trips, before returning to his boat... (Fogg has posted his video on YouTube, and it has been watched more than a million times.) It's very disappointing that they don't link directly to this video[1], unlike the New York Times which always links directly to their sources and references. It seems like the New York Times is the only mainstream news site that's not absolutely t…

That's incredible, and honestly looks quite fun. The fact that they're venomous might keep me from trying, though.

This got me thinking - as drone tech continues to improve and drop in price, I wonder if we could deploy a fleet of cheap autonomous fish-killing submersibles. The failure modes or evolutionary pressures might be problematic, but imagine the lionfish we could kill at volume.

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#55

Post by StanislavPetrov »

enchiridion wrote: post #20
StanislavPetrov wrote: post #14

By any definition humans are an invasive species. Unfortunately killing our fellow humans has been a competitive sport from time immemorial.

Misanthropy disguised as concern for the environment does not contribute to the discussion. Edit: Given your username, I’d expect more faith in humanity, not less.

>Misanthropy disguised as concern for the environment does not contribute to the discussion.

The importance of language and the dispassionate and accurate employment of accurate definitions is neither misanthropy or related to environmental concerns.

>Edit: Given your username, I’d expect more faith in humanity, not less.

Personally, that the largest and most productive societies on earth dedicate a large portion of their resources to building weapons of mass destruction isn't something that inspires much faith in humanity. Props to Petrov for acting with more sense then most of the rest of humanity.

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#56

Post by thrdbndndn »

BurningFrog wrote: post #53

The whole concept of "invasive species" makes me a bit uncomfortable. For one thing, preserving the purity of a local ecosystem is not the same thing as preserving the purity of your local human race, but it's not entirely different either. Also, an the world becomes more and more connected, it's a battle doomed to be lost. And those battles, as much as we might wish otherwise, should not be fought. Also, the idea th…

Mind to give some rationales?

To me it's as simple as to preserve the diversity of the species. Even without scientific reason, I just like the fact we have more species on the Earth. If I want see carp, I can go to their origin, they have plenty.

Like, life goes on in Africa with or without giraffes. But it would be a tragedy if my grandchild couldn't see one with their own eyes.

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#57

Post by chasil »

yawnxyz wrote: post #13

This makes me immediately think about the Cobra effect anecdote (or fable?). Basically, the Indian gov't tried to control the snake population by offering a bounty, and people started breeding snakes and killing them for bounty money. Better writeup here: https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/systems-thinking-and-the-cobra-e...

From the article:

"A female lionfish lays an average of twenty-seven thousand eggs every two and a half days."

This reproduction looks to be so prolific that cheating isn't required.

The ultimate solution to all of these problems is going to be a gene drive.

Especially for the lionfish, edits that leave only male offspring will wipe out the problem in the Atlantic.

The United States may condemn and punish such action, but the rest of Central and South America justly want their fishing industry back, and the outbreak likely came from the U.S. in the first place.

When a gene drive is sufficiently cheap and accessible, one of them will release it.

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#58

Post by mod »

echelon wrote: post #54
exhilaration wrote: post #11

Fogg spears two hundred creatures, in two trips, before returning to his boat... (Fogg has posted his video on YouTube, and it has been watched more than a million times.) It's very disappointing that they don't link directly to this video[1], unlike the New York Times which always links directly to their sources and references. It seems like the New York Times is the only mainstream news site that's not absolutely t…

That's incredible, and honestly looks quite fun. The fact that they're venomous might keep me from trying, though. This got me thinking - as drone tech continues to improve and drop in price, I wonder if we could deploy a fleet of cheap autonomous fish-killing submersibles. The failure modes or evolutionary pressures might be problematic, but imagine the lionfish we could kill at volume.

The article happened to talk about this.

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#59

Post by strken »

worthless-trash wrote: post #45
galangalalgol wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cats and honeybees should be on the list if we are being technical. If we killed all the honey bees, many of the invasive plants they pollinate would disappear as well. As for the cats? You first... No man in Ulthar may harm a cat.

Its already a thing. I hunted feral cats in central Queensland along with rabbits and foxes.

Feral cats are a huge menace, at least in Australia. They go through endangered native wildlife like a hot knife through butter. It can be confronting to people because cats are pets, but they're carnivorous little killing machines, and shooting a breeding pair might save thousands of birds and small mammals.

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#60

Post by [deleted] »

spoonjim wrote: post #38
causality0 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse how? Because they're enjoying something that needs to be done? These hogs would be more than happy to kill and eat you if they could. They regularly break into back yards and kill pets. If an animal is happy to pop slats off a fence and disembowel my cousin's dog I'm happy to put a bullet in it.

Yep. I’m not an opponent of capital punishment for example but wouldn’t want a government executioner to get a hardon while he does it.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN