Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport • Hacker News Board

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#71

Post by mlyle » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 3:59 AM UTC

bacon_waffle wrote: post #69

mlyle wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The people engaging in this activity are worse than poachers Sausage is yummy, and pigs do ecological damage.

If poisoning pigs were known to be more effective than shooting, would that change the calculus?

> If poisoning pigs were known to be more effective than shooting, would that change the calculus?

Depends on a lot of things. Relative cruelty of poisoning vs. shooting the pigs; utility of hunters enjoying pig meat; costs & effectiveness of both strategies; etc.

I suspect you'd probably end up doing both.

On the other hand, it's a bit moot, because I don't think we know how to effectively poison pigs without greater harms. Texas was using specialty-warfarin in addition to the hunting efforts. It's arguably crueler than shooting them.

We definitely do trap wild pigs in many jurisdictions, but this is much less effective than shooting them, IMO.

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#72

Post by lelandfe » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 4:04 AM UTC

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…

The New Yorker's house style was minimalist – few images, links rarely – long before the dawn of modern SEO. (I wish they'd change it, though.)

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#73

Post by Buttons840 » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 4:04 AM UTC

echelon wrote: post #67

mod wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article happened to talk about this.

I'm frequently guilty of reading the comments first, getting sucked into links, and never reading the original article. Thanks for the FYI.

The article is merely a comment on the topic of discussion. Often the best comment, but not always.

Sometimes I find myself wishing there were more comments so I can learn more about the topic, and then realize I haven't read the article.

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#74

Post by jasongi » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 4:06 AM UTC

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…

> 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.

It is entirely different. We are all the same species. Race is a social construct, and unlike foreign species introduction, the introduction of a wider genetic or cultural pool does not cause an ecosystem collapse.

> 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

This is just optics. You could say nuking a city just “changes” it into a desert wasteland instead of destroying it.

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#75

Post by propagandist » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 4:10 AM UTC

wyager wrote: post #52

propagandist wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.).

Yeah hunting is not in the same moral landscape as some of the Texas wild hog "hunts".

A lot of people are drawn to it because it involves shooting semi automatics at fleeing pigs from a helicopter, without even gathering the meat.

Killing an animal for meat/hide/oil or as part of a cull is in a different universe from gleefully shooting at them as a form of entertainment.

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#76

Post by propagandist » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 4:14 AM UTC

nemo wrote: post #62

propagandist wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you think about this in consequentialist terms poachers are far worse in every respect. I'm a pacifist, a vegetarian, and an ecologist. I am glad the hogs are getting culled, that's a valuable outcome. I don't care if the people who cull the hogs enjoy it. I wouldn't, I'm glad someone does, they're doing something with a good outcome, even if you think their motivations are unsavory.

Culling is not the issue. The passion is.

You don't need to be any of the things you mentioned to understand the problem with killing for entertainment.

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#77

Post by RappingBoomer » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 4:16 AM UTC

there is a youtube channel (or several) dedicated to killing iguanas in south florida...it's basically a sporting channel, justified by the fact that these lizards are invasive in florida...here is one such channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheIguanaHunter/videos

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#78

Post by Jedd » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 4:19 AM UTC

Ozzie_osman wrote: post #68

chasil wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How would you make sure the gene edits don't also wipe out the problem in their original habitat too?

This is relatively straightforward.

First, introduced species tend to, by definition, not breed with the 'original habitat' population, simply because they're separated by sufficient distances.

Second, these types of gene terminator approaches tend to work relatively quickly - several generations, I think, but I've only read about these in insect populations where generations are months not years. Anyway, the fallback approach is to maintain a breeding stock of non-edited, isolated somewhere safe, and if the original habitat specimens do get wiped out accidentally you can re-introduce if appropriate.

This is a good solution for mosquitoes - where you basically do want to wipe out a handful of species for a year or more, as the actual intent is to wipe out malaria (Plasmodium). Once that's done, you have the option to safely reintroduce those original-gene mosquito species.

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#79

Post by mod » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 4:21 AM UTC

echelon wrote: post #67

mod wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article happened to talk about this.

I'm frequently guilty of reading the comments first, getting sucked into links, and never reading the original article. Thanks for the FYI.

Oh hey, me too. I just thought you might be interested.

It didn't go well, and the description wasn't great. It left me thinking they maybe hadn't tried very hard, like didn't iterate the design.

Seems like they're a really easy target, though.

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#80

Post by Spivak » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 4:26 AM UTC

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.

Totally opposed to capital punishment, but as long as the person who enjoys the work isn't the person who decides that it needs done it seems fine, maybe even better if they enjoyed it. You probably want the person who isn't going to get PTSD from it carrying it out if minimizing human suffering is the goal.

I can't decide if doing the same thing with pedophiles and CP moderation is terrible or not. My gut reaction is terrible but after hearing about how traumatizing it is for the people who do it maybe it's some kind of fucked up win win. Because I could straight up not do that job, but that job being done prevents real life abuse.