81–90 of 136 posts
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...
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.
You're not the only one with that idea, automated underwater robots [0] are developed to kill crown-of-thorns starfish that eat corals[1]. They can cause a lot of damage to coral reefs and don't have a lot of predators.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COTSBot
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown-of-thorns_starfish#Ecolo...
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…
The question is: do all these sport "hunters" make any difference at all in the lionfish population? My guess is No. We could pay a bounty for killing mosquitos, but it wouldn't be nearly as effective as draining all the standing water, or introducing birth control of some sort. If I'm right that they're having no effect, then either a CRISPR solution, or introducing a natural predator is the answer (assuming that th…
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 chang…
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.
> The people engaging in this activity are worse than poachers Sausage is yummy, and pigs do ecological damage.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The people engaging in this activity are worse than poachers Sausage is yummy, and pigs do ecological damage.
Do you think your sausages are being made from wild pigs?
Better have a chest freezer.
I've not actually done this myself, mind you, but I've enjoyed the hand-me-downs from this process.
By any definition humans are an invasive species. Unfortunately killing our fellow humans has been a competitive sport from time immemorial.
Humans are as natural as any animal on this planet. Beavers build dams, flooding vast areas and it’s natural. When humans do it, it’s not. Makes zero sense.
Ours are not as natural in the sense that we no longer rely on our inborn capacities to produce those changes.
Yes, in a way we are like beavers in our engineering. But we are insanely overpowered beavers. The scope of our changes puts us in a class of our own.
So if we call changing the environment by one's own means only 'natural', and massively changing it by compounded means 'artificial', we are not natural, not as beavers. Ours is artificial.
So contrary to what you said, that distinction makes at least some sense.
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.
I’ve continued free diving but I don’t kill fish anymore for personal reasons. Regardless, I strongly encourage anyone interested to try it. Of all the ways to get a meal, getting in the water and selecting the ideal catch is the best I’ve ever known.
Just like the article describes, there are invasive species up for grabs all over the world. They’re usually fine to eat and worth targeting.