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Group buys up large tracts of land in Romania to create 'European Yellowstone'

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Re: Group buys up large tracts of land in Romania to create 'European Yellowstone'

#141

Post by dylan604 »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #72
Rinzler89 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they'll come down and steal from your garbage in town You mean their home? Bears were there before humans settled and built towns. IMHO can't really complain about bears wehen you're the on encroaching on their turf, not the other way around.

I never understand these arguments. You mean mastodon home,surely? They were there before bears! How about pterodactyl? How far do we go / where do we arbitrarily draw the line? I am all for ecology, preservation, being in sync with nature etc, but I find fundamentally flawed and dishonest arguments like these don't contribute to the cause. Over billions of years, every single species alive displaced some other speci…

> where do we arbitrarily draw the line?

clearly, a line is if both species are alive at the same time and competing for resources. we don't have do be moronic/sophomoric about the discourse.

Re: Group buys up large tracts of land in Romania to create 'European Yellowstone'

#142

Post by tmnvdb »

r00fus wrote: post #107
WalterBright wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like to eat.

France is a major food exporter. Some of those lands could be re-acquired by the state for non-food uses. Our capitalist world economy equates wealth based on extraction, not preservation. It really needs to be reimagined if we're going to be sustainable at all.

That exported food is also feeding people.

Re: Group buys up large tracts of land in Romania to create 'European Yellowstone'

#143

Post by vikramkr »

nottorp wrote: post #46
keiferski wrote: post #36

Of particular note is that there are a ton of bears in Romania, much more than in other European countries, with something like 60% of all European brown bears. [0] Glad to see that someone is attempting to preserve this. 0. https://www.mossy.earth/rewilding-knowledge/romanias-brown-b...

There are more bears than the land can sustain. Go to any tourist (or non tourist) spot in the mountains and they'll come down and steal from your garbage in town . Look up Brasov. It's a reasonably large touristic town and it regularly gets bears at the periphery.

The land can sustain them fine, that's just what it's like to live near bears. Tons of places are like that - you get used to it lol don't worry. There was a Tom Scott video on work folks are doing to develop bear resistant trash cans and the like: https://youtu.be/Xn_O2li_jpk?si=BUPxDOxXaOJdxC_v

It's funny (and sad) that wildlife has been so thoroughly decimated in parts of the world that people are so shocked by such thoroughly mundane things but it's an important reminder that ecological restoration work must involve working with locals and understanding the cultural forces at play to make these projects a success. Including making sure that externalities are accounted for and that the people in the area share in the benefits (economic like tourism, cultural like restoration of culturally significant animals and ecosystems, environmental depending on the intrinsic value people give to preserving the environment, etc). I'm seeing it in the replies to this thread - it's easy for folks in places like the American West to be dismissive of concerns like these but the idea that the wild is worth preserving is frankly a relatively recent one. If you just assume that obviously everyone values bears being alive while the other person just assumes that everyone values eliminating or at least suppressing bear populations to never have to deal with them everyone is just going to walk away assuming the other person is crazy

Re: Group buys up large tracts of land in Romania to create 'European Yellowstone'

#145

Post by jameshart »

aix1 wrote: post #77
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #61

The more the better, but there's already a "European Yellowstone" in the form of Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park in Belarus, of similar size, home to many of the remaining European buffalo.

I'm guessing you mean the bison. (At least that's what Belovezhskaya Pushcha is known for, other than being the largest area of primeval forest in Europe.)

Calling bison ‘buffalo’ is a North American thing, generally. It’s part of a huge pattern of naming confusions between British and American English for ungulates. An elk in Eurasia traditionally means what is a called a moose in North America, but in North America what they call an elk is more similar to a European red deer. America also calls its pronghorn (which is not an antelope) an antelope, and its reindeer caribou, unless they’re pulling Santa’s sleigh. Muskoxen also aren’t oxen.

But the bighorn sheep is really a sheep and it does have big horns, so they have that going for them.

Re: Group buys up large tracts of land in Romania to create 'European Yellowstone'

#146

Post by rsdfdfdfdf »

miahi wrote: post #97
larrik wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a regular town in Connecticut and I have bears attack my garbage regularly, so I'm not convinced that's all that weird.

Unfortunately, Romanian bears are brown bears (Ursus arctos), not black (Ursus americanus). They are not easily scared by people and encounters with them can be very dangerous.

I don't think there's a much difference in behavior between the species, probably Romania just has more bears living close to humans, which makes them less afraid and conflicts more likely. For the record, my home country (Finland) has about 2000 brown bears, and they have killed only a single person during past 100 years. Most of the time they try their best to avoid humans, and the majority of people living in the countryside have never even seen one.

Re: Group buys up large tracts of land in Romania to create 'European Yellowstone'

#147

Post by yread »

auselen wrote: post #123
Fricken wrote: post #56

>Several years ago, 80 bison were reintroduced two centuries after their disappearance from these territories... I had no idea there were bison in Europe. The provided hyperlink leads to an article about bison being reintroduced in Mexico. Here is an appropriate article about bison being rewilded in the Southern Carpathians: https://rewildingeurope.com/blog/free-roaming-bison-populati... .

I’ve read about them after getting introduced to: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Żubrówka

There is also the beer https://zubr.cz/cs

Re: Group buys up large tracts of land in Romania to create 'European Yellowstone'

#148

Post by ReleaseCandidat »

keiferski wrote: post #139
ReleaseCandidat wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Romania has about 5000, Slovakia and Ukraine about 2000 about 4000 from Ex-Yugoslavia to Greece and 2500 in Scandinavia. So, still way less than 50%.

I think the confusion might be because the Carpathian zone includes Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine, and the site I linked to is using that number solely for Romania. In any case, it's not my website and the general point remains that the specific region has a big percentage of European bears.

I didn't want to critisize you, just to get the numbers straight. I'm actually living in one of the regions with many bears (the northern end of the lower tatras) in Slovakia.

Re: Group buys up large tracts of land in Romania to create 'European Yellowstone'

#149

Post by rsdfdfdfdf »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #109
mlyle wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he's just saying that if you move in somewhere where there were lots of bears.... don't be surprised when bears show up and are annoying.

The "surprise“ comes from the fact this was historically a solved problem. People simply killed the annoying predators and nuisance animals. We are in a transition state of cultural values and expectations. People expect to being free from annoyances because that was the norm for hundreds if not thousands of years. The rules have changed around how we treat animals, but people have not internalized all the resulting…

Historically there were much less humans, and more wilderness for animals. Applying the historical solutions in modern day would mean extinction of species in many places.

Re: Group buys up large tracts of land in Romania to create 'European Yellowstone'

#150

Post by hnbad »

WalterBright wrote: post #105
underlipton wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know the history, but if it's anything like the public libraries here (and several other institutions), a lot of it would have been bankrolled by robber barons trying to secure their legacy and avoid taxation. In other words, guilting rich people and threatening nationalization of their wealth works.

> a lot of it would have been bankrolled by robber barons trying to secure their legacy and avoid taxation. Do you have a cite for that? BTW, donating to charity is tax deductible. For example, if I donate $100 to charity, I can deduct $100 from my taxable income. My choices: 1. paying taxes: I pay $20 2. donating to charity and deducting it from my income: I pay $100 I'm $80 worse off financially by donating to char…

That's a very naive understanding of how charities work. You don't donate to a charity, you donate to your charity.

Now, obviously your charity still needs to act as a charity so that money can't go back in your pocket but there are plenty of things the charity might spend it on that are in your financial interest and because you founded it, you likely have sufficient influence over it to make that happen even if you don't formally personally make its decisions.

Also, if you donate $100 in stock to a charity, that deducts your taxable income by $100 but it doesn't cost you $100 in income. Arguably a more egregious example for this is high art where you can create and destroy value through auctions (i.e. the value of your donation may be massively inflated compared to what you paid for it).

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