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

Iceland's attempts to replant its forests

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 285 posts

Re: Iceland's attempts to replant its forests

#101

Post by clort »

smcl wrote: post #91
cpr wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw the same thing on the island of Achill, Ireland. All sheep are allowed to roam the island freely, so if you want anything protected, you have to fence it in. And there are no trees to speak of. That could either be because of the harsh winds on this almost-westernmost point of Ireland, or (never thought of this until now) it could be the sheep. The government pays people 50 pounds per sheep per annum, so people…

Pounds in Ireland? I was curious if that was a typo or an old fact from pre-Euro days so I dug around a little about this subsidy/stipend, but couldn't find anything. Any ideas what it could be?

Irish used Pounds (Punt in Irish language) before and use the Euro now but they still refer to units of money as 'quid' over there

Re: Iceland's attempts to replant its forests

#102

Post by badminton1 »

Once the trees are removed, erosion happens, followed by lost of topsoil. Topsoil is an ecosystem in its own, with microorganisms and small animals. Just replanting a tree will not regenerate that. Agriculture faces a similar problem.

Then, forests are much more than just trees. There are all sort of plants, insects, fungi, etc.

Re: Iceland's attempts to replant its forests

#104

Post by zaroth »

pizzetta wrote: post #45
ckinnan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is actually a similar problem in the Northeastern United States. Deer are overpopulated (in my area 6x traditional level) because they have no predators and hunting is restricted. The deer eat all of the hardwood saplings. In many mid-Atlantic forests there are very few 10-20 year old hard wood trees, they don't survive the deer.

And the deer overpopulation also contributes to the Lyme disease tick problem.

Which we have a perfectly good vaccine for but it was shelved purely out of FUD!

http://legacy.wbur.org/2012/06/27/lyme-vaccine

Re: Iceland's attempts to replant its forests

#105

Post by Kluny »

riot504 wrote: post #98
ckinnan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is actually a similar problem in the Northeastern United States. Deer are overpopulated (in my area 6x traditional level) because they have no predators and hunting is restricted. The deer eat all of the hardwood saplings. In many mid-Atlantic forests there are very few 10-20 year old hard wood trees, they don't survive the deer.

It appears a simple solution of allowing hunting to occur would solve the problem. Why is hunting restricted?

I don't know what the case is in NE US, but in my town in British Columbia, the deer population is out of control in the metropolitan area, and every time a cull is mentioned, animal rights activists put a stop to it through loud and effective lobbying. It's quite irritating.

Re: Iceland's attempts to replant its forests

#106

Post by jlmorton »

nvlr wrote: post #93
toomuchtodo wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a really interesting article about how Yellowstone (a national park in the US) reintroduced wolves into the ecosystem, reducing the dear population, altering the ecosystem for the better: https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wolf-reintroduc... https://youtu.be/ysa5OBhXz-Q

Like all things, there is another side to the story too. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/10/opinion/is-the-wolf-a-rea...

And as is often the case with science, here's another more recent study (2015, vs 2010 cited in the NY Times piece) which largely confirms the prior results noting Aspen regrowth.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1890/14-0712.1/abstrac...

The NY Times opinion piece is clickbaity for its absolutist declaration that the prior studies are untrue, based on one new study.

Re: Iceland's attempts to replant its forests

#107

Post by ccozan »

ccozan wrote: post #64

Is this a case where robots could do almost all work? Define an area, load the saplings and send the robot to bore holes, put the sapling, fill, repeat.

I don't understand the downvotes. Can someone explain?

Is a valid question, looking for an answer from a person with more knowledge.

Re: Iceland's attempts to replant its forests

#108

Post by NegativeLatency »

riot504 wrote: post #98
ckinnan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is actually a similar problem in the Northeastern United States. Deer are overpopulated (in my area 6x traditional level) because they have no predators and hunting is restricted. The deer eat all of the hardwood saplings. In many mid-Atlantic forests there are very few 10-20 year old hard wood trees, they don't survive the deer.

It appears a simple solution of allowing hunting to occur would solve the problem. Why is hunting restricted?

I'm not entirely sure, but there appears to be some insight in this article: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/11/the-dee...

Fewer hunters, less land where hunting is permitted (small farms).

Re: Iceland's attempts to replant its forests

#109

Post by Gargoyle »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #72
plussed_reader wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See: Cliven Bundy

Came to post exactly this. Once upon a time there were vast western lands open for grazing. There were even "wars" fought between cattle and sheep ranchers over grazing rights. Today the feds have closed off many areas -- for example, if I understand correctly, in the Hells Canyon area there were once 300,000+ sheep left to graze, where today there are effectively none. Certainly there were areas that were significan…

There's a very beautiful documentary from 2011 about open range sheep grazing in Montana, called SWEETGRASS. It's un-narrated, mostly just lets things speak for themselves.

http://www.pbs.org/pov/sweetgrass/

Post reply on HN