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Return of wolves to Yellowstone has led to a surge in aspen trees

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Re: Return of wolves to Yellowstone has led to a surge in aspen trees

#101

Post by tialaramex »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #72
quotemstr wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another example: mosquitos. We can and should drive them to extinction. The species that feed on humans are nowhere food-web-critical. It's an arbitrary and wrong judgement that we should preserve mosquitos just because they happened to evolve with us. So what if eradicating them would be unnatural? So what if it would technically be a reduction in biodiversity? Not everything natural is good or optimal.

I remember when it was announced that smallpox was eradicated (Yeah, I'm old enough to have a smallpox vaccination scar). I remember someone moaning about how we had driven a species to extinction. We're a funny lot, really. I've learned not to take us too seriously; especially the folks that take themselves very seriously.

It is questionable whether smallpox is alive and so whether it can go extinct. If in some sense it can go extinct it seems both the Americans and Russians are determined to keep it alive "just in case".

Nobody was much concerned when we eradicated another infectious virus. Unlike Smallpox there was no "military rationale" for keeping copies on ice, so Rinderpest is gone. It appears that its close human relation, Measles, will be around for a long time though because "I don't believe in facts" trumps "My child has died of a preventable disease". So that's certainly evidence for you're "We're a funny lot" theory.

Re: Return of wolves to Yellowstone has led to a surge in aspen trees

#102

Post by chomp »

BurningFrog wrote: post #89
sghiassy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve always found the idea of “restoring” ecosystems a bit philosophically tricky. When we say that reintroducing wolves led to ecological improvements, what’s our reference point? Are we comparing it to Yellowstone 100 years ago? 500? Pre-human settlement? Ecological baselines are inherently arbitrary—there’s no objectively “correct” state of nature to return to. The systems we call degraded are often just different…

One point I rarely see made: When you "destroy" an ecosystem, a new one will take its place. The remaining animals and plants will converge on a new balanced state. The ecosystems we admire today are often that new balance after humans destroyed the natural one.

That’s because it’s a bad point. An ecosystem can collapse for multiple reasons, e.g. collapse due pollution will not create a thriving ecosystem.

In almost all cases, when a collapsed ecosystem reaches homeostasis again, the result is a more fragile and less diverse balance than what was there previously.

Re: Return of wolves to Yellowstone has led to a surge in aspen trees

#103

Post by Ar-Curunir »

rr808 wrote: post #57

I talked to a local who was friends with ranchers who now lose stock to wolves. They hate it. Its an interesting use case of local control, is the greater good more important than the people who live there?

More important their businesses? Yes, very likely. To what extent should their business interests be protected over nature?

Re: Return of wolves to Yellowstone has led to a surge in aspen trees

#104

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

tialaramex wrote: post #101
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when it was announced that smallpox was eradicated (Yeah, I'm old enough to have a smallpox vaccination scar). I remember someone moaning about how we had driven a species to extinction. We're a funny lot, really. I've learned not to take us too seriously; especially the folks that take themselves very seriously.

It is questionable whether smallpox is alive and so whether it can go extinct. If in some sense it can go extinct it seems both the Americans and Russians are determined to keep it alive "just in case". Nobody was much concerned when we eradicated another infectious virus. Unlike Smallpox there was no "military rationale" for keeping copies on ice, so Rinderpest is gone. It appears that its close human relation, Meas…

A fairly common horror movie trope, is some Eocene zombiemaker virus, being thawed out of the permafrost.

Re: Return of wolves to Yellowstone has led to a surge in aspen trees

#105

Post by trainsarebetter »

BurningFrog wrote: post #89
sghiassy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve always found the idea of “restoring” ecosystems a bit philosophically tricky. When we say that reintroducing wolves led to ecological improvements, what’s our reference point? Are we comparing it to Yellowstone 100 years ago? 500? Pre-human settlement? Ecological baselines are inherently arbitrary—there’s no objectively “correct” state of nature to return to. The systems we call degraded are often just different…

One point I rarely see made: When you "destroy" an ecosystem, a new one will take its place. The remaining animals and plants will converge on a new balanced state. The ecosystems we admire today are often that new balance after humans destroyed the natural one.

This is pretty naive take. We have turned eras of lush forests into essentially deserts and killed water sheds. These things don’t default back to a thriving ecosystem. Lots of the time they are just dead. Pre tree planting, after clear cutting, there’s a lot of “forests” in bc that are just one canopy hemlock swaths. They need to be thinned and diversified because the are essentially “dead” forests. A lot of work needs to be put into these areas, as the water sheds are falling apart and dying as a result.

Re: Return of wolves to Yellowstone has led to a surge in aspen trees

#106

Post by mykowebhn »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #88
mykowebhn wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These replies that simply restate a previous comment by inverting its meaning are really starting to annoy me. They're neither witty nor intelligent. Just lazy and annoying. Waiting for someone to reply to this doing exactly this

People assuming that last 250 years were predominantly harm are annoying. The human race is thriving by every objective metric of nature: population, lifespan, dispensable energy per capita.

Humans on their phone 24/7 due to addiction and/or who hold multiple jobs and still can't afford rent and/or who suffer from racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc. are not thriving.

Oh, but they live to be 75, can buy a 75 inch television, and there are 8 billion of them. I'd still say they're not thriving.

Would you consider the folks in Brave New World thriving?

And don't get me started on environmental destruction. This post was about wolves and trees thriving, by the way.

Re: Return of wolves to Yellowstone has led to a surge in aspen trees

#107

Post by sdenton4 »

bmacho wrote: post #44
quickthrowman wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really promoting the philosophy of Leibnizian Optimism in 2025? I suggest reading Candide by Voltaire, first published 266 years as a critique to the philosophy you are currently espousing.

People: "If God, then why bad?"[0] Leibniz: "God and bad can coexist. E.g. we live in the best possible world."[1] Voltaire: "Here's a depiction of some fictional bad." I don't think Voltaire engaged meaningfully with Leibniz's argument. (I think that Leibniz is simply right tho, in the mathematical sense, so there isn't much room for Voltaire anyway.) [0] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil [1] : https:/…

Doesn't Leibniz's argument assume a single all-powerful god, and an external notion of good and evil? I would call it a 'not-even-wrong' argument - perhaps it's perfectly correct given its assumptions, but the assumptions aren't (necessarily) anything to do with this world...

Re: Return of wolves to Yellowstone has led to a surge in aspen trees

#109

Post by joshtbradley »

Also collapsed the elk population from 18,000 to 2,000 and they’re worried the bison will eat the trees… I understand nature is incredibly complex and intelligent, and I’m curious what the end effect will be. But from an anthropocentric perspective, this is silly. When will the first human death occur?

Re: Return of wolves to Yellowstone has led to a surge in aspen trees

#110

Post by tracerbulletx »

sghiassy wrote: post #67
mkw5053 wrote: post #23

It's amazing the impact that the reintroduction has had. On a recent winter trip there I also learned that the reintroduction literally moved rivers [1]: - Elk quit loitering along streams, so willow and cottonwood shot up, anchoring soil and narrowing channels. - The new woody growth gave beavers lumber; their colonies jumped from one in 1996 to a dozen within fifteen years, raising water tables and rebuilding wetla…

I’ve always found the idea of “restoring” ecosystems a bit philosophically tricky. When we say that reintroducing wolves led to ecological improvements, what’s our reference point? Are we comparing it to Yellowstone 100 years ago? 500? Pre-human settlement? Ecological baselines are inherently arbitrary—there’s no objectively “correct” state of nature to return to. The systems we call degraded are often just different…

If only we had a whole group of experts who study this as their life work to make these choices instead of thinking our random speculations are the best we can do.
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