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

Decline of Indian vultures

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–129 of 129 posts

Re: Decline of Indian vultures

#121

Post by pas »

kergonath wrote: post #105
aurareturn wrote: post #2

Question: Did another animal take the role of the vultures? Nature is very efficient. If there opportunity, it seems like some animals might evolve to fill that role.

> Nature is very efficient. This is a meme and it is unfounded. In most cases, nature is good enough.

efficient at what? what's the measure, utility function, what are nature's KPIs? :)

utilizing energy gradients? maybe, but there's plenty of that on Mars yet it's barren. so probably certain ecosystems can be more or less efficient at this, right?

Re: Decline of Indian vultures

#123

Post by goda90 »

VikingCoder wrote: post #80

I once had someone on Reddit comment back to me, "Why should I care about biodiversity?" As someone who grew up watching "Life on Earth," I could not relate to their question at all. It was like if someone asked me, "Why should I care about oxygen?" And of course, I had the shame that if I can't explain something simply, then I don't really understand it. I still don't have a great answer that I can offer. But wow, t…

A reason I like to use for biodiversity is pests. Pests thrive off of human activity. They don't really need biodiversity to continue being around, because they have us. Getting rid of pests is hard, and totally annihilating them is very very hard. Really it's only worth the effort to keep the population low. Biodiversity gives us predators. Predators can keep the population in check. We don't have to put in the effort if there's enough predators to kill the pests themselves.

But our efforts to kill the pests can often harm the predators. The poisons we use might kill the predators too. The cycles of taking the pest population really low and then it jumping back up might leave the predators without enough food.

If you spray your yard for insects, the first things that will rebound in population are mosquitoes and flies because they eat us and our trash. Spiders and dragonflies will also be killed, but they'll rebound slower because their prey has to rebound first. Then what if you spray again before they fully rebound?

Re: Decline of Indian vultures

#124

Post by valarauko »

thih9 wrote: post #86

The timeline looks scary, it looks like it took about a decade to introduce a regulation that would help protect the vultures (and humans). > By the mid-1990s, the 50 million-strong vulture population had plummeted to near zero (...) Since the 2006 ban on veterinary use of diclofenac, the decline has slowed in some areas, but at least three species have suffered long-term losses of 91-98% (...) Wikipedia claims that…

> The timeline looks scary, it looks like it took about a decade to introduce a regulation that would help protect the vultures

To be fair, the cause was conclusively identified as diclofenac only as late as 2004-2005. Even in papers published as late as 2003, various other, more likely culprits were being investigated, including pesticides, pathogens, or food scarcity. India moved to ban veterinary use of diclofenac by early 2005, slowed down by pushback from the Ministry of Agriculture for lack of an effective alternative vulture safe drug, which were only really demonstrated in studies in early 2006. Later that year diclofenac was banned.

Re: Decline of Indian vultures

#125

Post by kergonath »

hollerith wrote: post #107
kergonath wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was essentially no impact to the consumers as the harvest were simply shipped in from other areas. … in the US. You left that critical bit out, and even then you have things like the dust bowl. Even to this day, without going back to the potato blight, there are famines regularly. It’s really hard not to see that as a direct effect on consumers.

During the Dust Bowl, there was no welfare, so the families in Oklahoma and nearby who were relying on a harvest and had no other plan for getting income and no savings ended up without food and without money with which to buy food. There's never been a time in US history or a place in the US such that there was a shortage of food for people who had money to buy food unless you count situations like the Donner Party…

> During the Dust Bowl, there was no welfare, so the families in Oklahoma and nearby who were relying on a harvest and had no other plan for getting income and no savings ended up without food and without money with which to buy food.

This is still pretty much the situation in most of the world. Your argument is completely American-centric, which is fine. But again, there are many examples of the lack of resilience of some agriculture practice doing quite a lot of damage.

> There's never been a time in US history or a place in the US such that there was a shortage of food for people who had money to buy food unless you count situations like the Donner Party in which a caravan spent the winter of 1846–1847 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

I did not know about that episode, thanks for the rabbit hole :)

That said, the “who had money to buy food” is problematic. Of course there will always be people who can afford 1) unsustainable practices to secure their supply of food, 2) importing stuff from the other side of the world, or 3) just move to where life is easier. It does not mean that famine does not exist, just that some people have more than they deserve.

Re: Decline of Indian vultures

#126

Post by turrican »

jihadjihad wrote: post #82

> The scavenging bird would always hover over sprawling landfills, looking for cattle carcasses Reading this sentence gave me the unsettling feeling of cattle carcasses tossed into the trash, along with a feeling of, "surely that doesn't happen in the US?" It turns out that landfilling a carcass seems to be a legitimate option (item 3 at [0]), and isn't something I'd ever thought about before. 0: https://efotg.sc.ego…

Grew up in ND/MT. In my experience the ranchers would use a tractor to move the carcass somewhere deserted, and then let the coyotes do the final clean-up.

Re: Decline of Indian vultures

#127

Post by hollerith »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #111
jihadjihad wrote: post #82

> The scavenging bird would always hover over sprawling landfills, looking for cattle carcasses Reading this sentence gave me the unsettling feeling of cattle carcasses tossed into the trash, along with a feeling of, "surely that doesn't happen in the US?" It turns out that landfilling a carcass seems to be a legitimate option (item 3 at [0]), and isn't something I'd ever thought about before. 0: https://efotg.sc.ego…

It doesn't happen as often in the US because unlike in India, cattle in the US get eaten and thus they don't frequently die of natural causes.

And when it does happen, there's probably something wrong the the carcass, e.g., it died of an infection.

Re: Decline of Indian vultures

#128

Post by bdjsiqoocwk »

VikingCoder wrote: post #80

I once had someone on Reddit comment back to me, "Why should I care about biodiversity?" As someone who grew up watching "Life on Earth," I could not relate to their question at all. It was like if someone asked me, "Why should I care about oxygen?" And of course, I had the shame that if I can't explain something simply, then I don't really understand it. I still don't have a great answer that I can offer. But wow, t…

I think to a curious person, "because it's interesting" should be enough.

Re: Decline of Indian vultures

#129

Post by whatsdoom »

Coolbeanstoo wrote: post #20

99% invisible did a good episode on the loss of Indian vultures and its effects. I found it quite interesting. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/towers-of-silence/

Radiolab also did an episode [1] which I really enjoyed, excited to listen to the 99% one

[1] https://radiolab.org/podcast/corpse-demon

edit: I saved this comment to reply back and by the time I did others had posted the same thing

Post reply on HN