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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

#131

Post by shellfishgene »

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.

Often ecosystem quality is measured by diversity, eg number of species. Diverse ecosystems are considered more resilient.

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

#132

Post by tomrod »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #130
tomrod wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oof. Bad place for a ranch. Natural ecology needs those apex predators. They should consider relocating if they are deep in the ranching world. If we've learned anything since the industrial revolution, we have learned that sustainability is highly desirable, even more so than marginal ranchland.

I guess the subsequent question is whether there are good places for ranches. If the benefits of predators reintroduction/protection become widely known, it will likely be practiced elsewhere in the future.

Great question! Once lab grown meat becomes economically viable, there will be few good places for ranches that make sense.

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

#133

Post by jebarker »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #120
jebarker wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a strange question. As a starter I’d like to see us help trees, coral, other primates and megafauna as much as possible. The former because they support so much other biodiversity and the latter because they’re nice to have in the world. Generally speaking though I favor sustainability where that means continuing to improve the quality of life for humans, especially those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladd…

I don't ask you to "enumerate every species worthy of help" but rather to formulate a criteria you use to figure out who is worthy of help and who is not. The "nice to have in the world" sounds quite arbitrary to me. I don't think the question I ask is strange, I'm trying to figure out the idea you believe in. So far you assume we share some core belief on the topic and the rest is obvious, which I don't think is the…

OK, I apologize if I misunderstood. My core belief is that it’s possible for humans to continue to prosper without causing a mass extinction of other species. I believe that largely happens through managing our impacts on the environment in which the species live and not just through direct intervention in the lives of those species, e.g. reducing deforestation and rewilding, reducing ocean acidification to save coral reefs. So I don’t think we have to choose specific species we wish to save and those we are willing to let go extinct.

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

#134

Post by parineum »

FergusArgyll wrote: post #71
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…

I think one approach would be; restoring it to a known stable equilibrium. Meaning, if without wolves things continue to deteriorate and clearly hasn't reached a stable equilibrium but you know that with them things were stable over some long term period then you should reintroduce them

It's never been stable, that's the arbitrariness op is talking about.

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

#135

Post by joshtbradley »

EA-3167 wrote: post #113
joshtbradley wrote: post #109

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?

Why would a single human death, or even a few deaths a year matter to the policy? Dogs kill people, bees kill people, lots of things kill people and plenty of those things don't even serve as much of a purpose as wild wolves. If there are benefits to be had as a result of this policy, the question isn't some artificial zero-tolerance policy towards human death and injury, it's the usual balance of pros and cons.

Fair point. Except for “don’t even serve as much of a purpose as wild wolves.” I’d argue dogs, bees, and let’s say cars, all serve an enormous purpose to humanity. The pros/cons of replenishing an ecosystem is a good framework to analyze this through. I am selfishly an advocate for humanity, and safer forests with more wild game for hunting seems like a bigger pro to me. Of course, I could be disastrously wrong. But we don’t know yet.

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

#136

Post by joshtbradley »

TimorousBestie wrote: post #124
joshtbradley wrote: post #109

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?

If you’re going to exterminate every species that kills humans, there’s gonna be a lot of very angry dog owners on your doorstep.

That’s not my argument. I’m saying wolves are dangerous, and as a human, I don’t want to have to worry about wolves when I’m hiking Yellowstone. Call me selfish but I’d rather be alive than feel good that the forest is back to its natural state.

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

#137

Post by 29ebJCyy »

parineum wrote: post #134
FergusArgyll wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one approach would be; restoring it to a known stable equilibrium. Meaning, if without wolves things continue to deteriorate and clearly hasn't reached a stable equilibrium but you know that with them things were stable over some long term period then you should reintroduce them

It's never been stable, that's the arbitrariness op is talking about.

There is absolutely stability if you zoom out to the time scale that permits evolutionary adaptation (and of course, if you zoom out much farther it all devolves to noise again). But it’s specious to say that “the only constant is change” and then declare all comparisons moot.

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

#138

Post by tehjoker »

tialaramex wrote: post #96
subscribed wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often hear this argument, "oh, but how far can we possibly go??! But deer are pretty?!", especially from farmers and grouse shooting estates here in the UK. It's wild, because it's so easy to measure and asses: an ecological desert, dying ecosystem, rich in single overgrazing specie is unequivocally bad. Rich, lush ecosystems sustaining great biodiversity and ecologically unique features (eg chalk streams or temper…

Indeed. For the UK in particular you clearly can't have "What it was without people" because that's far too long ago, there aren't records so we'd only be guessing. The New Forest - near me - was built about a thousand years ago, it's not "supposed" to be like that, it was built on purpose and it takes considerable maintenance to keep it that way, felling trees, managing trails, maintaining bridges and so on. Things…

Something I learned recently, acrons (properly prepared, they are indeed poisonous otherwise) used to be a human staple food in the Americas. It was displaced because it is annoying to prepare and the taste is relatively bland.

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

#139

Post by JumpCrisscross »

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…

> When we say that reintroducing wolves led to ecological improvements, what’s our reference point?

Ecological diversity and utility to humans.

The GYE is more diverse thanks to having wolves check grazing populations. And the physical structure of the riparian environment is more stable, which means better (and cheaper) infrastructure and water management.

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

#140

Post by hagbard_c »

mykowebhn wrote: post #65
hagbard_c wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's incredible how much good we have done to ourselves in the past 250 years, and how much good we can do in the now and the future.

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

In response to a one-sided and overdone statement a reversed and equally overdone statement is a good way to point out the problems with such statements. I am annoyed and dismayed by the simpleminded self-flagellation implied by statements like the one I reacted to and think that people who make such statements should be time-warped back the mentioned 250 years and made to live in that era for, say, a year or so. When they are returned to the current era they will sound a different tune - that is if they manage to survive that year without succumbing to disease, some violent attack by man or beast or by starvation.
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