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Wildlife is reclaiming Yosemite National Park

latimes.com

91–100 of 237 posts

Re: Wildlife is reclaiming Yosemite National Park

#91
post #74
post #5

As noted in the article, the headline is misleading. The population obviously hasn't quadrupled since Yosemite closed to visitors on March 20th. It is remarkable though to see how quickly wildlife is willing to re-enter areas that have historically been overrun with humans!

If you say that the population of a city has doubled, it mostly means that people moved there, not that they were born there. The headline is fine. All: Obviously the bears weren't born in the last month. Please assume basic intelligence in your fellow readers. Edit: Ok you guys, I surrender. There is no fighting the dreaded title fever. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... .

I respectfully disagree. Yosemite is massive, and the population of bears simply did not quadruple or migrate from other areas 4x.

After a few seconds of thinking about it, it’s obvious that 4x the bears were not born there, but it’s just interesting enough to get a click, to find out what the headline really means, and therefore is a type of clickbait.

Re: Wildlife is reclaiming Yosemite National Park

#93

I hope this inspires our generation. I hope we remember that the way things were recently aren’t they way have to be, or the way things naturally are. We need more pollution controls, clean power, and less driving. I also think we need to reduce how many people visit certain places as the harsh reality is that impact is clearly related to visits. It will mean a shared sacrifice but a healthier planet. Hopefully limit…

Broader visitation could help significantly without needing limits (not that I oppose limits). There's a lot of focus on the 'crown jewels', Yosemite, Yellowstone, Arches, Zion, a few others. But there are a lot of really great places, much closer to home, that get passed over in our collective obsession with top ten lists.

Re: Wildlife is reclaiming Yosemite National Park

#94

I hope this inspires our generation. I hope we remember that the way things were recently aren’t they way have to be, or the way things naturally are. We need more pollution controls, clean power, and less driving. I also think we need to reduce how many people visit certain places as the harsh reality is that impact is clearly related to visits. It will mean a shared sacrifice but a healthier planet. Hopefully limit…

> We need more pollution controls, clean power, and less driving.

I don't know about the less driving part. Less driving implies higher density living and massive reliance on public transport. I think the higher density and massive reliance on public transport have been one of the big reasons why New York City has the highest number of COVID-19 cases in the US and a much higher mortality rate than the rest of the country.

Speaking of cars, I for one have been very happy that I can go get needed supplies without having to ride a public transport system. My exposure risk with driving is basically zero no matter how far I travel, and depends only on my endpoints. However, with a public transport system, it increases with the time and number of stops since that brings me into contact with more people for longer periods who may be infected.

Throughout history, high density cities have shown themselves to be magnets for plagues and pandemics. I hope people and companies learn the value of spreading out and maybe allowing workers to work remotely, instead of insisting all their workers crowd into high density, expensive cities.

Re: Wildlife is reclaiming Yosemite National Park

#96

> This month is typically a busy month in Yosemite: Of the almost 4.6 million tourists that visited the valley in 2019, about 308,000 came during April. "This month is typically a busy one: less than 1/12th of the number of annual visitors." ️

I like the absolute numbers. "Less than 1/12" lacks important information: less than xx of what?

[deleted]

Re: Wildlife is reclaiming Yosemite National Park

#97

It's nice to know that the earth starts to heal so quickly after humans are gone. Although by the time we are actually gone we might make it uninhabitable for other life too.

This article doesn't demonstrate the earth "healing" (certainly not in a 1-month timeframe), and there isn't a quadrupling in bear population; the headline is a lie as the article later clarifies. The headline is referring to bears spreading out from their habitat to temporarily-vacated human habitats.

Re: Wildlife is reclaiming Yosemite National Park

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably why rabbits have been getting abnormally bold in my yard lately...

Yeah there are suddenly a lot of rabbits around me too. I suspect it’s the great decrease in cars running them over.

It is probably because you are home instead of the office in springtime.

Re: Wildlife is reclaiming Yosemite National Park

#99
post #85

A month without humans, bears are moving through survey zones more frequently. The problem highlighted here is our methods for setting up survey zones is terrible and is severely UNDERCOUNTING the population. Even more troubling is systems of surveillance like these provide the inputs for the climate change models we've depended on and which have predicted we'll all be extinct in 50 years. I swear by the end of Covid…

That's an amazing amount of speculation and extrapolation from a tiny data point. How exactly do bear sightings relate to temperature readings?

Re: Wildlife is reclaiming Yosemite National Park

#100
post #4

> "The bear population has quadrupled," said [Ahwahnee Hotel employee Dane] Peterson... > "It's not like they aren’t usually here," he said of the bears, bobcats and coyotes that he and other employees now see congregating outside their cabins and apartments. "It's that they usually hang back at the edges, or move in the shadows." Edit: The title used here omits the quotation marks of the article title, making it mor…

>"The bear population has quadrupled"

Isn't this due to hibernation concluding and Spring arriving?

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