Killing off predators has a cascading effect that comes back to bite you in the ass. They killed off all the natural predators of deer in Indiana and now, not only are there deer everywhere (people in Bloomington have to fence in their gardens because of an urban deer problem), if enough of them aren’t culled by hunters every year, they eat up all the food and not only do a bunch of deer starve to death, but so do all the other animals that they share that food with.
But talk about re-introducing wolves and bears and cougars to Indiana and people think they’ll be murdered in their beds… as if there are constant maulings in the parts of the U.S. with those animals. You’re more likely to be killed by a deer running in front of your car in Bloomington in the middle of the day. Which sure as hell almost happened to me once.
Hunters are a big lobby here. They don’t want competition by predators. As long as there’s no natural balance, they can tell everyone their hobby is essential work for the preservation of nature. An actually sustainable solution is against their interests.
The big problem with hunters “managing” wildlife is that they go out and shoot the big strong healthy ones, and not the small weak sickly ones. Overall it weakens the population.
Hunting is huge in Indiana (we’re full of Republican rednecks after all), but even hunters have come to admit there’s just not enough of them and too many deer at this point. They’re the first ones seeing the effects.
As it is, I support them because it’s them- and they generally eat what they hunt- or the Indiana Department of Natural Resources sends people out with rifles and puts the carcasses in a big pile and sets fire to it or whatever wasteful thing they would do.
AFAIK the policy shift has more to do with wolf population increasing and now getting into more inhabited areas and killing domesticated animals. The rural/farming community has previously been pretty split on the issue, since they are quite often engaged in nature preservation & wildlife issues aside from hunting. However, these incidents have polarized the public against wolves.
For context, wolves were extinct in southern Sweden for roughly a century (since the early 1900s), and in northern Sweden for several decades before being artificially reintroduced there during the 1970s and slowly spreading southwards.
less prey means predators have less food, so they don’t reproduce as much or die of hunger, this decreases predator population, this means prey has better conditions to reproduce, this means that prey population grows, this means that predators now have more prey available, this means that predator population grows, which limits prey population. it’s a cycle, it’s pretty long, and nobody remembers that’s how it rolls before it completes. it’s not very regular, but sensitive to random inputs
Killing off predators has a cascading effect that comes back to bite you in the ass. They killed off all the natural predators of deer in Indiana and now, not only are there deer everywhere (people in Bloomington have to fence in their gardens because of an urban deer problem), if enough of them aren’t culled by hunters every year, they eat up all the food and not only do a bunch of deer starve to death, but so do all the other animals that they share that food with.
But talk about re-introducing wolves and bears and cougars to Indiana and people think they’ll be murdered in their beds… as if there are constant maulings in the parts of the U.S. with those animals. You’re more likely to be killed by a deer running in front of your car in Bloomington in the middle of the day. Which sure as hell almost happened to me once.
Hunters are a big lobby here. They don’t want competition by predators. As long as there’s no natural balance, they can tell everyone their hobby is essential work for the preservation of nature. An actually sustainable solution is against their interests.
The big problem with hunters “managing” wildlife is that they go out and shoot the big strong healthy ones, and not the small weak sickly ones. Overall it weakens the population.
I mean we also don’t want all the Chad super strong genetic freak deer running around. So maybe that’s ok?
Hunting is huge in Indiana (we’re full of Republican rednecks after all), but even hunters have come to admit there’s just not enough of them and too many deer at this point. They’re the first ones seeing the effects.
As it is, I support them because it’s them- and they generally eat what they hunt- or the Indiana Department of Natural Resources sends people out with rifles and puts the carcasses in a big pile and sets fire to it or whatever wasteful thing they would do.
AFAIK the policy shift has more to do with wolf population increasing and now getting into more inhabited areas and killing domesticated animals. The rural/farming community has previously been pretty split on the issue, since they are quite often engaged in nature preservation & wildlife issues aside from hunting. However, these incidents have polarized the public against wolves.
For context, wolves were extinct in southern Sweden for roughly a century (since the early 1900s), and in northern Sweden for several decades before being artificially reintroduced there during the 1970s and slowly spreading southwards.
Bloodthirsty nuts want a license to be able to shoot and kill things legally, to the surprise of no one
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotka–Volterra_equations in action
That is way over my ability to understand, but I will take your word for it.
less prey means predators have less food, so they don’t reproduce as much or die of hunger, this decreases predator population, this means prey has better conditions to reproduce, this means that prey population grows, this means that predators now have more prey available, this means that predator population grows, which limits prey population. it’s a cycle, it’s pretty long, and nobody remembers that’s how it rolls before it completes. it’s not very regular, but sensitive to random inputs