Historically wolf culling has been more about protecting livestock and pets than people. It's also helpful for hunters to make sure they're not competing for deer.
I live in Netherland, were, as the article notes, wolves seem to be returning among some controversy. On the one hand it looks like a sign that nature is recovering in central and western Europe. Netherland in particular is known for only having highly managed nature, and the only piece of wild, unmanaged nature is on a piece of land that didn't even exist a couple of decades ago.
So wolves returning feels to me like a sign that we're doing something right, giving more space for wild animals.
But it's undeniable that it also comes with some challenges. Wolves might be welcome in the Oostvaardersplassen, but I don't know how they should ever get there. Instead, they're in areas where farmers and shepherds graze their sheep.
Reading about the Oostvaardersplassen is interesting, it seems to have a lot of major problems, mostly related to being too small. I'm not sure that introducing wolves is a good idea, don't they typically need more space to roam?
They probably do. On the one hand, there are a lot of herd animals that we're supposed to leave alone but could probably do with some predation, and we've got predators in need of prey. But I don't think we can get them together; too isolated, too far away.
TFA is about wolves? ITT coyotes are also discussed. You're the one with the daft idea that coyotes don't kill things people care about. They do kill cats, and they do kill calves, and depending on the situation they could kill other things too.
I’m the one with the idea that they don’t kill people. You’re the one who kills them because they are predators of livestock, which is what the article is about.
Sorry about that; I'm not sure why that pinged my sarcasm meter. Of course you're right, that killing coyotes to preserve livestock (even though I'm not really sure how effective any particular coyote death is for that) is similar to killing wolves for the same reason. If there is a difference, it is that wolves seem to be a threatened species wherever they appear, while coyotes are about as endangered as squirrels. I don't particularly care about anyone's pets, but if they want to get rid of coyotes in a city to protect pet cats I don't see the problem. If they wanted to encourage coyotes to control feral cats that would be fine too.
I assure you that I don't "fear" coyotes (or wolves for that matter, when I've been in wolf areas) as if they were a threat to my own life. I don't think "mortal fear" is a factor in anyone's thinking about coyotes? There may be something to TFA's claims that this is a factor with respect to wolves...
History - pre litter boxes they were put out for the night. Plus their role has long been "grainery guard" and rats have caused major health problems. Even if cats aren't actively hunting them barring toxoplasmosis their scent scares mice. They auto-domesticated because agriculture made massive food reserves and the ones who didn't have the "Furless quadrupeds who constantly walk like angry bears, are about ten times your mass, have claws the size of your head and kill far bigger things! Run away!" sensible response to humans like most animals and had a reducded scatter distance which let them raid our grainery raidera were favored.
The fact of the matter is we have long /wanted/ their response be to kill all the scurrying rats and tiny birds weren't exactly a concern compared to not dying.
Cats are for killing birds - that's their niche. No more wrong than birds doing what birds do.
And face it, every bird pair has half a dozen chicks each year. Next year the bird population is about the same. That means, most new birds are going to die in the first year. Cats are just a part of that.
Domestic cats are an invasive species. They're not a natural part of the food chain, they're not doing any good by killing or even eating what they kill, they just do it for fun. They basically have no predators because they live where we live, and we chase off or kill predators.
There were some 500 species of cat, spread all over the world, when humans arrived. You cannot find a niche where cats are 'invasive'. How they kill, and what they eat or don't eat, is entirely up to the cat, not some misplaced human emotion about right and wrong.
Because, along with birds, cats kill a lot of rodents. Rodents both carry disease and eat stored human food. Thus humans have, historically, been better off with cats around, and may in fact still be better off.
Cats are trash for rodent control. They spend too much time playing with their 'food' and not enough time actually killing it. Dogs are much better at killing rats yet we don't let dogs roam around outside willy nilly.
Most rodent control in the modern era comes from modern building techniques and materials, as well as waste disposal networks, that keep rodents out of our buildings and away from human sources of food. Go to a neighborhood with well maintained buildings but no cats and you'll find fuck-all rodents. Go to a neighborhood with run down buildings and a million cats, and you'll find a billion rodents.
And cats leave gory corpses of small animals in front of doorways. At least, they do whenever they're actually doing their supposed job of killing rodents. In practice it's enough corpses to make a mess but not enough corpses to actually hamper the rodent population.
The excuses made for cats seem to nearly always be characterized by a lack of critical thought. Saying that is probably considered controversial, but so is the toxoplasmosis hypothesis.
I was trying to answer "Dogs are much better at killing rats yet we don't let dogs roam around outside willy nilly.", but I was not as precise as I could be in retrospect.
The objective function that most human beings use is not "what animal kills rodents most efficiently", but "what animal kills rodents most efficiently and poses little harm to human beings most of the time". In my experience, most stray cats will likely run away from children and most stray cats will likely not initiate attacks against children. On the other hand, most stray dogs are more likely to do both of those things. As a result, cats get a pass for being less efficient rodent killers than dogs because they are also less likely to harm human beings.
> The objective function that most human beings use is not "what animal kills rodents most efficiently", but "what animal kills rodents most efficiently and poses little harm to human beings most of the time".
See, I disagree. I do not believe that killing rodents is a serious consideration for most modern cat owners. There are cheaper, more efficient and lower maintenance methods of exterminating rodents than cats. Most cat owners own their cat as a pet and think nothing of letting it terrorize the neighborhood birds because it's cute. Talk of rodent extermination is a post-hoc justification for their behavior.
Oh, I agree with that: most people who have cats have them for companionship, and they don't think about the things that said choice externalizes. However, the same can be said for people who have dogs for companionship. Some dogs routinely lunge at people passing by. In addition, despite the best efforts of those who walk their dogs, there are smears of dog feces on sidewalks. Both situations are examples how keeping a dog has externalities.
If a rat comes in my garden I can kill it. If a cat comes in my garden regularly, sprays on everything, shits where my kids play ... then legally (UK) it seems there's very little I can do; I don't see why.
Chicago encourages them; there's a capture-tag-and-release program, and people name the coyotes that haunt their blocks. I think people assume they eat rats.
Book recommendation: Never Cry Wolf, by Farley Mowat. It takes a pretty close look at wolves (among other things) in the Canadian far north in a highly readable book. Hilariously funny at times, Mowat comes to largely the same conclusion as the article: that wolves have more to fear from us than us from them. He nonetheless, like the author of TFA, finds it hard to overcome the primal fear we seem to have of wolves.
We do have to fear grizzly bears and mountain lions. And I'm not gonna lie, I'm pretty nervous if I'm all alone in the forest and I hear a wolf. :) I'd like us not to kill them, though, unless in self defense.
Not really. I've spent many hours, days, weeks at a time in the wilderness in the Canadian Rockies and West Coast, with some of the densest population of all 3 of these predators, and it's pretty damn easy to avoid them. No need for guns down here either (maybe in the Arctic, Polar bears are actually aggressive).
They generally avoid you. Humans don't look like food to all but a couple animals in the world and most animals being basically sensible assume that unless the 'not-prey' decides to be aggressive they have more to lose than gain from interacting with us.
The easiest and most obvious way is to travel in groups and be noisy. Bears are opportunistic more than they're predatory, meaning they're risk averse and avoid confrontation. Next is to avoid their feeding areas - so don't stick around next to carrion, pass through their favourite meadows carefully but quickly, and don't hang around their berry bushes or obvious dens. Obviously stay away from cubs.
If you do encounter them, back away slowly (don't turn your back), they'll pretty much always also go the other way. I've encountered plenty in the backcountry, usually at fairly long distances and they always move on.
Also note that this applies mainly to BC, Alberta, and south of US. They do get slightly more aggressive up north due to having less easy food sources. Also, black bears are a different story, as are polar bears.
I don't know how accurate your statement is. From what I've read, it's not a matter of avoiding, it's of escaping.
Coincidentally, I read the following study which only considered the use of pistols, and only incidents that were reported, in the defense from a bear attack. 37 incidents since 1987.
37 incidents in 32 years across the whole US... And that's with a reckless gun-toting population (human). Conversely 15ish people die from avalanches every year in Canada. Bears... Dunno, maybe one every 3-4 years?
Also, the US has more hunters. Hunters are more likely to be attacked since they often are sneaking up on bears.
Bears really aren't dangerous. There's tons of sightings and encounters around here, almost no attacks. For the few attacks that happen, bear spray is pretty effective. Guns are overkill and aren't even allowed in the parks around here.
For anyone interested, there is an ongoing debate to re-introduce Wolves to the Scottish Highlands. We have a major issue with deer overpopulation (which comes with Lyme disease and damaged trees).
So gameskeepers are receptive to the idea although sheep farmers are concerned.
> it’s putting nature back to the way it was before humans altered its course.
This sentiment is appealing, but there's little backing it. Humans have always shaped nature, and regardless of people, ecosystems are dynamic (1). We should be asking ourselves what sort of world we want to live in, and what we want our impact to look like. We should not harken back to a pre-human influenced time that never really existed. (Most restoration plans don't plan on restoring ecosystems to a fully pre-human state, but rather to some time where humans were present, but not as numerous).
We should instead say things like "this ecosystem was better 300 years ago, and we should try and return to something closer to that". That's wholly different from the narrative of natural being everything but human. It does, however, force us to qualitatively analyze what we're doing. Instead of saying "we changed it, now we have to restore it", it forces us to think about what the costs and benefits of restoration are.
Two book recommendations (not to you specifically) that come to mind are "Changes In The Land," which discusses the types of "wildlife management" done by native Americans, and "Against The Grain," which may not be the best source for this, but does describe agriculture near the beginning of human "civilizations."
Tell that to Antarctica, or to Everest, or to the vast oceans. Until the last century mankind's presence was slight. We lived in the nice places that we convenient for us. Now we live everywhere, or at least our trash does. The idea that humans are part of the natural world, that we need not curtail our behavior because we were put here too, is quasi-religious dogma promoted by climate deniers. Humans are different. We have abilities vastly beyond any other species. That comes with responsibilities, responsibilities that cannot be sidestepped by declaring us just another mammal looking for food.
It's true, more or less depending on region. In Europe we have shaped the landscape for millenia, and the ecosystems have developed accordingly.
Without humans, almost everything would be covered by forests and swamps, not the wide range of biomes we now find, with open fields, grasslands, and patches of forests. Many local insects, birds and plants need these. Our responsibility here is not to stop, but to keep everything in good condition (not like now where there is far too little slack in the system and no space left for this wildlife).
Humans do this to a different degree than other animals but other animals also shape the environment; beavers can redirect rivers, some bird purposefully spread wildfires and so on.
It does, however, force us to qualitatively analyze what we're doing.
The problem is that can be a decades or centuries long endeavor. So in the meantime, striving for a pre-human or early-human stable state is often beneficial for us, even if it isn't optimal & even if we can't draw the cost-benefit table yet.
I frankly don’t understand why we would want to reintroduce a predator like this. From the article it seems the only benefit they bring is to control deer populations at the expense of farmers and causing discomfort to the general population. Instead of having wolves why not simply have humans hunt the excess deer? If you can test the game for undesirable pathogens it could even be a good business opportunity. Ultimately humans are always in control of the environment even if we choose to do nothing. Our technology and resources are too great to claim we have “unmanaged wilderness”.
1. I doubt we have the technology to automate deer hunting yet; however, it would be very useful to have drones hunt the deer and have humans pickup the spoils. I did say it would be great if we could buy hunted deer as long as it’s tested for the nasty pathogens wildlife tends to have.
2.Having humans hunt the deer is preferable because they obey laws, don’t scare people, wont eat the farmer’s animals and, again, we also get to keep the meat.
Hunting is decreasing in popularity, possibly due to awareness of CWD.
And I don't think there are people clamoring for venison. If you have friends or family that enjoy hunting, you can get quite a bit of venison for free. The best cuts are tasty, if your processor is good the summer sausage or hot sticks will be good, but I ate ground venison sloppy joes and chili not that many times before I personally never want it again.
> Having humans hunt the deer is preferable because they obey laws, don’t scare people,
Hunters are scary. Not that Hunters as people are scary, but I would avoid wilderness where I know there to be hunters active, even if I am wearing blaze orange. Accidents happen. Probably more often to the hunters themselves than to strangers, but they do happen.
A few people saw a wolf a handful of few times in an area I regularly walked through one summer, and I started carrying a bat if I was alone, but mainly trying to walk with dogs or another person. Both can be scary, even though both are less likely to harm you then a car.
All hunters obey laws?, well, maybe sometimes, some of them
Exploit natural resources in a space created specifically to protect natural resources from been looted is perverse. If you kill deer and use its meat, suddenly Yellowstone is turned into another meat farm. There are thousands of meat farms but only one yellowstone. Soon, somebody will start pushing to chop some old trees to manage correctly the wood supply. There is no return from this ideology. Human greed is endless
Wolves with access to wild preys and stable groups will eat only a small percentage of domestic animals. If we pay local hunters for removing deer meat, we'll need to pay again a second time to the same hunters/farmers to compensate the increase in cattle deaths or to kill the sudden excess of wolves. With luck the same cow will not be reported as killed and re-killed again by wolves 5 times in its entire life (Paying the same animal several times has happened before).
Result of doing things complicated having a simple solution: You'll need to pay more taxes
We have the technology for spying millions of people day and night, managing home lights and closing doors from thousands of miles of distance. Why professional farmers (that do not have another thing to do in their journey as keeping an eye on their cattle), are still unable to watch for their animals, and keep them safe at night? Wolves can't open a padlock.
Because they aren't perfectly good. Humans eliminate predators around the world because they threaten our livestock and public safety. If we actively wanted to cull deer populations with minimum effort it takes very little effort trap or poison them en masse versus trying to track them with rifles.
But some people find it to be a fun activity to kill wildlife and thus the whole culture of huntsman persists. People pay for the recreation of hunting. It actually makes some communities money - private citizens cull the deer while paying for the privilege.
> Instead of having wolves why not simply have humans hunt the excess deer?
Because wolves are much smart for this job and provide benefical collateral effects in a miriad of ways that humans can't; and they do it 365 days a year. Is like comparing traveling in bullet train with a wheelbarrow.
I think yours is a very reasonable argument. I guess in the end it comes down to preference: do we prefer a world with wolves in the forests, where farmers have to keep guard dogs an maybe loose some animals, or do we prefer one where there a no predators in the wild, intensive farming is unhindered, and we cull herbivore population through established quotas to maintain some equilibrium?
The video ("How Wolves Change Rivers") states that humans had previously failed to control the deer. You could pay more humans hundreds of millions of dollars a year to patrol every one of these areas. Or you could simply let the wolves do it.
One issue is that hunters hunt differently than wolves and other natural predators. Predators go after the old, the sick, the weak, the young. Hunters almost exclusively go after the health. Not only is that changing the distribution of the gene pool, it also isn't effective population control. We'd need to force hunters to go after a bunch of fawns instead.
There can also be unintended consequences to human culling, besides long-term genetic changes. There's one example of when they started culling a elephants in Kruger National Park. The Park had too many elephants and so they had to kill some of the herd. However, they tended to kill only adults, leaving a lot of juveniles around. The problem is that, once juvenile males reach adulthood, they leave the family herd and hang out with an older male. The older male teaches the younger males about surviving in the wild. And, importantly, self-control. Male elephants periodically go through an extreme spike of testosterone (called musth) that can cause very aggressive behavior. The young males learn from the older male to control themselves. If there aren't any older males around, they don't get this knowledge, and will be prone to violence. After that culling, there was a large spike in incidents of these rogue elephants attacking villages and rhinoceroses. In short, culling can change the behavior of the animal population immediately and for the worse. Not sure how relevant that is to white-tailed deer, but it's something to consider.
Youtube is littered with videos showing the attack reflex predators display, when another beeing shows vital problems (age) or insecure movement (again age). These creatures are not stupid, they will of course not attack, when there is plenty of easy food (deer overpopulation).
But once that oversupply is depleted, and the times get rough, these packs will hunt down the weak, the disabled and the young in winters.
Nature protectors will promise this not to happen, and then lie. They promised that there would be compensation, if the reintroduced beaver would create damages to farmers or citizens. The beaver would then arrive, build damns, basically do his part of terraforming, to create his ideal habbitat. I dont blame the creature, its doing what it always did.
There was compensation- alright, 100 € for a broken axle on a tractor, sunk into a beaver lodge, dug into a field. Seriously, there are parts of the country, where this delusional maniacs dont dare to visit any more, better to stay in the city and make laws there how to govern there make believe world.
Using the image of the wolf as a bloodthirsty, uncontrollable killer...
In South Carolina, state Sen. Stephen Goldfinch (R-Georgetown) is foregoing science for a call to arms. Goldfinch, who declined to comment for this story, told WMBF News in Myrtle Beach that killing coyotes should be South Carolina’s top priority.
“The state’s perspective is every coyote needs to be a dead coyote. Trap them, shoot them . . . however you want to get rid of them,” Goldfinch said. “. . . This is now about going to war with the coyotes.
When predator control comes up I always find myself wondering- sorry, which one was supposed to be the bloodthirsty killer?
(I realize the Goldfinch quotes reference coyotes, but it's all the same story)
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 165 ms ] threadIf wolves were more prey than predator populations would decline very quickly.
A wolf wouldn't think twice about killing a human.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_attack#History_and_percep...
"There have been only two verified documented deaths from wild healthy wolves in North America"
now as the list demonstrates "verified...wild healthy" leaves a hell of a lot of wiggle room but even then lists are not long.
So wolves returning feels to me like a sign that we're doing something right, giving more space for wild animals.
But it's undeniable that it also comes with some challenges. Wolves might be welcome in the Oostvaardersplassen, but I don't know how they should ever get there. Instead, they're in areas where farmers and shepherds graze their sheep.
Also, "guard llamas".
Makes me wonder if they are really just furry camels.
I assure you that I don't "fear" coyotes (or wolves for that matter, when I've been in wolf areas) as if they were a threat to my own life. I don't think "mortal fear" is a factor in anyone's thinking about coyotes? There may be something to TFA's claims that this is a factor with respect to wolves...
The fact of the matter is we have long /wanted/ their response be to kill all the scurrying rats and tiny birds weren't exactly a concern compared to not dying.
And face it, every bird pair has half a dozen chicks each year. Next year the bird population is about the same. That means, most new birds are going to die in the first year. Cats are just a part of that.
Same can be said for humans.
Most rodent control in the modern era comes from modern building techniques and materials, as well as waste disposal networks, that keep rodents out of our buildings and away from human sources of food. Go to a neighborhood with well maintained buildings but no cats and you'll find fuck-all rodents. Go to a neighborhood with run down buildings and a million cats, and you'll find a billion rodents.
The excuses made for cats seem to nearly always be characterized by a lack of critical thought. Saying that is probably considered controversial, but so is the toxoplasmosis hypothesis.
The objective function that most human beings use is not "what animal kills rodents most efficiently", but "what animal kills rodents most efficiently and poses little harm to human beings most of the time". In my experience, most stray cats will likely run away from children and most stray cats will likely not initiate attacks against children. On the other hand, most stray dogs are more likely to do both of those things. As a result, cats get a pass for being less efficient rodent killers than dogs because they are also less likely to harm human beings.
See, I disagree. I do not believe that killing rodents is a serious consideration for most modern cat owners. There are cheaper, more efficient and lower maintenance methods of exterminating rodents than cats. Most cat owners own their cat as a pet and think nothing of letting it terrorize the neighborhood birds because it's cute. Talk of rodent extermination is a post-hoc justification for their behavior.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_Cry_Wolf
Actually I compare guns to bicycle helmets. I only consider using either one of them in very specific and uncommon situations.
If you do encounter them, back away slowly (don't turn your back), they'll pretty much always also go the other way. I've encountered plenty in the backcountry, usually at fairly long distances and they always move on.
Also note that this applies mainly to BC, Alberta, and south of US. They do get slightly more aggressive up north due to having less easy food sources. Also, black bears are a different story, as are polar bears.
But for most of us for most of our uses of the woods, we're better off learning to be kind of noisy kind of constantly.
Coincidentally, I read the following study which only considered the use of pistols, and only incidents that were reported, in the defense from a bear attack. 37 incidents since 1987.
https://www.ammoland.com/2018/02/defense-against-bears-with-...
Also, the US has more hunters. Hunters are more likely to be attacked since they often are sneaking up on bears.
Bears really aren't dangerous. There's tons of sightings and encounters around here, almost no attacks. For the few attacks that happen, bear spray is pretty effective. Guns are overkill and aren't even allowed in the parks around here.
So gameskeepers are receptive to the idea although sheep farmers are concerned.
https://www.conservationjobs.co.uk/articles/wolf-reintroduct...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/08/wolves-s...
This sentiment is appealing, but there's little backing it. Humans have always shaped nature, and regardless of people, ecosystems are dynamic (1). We should be asking ourselves what sort of world we want to live in, and what we want our impact to look like. We should not harken back to a pre-human influenced time that never really existed. (Most restoration plans don't plan on restoring ecosystems to a fully pre-human state, but rather to some time where humans were present, but not as numerous).
We should instead say things like "this ecosystem was better 300 years ago, and we should try and return to something closer to that". That's wholly different from the narrative of natural being everything but human. It does, however, force us to qualitatively analyze what we're doing. Instead of saying "we changed it, now we have to restore it", it forces us to think about what the costs and benefits of restoration are.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_ecology#Human-media...
Tell that to Antarctica, or to Everest, or to the vast oceans. Until the last century mankind's presence was slight. We lived in the nice places that we convenient for us. Now we live everywhere, or at least our trash does. The idea that humans are part of the natural world, that we need not curtail our behavior because we were put here too, is quasi-religious dogma promoted by climate deniers. Humans are different. We have abilities vastly beyond any other species. That comes with responsibilities, responsibilities that cannot be sidestepped by declaring us just another mammal looking for food.
Without humans, almost everything would be covered by forests and swamps, not the wide range of biomes we now find, with open fields, grasslands, and patches of forests. Many local insects, birds and plants need these. Our responsibility here is not to stop, but to keep everything in good condition (not like now where there is far too little slack in the system and no space left for this wildlife).
The problem is that can be a decades or centuries long endeavor. So in the meantime, striving for a pre-human or early-human stable state is often beneficial for us, even if it isn't optimal & even if we can't draw the cost-benefit table yet.
A possible argument would work like this:
1. Why not automate it by having drones hunt excess deer?
2. Why build drones when there are perfectly good natural ones, such as wolves?
2.Having humans hunt the deer is preferable because they obey laws, don’t scare people, wont eat the farmer’s animals and, again, we also get to keep the meat.
And I don't think there are people clamoring for venison. If you have friends or family that enjoy hunting, you can get quite a bit of venison for free. The best cuts are tasty, if your processor is good the summer sausage or hot sticks will be good, but I ate ground venison sloppy joes and chili not that many times before I personally never want it again.
> Having humans hunt the deer is preferable because they obey laws, don’t scare people,
Hunters are scary. Not that Hunters as people are scary, but I would avoid wilderness where I know there to be hunters active, even if I am wearing blaze orange. Accidents happen. Probably more often to the hunters themselves than to strangers, but they do happen.
How do you feel about wolves?
Exploit natural resources in a space created specifically to protect natural resources from been looted is perverse. If you kill deer and use its meat, suddenly Yellowstone is turned into another meat farm. There are thousands of meat farms but only one yellowstone. Soon, somebody will start pushing to chop some old trees to manage correctly the wood supply. There is no return from this ideology. Human greed is endless
Wolves with access to wild preys and stable groups will eat only a small percentage of domestic animals. If we pay local hunters for removing deer meat, we'll need to pay again a second time to the same hunters/farmers to compensate the increase in cattle deaths or to kill the sudden excess of wolves. With luck the same cow will not be reported as killed and re-killed again by wolves 5 times in its entire life (Paying the same animal several times has happened before).
Result of doing things complicated having a simple solution: You'll need to pay more taxes
We have the technology for spying millions of people day and night, managing home lights and closing doors from thousands of miles of distance. Why professional farmers (that do not have another thing to do in their journey as keeping an eye on their cattle), are still unable to watch for their animals, and keep them safe at night? Wolves can't open a padlock.
But some people find it to be a fun activity to kill wildlife and thus the whole culture of huntsman persists. People pay for the recreation of hunting. It actually makes some communities money - private citizens cull the deer while paying for the privilege.
Because wolves are much smart for this job and provide benefical collateral effects in a miriad of ways that humans can't; and they do it 365 days a year. Is like comparing traveling in bullet train with a wheelbarrow.
The video ("How Wolves Change Rivers") states that humans had previously failed to control the deer. You could pay more humans hundreds of millions of dollars a year to patrol every one of these areas. Or you could simply let the wolves do it.
There can also be unintended consequences to human culling, besides long-term genetic changes. There's one example of when they started culling a elephants in Kruger National Park. The Park had too many elephants and so they had to kill some of the herd. However, they tended to kill only adults, leaving a lot of juveniles around. The problem is that, once juvenile males reach adulthood, they leave the family herd and hang out with an older male. The older male teaches the younger males about surviving in the wild. And, importantly, self-control. Male elephants periodically go through an extreme spike of testosterone (called musth) that can cause very aggressive behavior. The young males learn from the older male to control themselves. If there aren't any older males around, they don't get this knowledge, and will be prone to violence. After that culling, there was a large spike in incidents of these rogue elephants attacking villages and rhinoceroses. In short, culling can change the behavior of the animal population immediately and for the worse. Not sure how relevant that is to white-tailed deer, but it's something to consider.
https://www.denverpost.com/2019/06/03/wolves-coyotes-predato...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/06/0...
But once that oversupply is depleted, and the times get rough, these packs will hunt down the weak, the disabled and the young in winters.
Nature protectors will promise this not to happen, and then lie. They promised that there would be compensation, if the reintroduced beaver would create damages to farmers or citizens. The beaver would then arrive, build damns, basically do his part of terraforming, to create his ideal habbitat. I dont blame the creature, its doing what it always did.
There was compensation- alright, 100 € for a broken axle on a tractor, sunk into a beaver lodge, dug into a field. Seriously, there are parts of the country, where this delusional maniacs dont dare to visit any more, better to stay in the city and make laws there how to govern there make believe world.
In South Carolina, state Sen. Stephen Goldfinch (R-Georgetown) is foregoing science for a call to arms. Goldfinch, who declined to comment for this story, told WMBF News in Myrtle Beach that killing coyotes should be South Carolina’s top priority.
“The state’s perspective is every coyote needs to be a dead coyote. Trap them, shoot them . . . however you want to get rid of them,” Goldfinch said. “. . . This is now about going to war with the coyotes.
When predator control comes up I always find myself wondering- sorry, which one was supposed to be the bloodthirsty killer?
(I realize the Goldfinch quotes reference coyotes, but it's all the same story)