Posting NY Times articles isn’t an argument. If you believe climate change is the main cause here, post a legitimate and peer reviewed study by people on the ground. This looks like you’re high on sensationalist doomerism.
The problem with the post is that Bengal Tiger != Indian Tigers. Bengal Tigers are a subspecies of tigers and not many of them are even in India.
The issues faced by Indian tigers was loss of habitat due to human encroachment (which will be worsened due to human migration due to climate change), whereas the major future threat to Bengal tigers, which live primarily in the low lying Sunderban areas of Bangladesh, is climate change.
So both things are true because we are talking about completely different groups of animals.
the sunderbans have a very low amount of Tigers. Most of India's Tigers are in the states of madhya pradesh, Karnataka and maharashtra which are not affected by rising sea levels as much as bengal as they are plateaus.
royal bengal Tigers are the SAME as Indian Tigers. The British first saw them in bengal and hence their name. They are spread all over India
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_tiger
Just watched some eps of Extrapolations this week, the Apple TV show about climate change. It's (a sci-fi show that shows life in the future ~2040-2060) very far fetched, but not so much as to say it's out of the question that species continue to eradicate due to extreme climate change when it occurs. 1 cause was wildfires, and we saw some terrible fires over the last few years, from ones in Australia, or the Amazon, to ones in California. Still remember those pictures of burning Koalas in Australia. Another is the idea of rising sea levels which could cause many habitat loses like the Tiger ones.
But while these things may not be happening now, it does feel that more attention in terms of engineering efforts need to happen. There is a lot of hype and media outrage, but not seeing as much real substantive efforts. I hope we can control climate much better in the coming decades. Many believe Deep Learning will help with that. At the same time, these models are not as good at planning right now. So, I wonder if it will be as simple as that. Definitely in the realm of data extraction, and analysis, it will be of great help.
It is worthwhile to say that some of the conservation efforts may not sit well with a lot of people, like preventing poaching by shooting the poachers.
I actually wonder, with no way to measure such, if a huge fraction of humanity would be ok with shooting poachers. It's sort of an interesting question, in many ways.
While I was in that camp for a long time. It's also somewhat enlightening to understand their perspectives. Some are hired to do the work from extremely poor backgrounds I believe.
The first and foremost is to ban public trophy hunting. Many governments in Africa allow it as a revenue stream. But, the outrage needs to come from the local population there.
Canada and the US allow trophy hunting within their borders; there’s a famous picture of “Kid Rock” and Ted Nugent with a killed mountain lion, ironically a true symbol of the americas they claim to represent. And so called canned hunts happen in Texas.
There’s a great deal of public apathy or ignorance to be overcome in general to excise the small fraction of humanity from conducting such practices.
> Canada and the US allow trophy hunting within their borders; there’s a famous picture of “Kid Rock” and Ted Nugent with a killed mountain lion, ironically a true symbol of the americas they claim to represent. And so called canned hunts happen in Texas.
Mountain lions, also called Cougars, are the exact opposite of endangered.
Is it stupid to go hunting one? Sure, I guess. Given that cougars can be found walking down the streets in suburbs outside of Seattle, (also I think you can find them walking around some of the larger parks in Seattle!) I would hardly be impressed if someone told me they killed one.
"Oh wow you killed a large cat that eats small dogs and also drinks out my bird feeder".
for more like this, cal flyn's "islands of abandonment" is an interesting read featuring several surprising example of how ecosystems have adapted to varying levels of human destruction
Tigers are majestic creatures that should be preserved.
They are also efficient and dangerous ambush predators that will eat you or your children given the chance.
Reminds me of that dentist that got a tag and shot “Cecil the Lion” and the literati in NYC engaged in the requisite handwringing while the Africans who actually had to live with it were celebrating the 50 grand payday and the elimination of a dangerous menace.
Then again maybe reintroducing apex predators to the streets of San Francisco would be a net improvement. Let’s restore the grizzly to the bay area.
There is this insane book called "Man eaters of Kumaon" by Jim Corbett. It is an old book, but well worth your time. If my memory is right, one of the tigers he goes after had killed hundreds of humans.
They're not dangerous to humans, we've proven that by nearly eliminating the entire species. Bears are no match either, that bear on the CA flag is also extinct. Go walk around the tenderloin at night, I bet you would fare better against a bear versus the collective denizen.
Bears will absolutely see you as a food source. Don’t fuck with bears. Tigers, and most large cats, are more sensitive about risk of injury and as such spooked off more easily, e.g. by you standing up. Bears near populations aren’t going to seek you out, but they’re different from tigers.
>They are also efficient and dangerous ambush predators that will eat you or your children given the chance.
Lol, no tigers don't generally attack people, and will often run away when the human stands up. Attacks on humans are generally similar to Bear attacks, defensive in nature when people are messing with their young or getting up in their business. Though there have been cases of injured tigers going nuts and switching to attacking people.
“Cecil the Lion” was not a tiger. "the elimination of a dangerous menace" no, he lived in a national park and was practically a zoo exhibit. He had a GPS tracker and all the safari tours in the area would go see him. His fame with tourist is what caused the uproar.
Even before modern guns, you read about hunting parties - which would be dozens, even hundreds of men - ganging up on a solitary animal and wonder how was that ever equated with bravery.
Or ending a life for trivial reasons e.g. swatting a musquito or fly because you find it annoying, killing a roach just because it happens to wander into your house. Uprooting weeds and killing them because you don't like the look of weeds in your flower garden etc etc. When is it justified, everyone draws their own line I suppose.
It should not be surprising that humans find it fun to do something that we did for survival for most of our evolutionary history. The evolutionary function of play is the practice of adult skills.
What's actually bizarre is that the billions of modern humans who would find it sickening to kill any animal personally have no issue thoughtlessly living a lifestyle whose need for ever-expanding consumption of living space, energy, and other resources is directly contributing to a human-caused mass extinction.
> It should not be surprising that humans find it fun to do something that we did for survival for most of our evolutionary history.
People did not hunt tigers for "most of our evolutionary history". In fact, it's quite recent that people have hunted tigers at all, and even then it's more of an outlier than a standard practice.
Tigers are difficult and dangerous to hunt, and they're not healthy to eat regularly, nor is their meat particularly attractive (despite the named "tiger meat", which is actually raw beef).
Furthermore, contrary to mass media depictions, tigers rarely attack humans unless provoked, and they avoid human settlements as well. So even as a matter of safety and defense, hunting tigers is a rarity.
Until, of course, you start destroying large swaths of their habitat by mass-clearing old-growth rainforest in order to produce enough food to keep up with the usurious demands of a colonial occupier. At that point, yes, you do start to combat tigers more directly.
There are larger predators like lions featured heavily in cave paintings and other forms of the earliest human art for a reason. We have never hunted predators like bears and big cats as a primary food source, but a willingness to defend humans and our food with hand weapons is actually a skillset actively practiced until very recently in societies like the Maasai. The Human Planet docuseries has a pretty incredible scene where hunter gatherers coordinate to steal a kill from an entire pride of lions. It makes you see why people on the other side of the world in highly industrialized societies would find it to be an adrenaline rush to hunt the biggest, baddest looking animal they can find (not that I do this personally).
You're completely right that the desire to hunt a tiger isn't really logical or necessary, I'm just pointing out that it is not psychologically aberrant that some people (mostly men) would find it satisfying to do things like that as a thrill-seeking activity.
You're totally correct at the demographic level. Probably the best trend for tigers is the fact that India and China are getting richer and people will consequently be having fewer kids. It will result in less pressure on habitat and hopefully less demand for things like traditional Chinese medicine products made out of tigers.
I was mostly reacting to the hypocrisy of the kind of Western liberal who would crucify a trophy hunter online, but who flies all over the world for vacation and buys Shein hauls to post on TikTok. The personal consumption choices of rich people are still driving a lot of environmental degradation. Hating hunters is more of a liberal tribal shibboleth than a meaningful way to have impact on global biodiversity.
I can't help but feel that this reinforces the parent comment's point. As long as the only thing we have to do is push a button, the reality behind the food we're about to eat is shielded from us.
Despite knowing this, we continue to behave in ways that run counter to a rational examination of the realities behind pushing that button.
And we default to focusing on factors like the visceral nature of the experience instead of the implications of the choice.
This is a pretty common default in our current culture, and so the bizarre-ness to me is more about our instincts to continue making the bad choice just because it's easier right now and we won't have to pay for the long term repercussions personally.
It's bizarre upon closer examination because it's a self-harming behavior that we collectively engage in, even if it can be explained mechanically in terms of evolutionary reward systems that are in need of an upgrade.
None of this is to excuse modern forms of hunting for sport, but we are predators, and only our continued evolution of consciousness/culture will move us beyond that. That predatory behavior continues to exist is not surprising, nor is our tendency to overuse food delivery services.
Avoiding discomfort is pretty much the default operating mode of the brain. There is little to no “rational examination of the realities behind pushing that button” — because that examination hurts.
And I am not sure the behaviors are so much collective + self-harming as they are individual + collective-harming. Like you said: I don’t have to pay for the long-term repercussions personally.
I feel like this comment is drifting into gross pedantry, but I am really not trying to argue semantics. Just wanted to underscore that we might not be meeting people where they are (which is probably important if we want to change their disposition)
First, I think that calling attention to our tendency to avoid difficult things is a really good call. This mindset extends to almost everything in life, and can have serious consequences. Relinquishing this dislike of discomfort is at the center of many contemplative practices for good reason.
> And I am not sure the behaviors are so much collective + self-harming as they are individual + collective-harming.
I would argue that the behaviors are both. One gives rise to the other, and the other reinforces the former.
They are collective + self-harming because the collective behavior lulls the individual into a sense of "I don't need to think about this either". The end result is an action taken without an understanding of the consequences, even if those consequences may eventually kill me.
They are self-harming + collective because the individual who is aware of the impact but chooses to engage in it anyway is now doing so in spite of the knowledge. And that stance is also exported to the collective - "The people who have thought about this are still charging ahead anyway, so I might as well".
> we might not be meeting people where they are (which is probably important if we want to change their disposition)
Meeting people where they are is something that I care about, and I think it's a good mindset to apply to issues like this. With that said, it's not clear to me which aspects of the conversation here aren't meeting people where they are, and how the semantic distinction (if it exists) clears that up.
How can we repackage this more clearly to meet people where they are?
I think you could probably say the same thing about a lot of activities: how is jumping out of a plane fun? How is sitting in a field waiting to take a picture of a bird fun? How is blindly manipulating symbols in a computer fun? You can play that game for anything. But for every activity someone enjoys, you can bet that it's not the reductio ad absurdum restatement of that activity they find fun, it's something else about it.
It's odd to be in the position of defending trophy hunters, so that's not what I'll do. There are many defensible types of hunting, but hunting rare or endangered animals for nothing else but a trophy is ethically indefensible. However, for people who do that, I imagine it's not the ending of the life that's fun, it's the challenge, and especially the bragging rights it gives them afterwards. Just a guess though.
People enjoy things for different reasons, but sometimes it's for the good of the ecosystem. People pay big money to hunt big game, which is exhilarating in itself for some, but that money goes towards conservation efforts, of which the necessary culling they participated in is just a small part. Plus, if things need culling for the ecosystem to thrive, it's likely the conservationists themselves wouldn't enjoy the culling part, so it allows them to outsource it to someone that would think it's fun and exhilarating. But poachers can go to hell in a handbasket.
If you have an actual sound ecosystem, in a sufficiently large habitat area (not encroached by humans, roads, etc.), culling is rarely necessary.
While some areas that allow trophy hunting charge steep fees that help conservation, I can't see that I've ever seen an accounting of it being at sustainable levels. And the proof is in the pudding, where in Africa, rhinos, elephants, giraffes, cheetahs, and many more are declining rapidly.
I'd say that if someone really wants to hunt, they should not be selling licenses to hunt game, but to hunt poachers, something that can fight back (policies are already shoot on sight in many areas). Donate, get deputized, go hunting. We only have a few years before many key species are gone forever.
> If you have an actual sound ecosystem, in a sufficiently large habitat area (not encroached by humans, roads, etc.), culling is rarely necessary.
It's really a question of the extent to which humans get bothered when prey populations get too big and then they leave the preserve and start getting hit by cars. Or too many wolves and they start killing farmers' sheep. Culling helps avoid the wild swings in population.
I'd also point out that even with populations that are not in good shape (threatened or declining), selling super expensive hunting licenses can still make sense. If $50,000 = +3 rhinos, let the hunter kill the rhino. Of course there are perverse incentives and all sorts of practical difficulties, but I just want to make the point that it's possible for that sort of thing to be in the best interests of the species being conserved.
Yes, it is a possible model, but I don't know of anywhere where it is actually shown to work. And yes, there are lion farms that are really sad examples where they are bread to be hunted, and they are not living in natural conditions.
Part of the problem is that the [-1 rhino] is a guaranteed figure, and may increase, but [+3 rhino] is speculative, requiring many steps that may go wrong, from mating, fertilization, gestation, birthing, survival to adulthood; bird in the hand vs bird in the bush. It may turn out that the number is more like $1.5 million for a license than $50k, which already seems outrageous.
I also have close family who work directly with African wildlife foundations and although I've heard much discussion of solutions, I've never heard any mention of this as being viable.
I like the idea of taking the camera and calling that the "hunt". Same experience, except the animal survives for the next hunter. I dunno, not a hunter.
I'm not a hunter, but I imagine the challenge grabs people. If you've ever been riveted to a screen trying to find and fix a bug, it seems like you have experienced the essential draw of hunting.
There's an animist tribe called Idu Mishmis in India's North East state of Arunachal Pradesh, Their mythology considers Tigers to be their elder brothers, So they venerate Tigers and are deeply involved in conserving their habitat leading to an unique way of wildlife conservation.
They don't indulge in retaliatory killing of the Tiger even if it hunts one of their people.
Subsequent Tiger census of their region have shown to have significant Tiger population that the Govt. now wants to establish a Tiger Reserve in their region, Now the Idu Mishmis are protesting that plan claiming that the Tigers are actually located in their own farm lands and not in deep forest region[1].
Conservation in India has often taken this pattern historically, integrated into religious beliefs, but conservation in the west typically imposes this pattern of keeping humans and human development out of the area altogether, regardless of the shape of such development.
"Tigers are thriving in certain landscapes of the country and disproportionately adding to the increasing tiger count, while other former tiger landscapes have lost all or most of their tigers" - https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/raza-kazmi...
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 167 ms ] threadNY Times 2019: Climate change is now pushing the Bengal tiger closer to extinction https://archive.is/0qbcz#selection-553.0-559.23
NY Times 2020: India Sees Coronavirus Threat to Fragile Population: Tigers https://archive.is/PnuV3#selection-441.0-441.59
Human development and trophy hunting are threats, but they aren't the only ones.
You are arguing against a statement that nobody made.
The problem with the post is that Bengal Tiger != Indian Tigers. Bengal Tigers are a subspecies of tigers and not many of them are even in India.
The issues faced by Indian tigers was loss of habitat due to human encroachment (which will be worsened due to human migration due to climate change), whereas the major future threat to Bengal tigers, which live primarily in the low lying Sunderban areas of Bangladesh, is climate change.
So both things are true because we are talking about completely different groups of animals.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_reserves_of_India
But while these things may not be happening now, it does feel that more attention in terms of engineering efforts need to happen. There is a lot of hype and media outrage, but not seeing as much real substantive efforts. I hope we can control climate much better in the coming decades. Many believe Deep Learning will help with that. At the same time, these models are not as good at planning right now. So, I wonder if it will be as simple as that. Definitely in the realm of data extraction, and analysis, it will be of great help.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-38909512.amp
The first and foremost is to ban public trophy hunting. Many governments in Africa allow it as a revenue stream. But, the outrage needs to come from the local population there.
There’s a great deal of public apathy or ignorance to be overcome in general to excise the small fraction of humanity from conducting such practices.
Mountain lions, also called Cougars, are the exact opposite of endangered.
Is it stupid to go hunting one? Sure, I guess. Given that cougars can be found walking down the streets in suburbs outside of Seattle, (also I think you can find them walking around some of the larger parks in Seattle!) I would hardly be impressed if someone told me they killed one.
"Oh wow you killed a large cat that eats small dogs and also drinks out my bird feeder".
Had to disable it to access the site.
I hope this isn’t a sign of dns blocking in iCloud relay like the uk government likes to do.
Weird when i go back there and libgen etc won’t even resolve.
They are also efficient and dangerous ambush predators that will eat you or your children given the chance.
Reminds me of that dentist that got a tag and shot “Cecil the Lion” and the literati in NYC engaged in the requisite handwringing while the Africans who actually had to live with it were celebrating the 50 grand payday and the elimination of a dangerous menace.
Then again maybe reintroducing apex predators to the streets of San Francisco would be a net improvement. Let’s restore the grizzly to the bay area.
Insane story
Bears will absolutely see you as a food source. Don’t fuck with bears. Tigers, and most large cats, are more sensitive about risk of injury and as such spooked off more easily, e.g. by you standing up. Bears near populations aren’t going to seek you out, but they’re different from tigers.
https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/12hzfw1/bear_rider/
Lol, no tigers don't generally attack people, and will often run away when the human stands up. Attacks on humans are generally similar to Bear attacks, defensive in nature when people are messing with their young or getting up in their business. Though there have been cases of injured tigers going nuts and switching to attacking people.
“Cecil the Lion” was not a tiger. "the elimination of a dangerous menace" no, he lived in a national park and was practically a zoo exhibit. He had a GPS tracker and all the safari tours in the area would go see him. His fame with tourist is what caused the uproar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Cecil_the_lion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_attack
Even before modern guns, you read about hunting parties - which would be dozens, even hundreds of men - ganging up on a solitary animal and wonder how was that ever equated with bravery.
Couldn't the same said about eating meat with every meal in the west or going to a steakhouse for 'fun'.
What's actually bizarre is that the billions of modern humans who would find it sickening to kill any animal personally have no issue thoughtlessly living a lifestyle whose need for ever-expanding consumption of living space, energy, and other resources is directly contributing to a human-caused mass extinction.
People did not hunt tigers for "most of our evolutionary history". In fact, it's quite recent that people have hunted tigers at all, and even then it's more of an outlier than a standard practice.
Tigers are difficult and dangerous to hunt, and they're not healthy to eat regularly, nor is their meat particularly attractive (despite the named "tiger meat", which is actually raw beef).
Furthermore, contrary to mass media depictions, tigers rarely attack humans unless provoked, and they avoid human settlements as well. So even as a matter of safety and defense, hunting tigers is a rarity.
Until, of course, you start destroying large swaths of their habitat by mass-clearing old-growth rainforest in order to produce enough food to keep up with the usurious demands of a colonial occupier. At that point, yes, you do start to combat tigers more directly.
You're completely right that the desire to hunt a tiger isn't really logical or necessary, I'm just pointing out that it is not psychologically aberrant that some people (mostly men) would find it satisfying to do things like that as a thrill-seeking activity.
All this while the world is greening.
Most of the developed world too has declining birth rates.
So I would hardly call it an ever expanding consumption.
I was mostly reacting to the hypocrisy of the kind of Western liberal who would crucify a trophy hunter online, but who flies all over the world for vacation and buys Shein hauls to post on TikTok. The personal consumption choices of rich people are still driving a lot of environmental degradation. Hating hunters is more of a liberal tribal shibboleth than a meaningful way to have impact on global biodiversity.
I also agree with you on the individual level with increasingly larger cars etc..
It’s almost like there’s a difference between shooting something in the face, and pressing a button on my phone to make food appear outside my door.
Not saying there aren’t repugnant aspects of both, but one is quite a bit more visceral and direct.
Despite knowing this, we continue to behave in ways that run counter to a rational examination of the realities behind pushing that button.
And we default to focusing on factors like the visceral nature of the experience instead of the implications of the choice.
This is a pretty common default in our current culture, and so the bizarre-ness to me is more about our instincts to continue making the bad choice just because it's easier right now and we won't have to pay for the long term repercussions personally.
It's bizarre upon closer examination because it's a self-harming behavior that we collectively engage in, even if it can be explained mechanically in terms of evolutionary reward systems that are in need of an upgrade.
None of this is to excuse modern forms of hunting for sport, but we are predators, and only our continued evolution of consciousness/culture will move us beyond that. That predatory behavior continues to exist is not surprising, nor is our tendency to overuse food delivery services.
And I am not sure the behaviors are so much collective + self-harming as they are individual + collective-harming. Like you said: I don’t have to pay for the long-term repercussions personally.
I feel like this comment is drifting into gross pedantry, but I am really not trying to argue semantics. Just wanted to underscore that we might not be meeting people where they are (which is probably important if we want to change their disposition)
> And I am not sure the behaviors are so much collective + self-harming as they are individual + collective-harming.
I would argue that the behaviors are both. One gives rise to the other, and the other reinforces the former.
They are collective + self-harming because the collective behavior lulls the individual into a sense of "I don't need to think about this either". The end result is an action taken without an understanding of the consequences, even if those consequences may eventually kill me.
They are self-harming + collective because the individual who is aware of the impact but chooses to engage in it anyway is now doing so in spite of the knowledge. And that stance is also exported to the collective - "The people who have thought about this are still charging ahead anyway, so I might as well".
> we might not be meeting people where they are (which is probably important if we want to change their disposition)
Meeting people where they are is something that I care about, and I think it's a good mindset to apply to issues like this. With that said, it's not clear to me which aspects of the conversation here aren't meeting people where they are, and how the semantic distinction (if it exists) clears that up.
How can we repackage this more clearly to meet people where they are?
It's odd to be in the position of defending trophy hunters, so that's not what I'll do. There are many defensible types of hunting, but hunting rare or endangered animals for nothing else but a trophy is ethically indefensible. However, for people who do that, I imagine it's not the ending of the life that's fun, it's the challenge, and especially the bragging rights it gives them afterwards. Just a guess though.
While I agree with this, I find it hard to digest that some people find even the challenge "fun" when it necessarily involves ending a life.
Everyone's different.
Luckily, a very small percentage of the population is big game hunters...
The vast majority of westerners aren't vegetarian.
While some areas that allow trophy hunting charge steep fees that help conservation, I can't see that I've ever seen an accounting of it being at sustainable levels. And the proof is in the pudding, where in Africa, rhinos, elephants, giraffes, cheetahs, and many more are declining rapidly.
I'd say that if someone really wants to hunt, they should not be selling licenses to hunt game, but to hunt poachers, something that can fight back (policies are already shoot on sight in many areas). Donate, get deputized, go hunting. We only have a few years before many key species are gone forever.
It's really a question of the extent to which humans get bothered when prey populations get too big and then they leave the preserve and start getting hit by cars. Or too many wolves and they start killing farmers' sheep. Culling helps avoid the wild swings in population.
I'd also point out that even with populations that are not in good shape (threatened or declining), selling super expensive hunting licenses can still make sense. If $50,000 = +3 rhinos, let the hunter kill the rhino. Of course there are perverse incentives and all sorts of practical difficulties, but I just want to make the point that it's possible for that sort of thing to be in the best interests of the species being conserved.
Part of the problem is that the [-1 rhino] is a guaranteed figure, and may increase, but [+3 rhino] is speculative, requiring many steps that may go wrong, from mating, fertilization, gestation, birthing, survival to adulthood; bird in the hand vs bird in the bush. It may turn out that the number is more like $1.5 million for a license than $50k, which already seems outrageous.
I also have close family who work directly with African wildlife foundations and although I've heard much discussion of solutions, I've never heard any mention of this as being viable.
They don't indulge in retaliatory killing of the Tiger even if it hunts one of their people.
Subsequent Tiger census of their region have shown to have significant Tiger population that the Govt. now wants to establish a Tiger Reserve in their region, Now the Idu Mishmis are protesting that plan claiming that the Tigers are actually located in their own farm lands and not in deep forest region[1].
[1] https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-politi...