Comments on: When Large Animals Disappear, Ecosystems are Hit Hard

By: Travis

Travis — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 03:23:10 +0000

I am no environmentalist nor am I an avid hunter. But in light of the subject at hand it seems that most have not gotten the point of this topic.

By in large the human race as a species is self preserving and destructive. We take what we want and need and throw away the rest. Through our history we have caused entire eco-systems to fail. Once vibrant forests now reduced to shopping malls, parking lots, and residential housing. We build in places where we encroach on the habitat of other species taking from them their food, water, and shelters. Yes I hunt, yes I fish, but I do so by US federal regulations. I don’t go out and hunt deer when its turkey season and vise-versa. To blame just one or even several groups of humanity doesn’t solve any problems. We as a collective species is at fault for harming this planet the way we have. Yes we haven’t been on this planet for a very long time. But we have been here long enough to do the damage we have.

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 17:37:30 +0000

@ Cottereaux That is a great point. Mother nature has also regulated the earth’s temperature for millions of years, so we should continue to pump green house gases into the atmosphere and let the earth figure it out. What’s the worst that could happen?

And hey, human beings have managed to survive for thousands of years before the discovery of “calories” and “vitamins”. People should just ignore silly things like “science”, and just eat whatever they want whenever they want. Things worked out fine in the past, so QED it must continue to work out fine in the future.

By: Cottereaux

Cottereaux — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 11:37:01 +0000

So how is it that Mother Nature has wiped out hundreds of thousands if not millions of species since life began on Earth including those LARGE dinosaurs yet life goes on? What is the real purpose of this story?

Seems to me the all these do good environmentalists should just let Nature do its thing, after all, Nature has been at this species extinction thing for over a billion years. That is a lot of practice time!

By: Brian Too

Brian Too — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 00:40:54 +0000

@2. Karen,

There is no such thing as “real” hunting. Hunting is hunting. In low enough levels all hunting is a minor blip on prey populations. At high enough levels, any hunting at all can be an extinction level event. Eco-management must encompass the idea that hunting must be banned in certain places, at certain times, for certain species.

I vividly remember an interview published locally, with a hunter. Grizzly populations are in trouble but this guy simply could not accept that “animal needs could be placed above human needs.” In fact this brilliant character couldn’t recognize that the grizzly’s need to exist, as a species, completely trumped his need to shoot them.

Is hunting then bad? Of course not. However pretending that poaching, overharvesting, and underground economies aren’t “real” could lead to a world where large predator and prey species no longer exist. I don’t want such a world.

@4. m,

Your comment equating deer with rats shows that you have little to contribute. Come back when you grow up.

By: m

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:53:26 +0000

Karen – agreed. I would go even further and say hunting should be expanded! Too many people have “Bambi” syndrome. Deer are nothing more than rats with antlers (albeit tasty ones!).

By: Susan P.

Susan P. — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 20:20:50 +0000

I think we should stop breaking ANY new ground ANYwhere – and simply rebuild where structures are now. There are many vacant places everywhere – houses, strip malls, etc. – Why aren’t we reusing all these buildings? Even by me, they are about to start “development” in some fields.. (argh! I hate that word – It sugarcoates it)
What more can I do, without an environmental background?!

By: Karen

Karen — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 18:30:10 +0000

I wish they would qualify hunting instead of blaming hunting in general. REAL hunting aims at eco-management. It is poachers or those hunting illegally who are destroying the ecosystem. Villainizing all hunting needs to stop.

By: E.M. Lores

E.M. Lores — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 17:13:40 +0000

As a retired marine scientist, I studied plankton communities in our local bay. I think that the loss of too many fish from our bay has caused a dramatic shift in the basic phytoplankton to pico-cyanobacteria. A type of algae that does not support most organisms in the estuarine ecosystem and therefore significantly reduces the productivity of the system. We need to restore fish populations, but at this point the system will not support them. I think we need studies to investigate how to restore systems when the loss of predators has lead to dramatic changes that are difficult to reverse.