Colorado voters are set to decide if wolves should be reintroduced to the state
npr.org
npr.org
SO the true cost of meat SHOULD include erosion, pollution, and management of federal lands, antibiotic release into the water table, water use, and GHG emissions. But instead we pay most of those costs through taxes and have lower cost at the grocery store.
https://www.blm.gov/programs/natural-resources/rangelands-an...
They'd be stuck paying someone else sky-high grazing fees. The market would probably just get taken over by big players just like most of the rest of agriculture has.
Not to mention the feces destroys water quality.
I understand (and share some of) your sentiment, but it's worth correcting you to say that ranchers (usually) don't feel that grazing rights are an "inalienable birth right". Instead, they feel that grazing rights are a property right, and they should not be deprived of this property without compensation. What may surprise you is that courts frequently agree with the ranchers' interpretation!
Most people don't realize that when a ranch is sold, the grazing rights are sold along with the private land. They have market value, and they are attached to a particular property. Banks treat them as collateral, and maybe more importantly, the IRS treats them as assets for the purposes of taxation: https://famguardian.org/publications/propertyrights/estatax.....
So yes, everyone must adapt, but it's not nearly as simple as the ranchers simply being wrong. The way the US West was settled created a system where private individuals really do have a (some sort of) legitimate property right in the use of public lands. Unless you are willing to give up on private property altogether (personally, I'm more sympathetic than most to Proudhon's "Property is Theft" argument) a more nuanced understanding is necessary.
Here's a good (and reasonably balanced) article that gives more background about the issues: https://www.perc.org/2016/01/21/managing-conflicts-over-west.... The first third is about the Bundy case, the middle about the how we got the system we have, and the last part is about where it might go from here.
Subsidized grazing costs should come with rider "we can change the rules".
You quoted a statement that isn't in the article.
> like using the countryside to pasture livestock as they’ve ‘done for generations’ is an inalienable birth right.
I didn't get this at all from the article. Where are you picking this up?
> Give me a break, everyone has to adapt with the times, ranchers should be no exception.
Sure, but they have a right to defend their interests. If ranchers voted to allow wolves and bears back into downtown denver, do you think the people of denver have a right to be worried?
> For all their ruggedness they honestly act like spoiled children.
Are you sure you come from a rural background and you generally feel for the interests of rural folk?
> ‘Wolves will affect the livelihood of my archaic, wealthy rancher lifestyle’ doesn’t really reverberate with me.
Once again your quoted text appears nowhere in the article. You are intentionally misleading readers here by making it seem like you are quoting from the article and falsely attributing the quotes to the ranchers.
This is actually in the article.‘Will also fears the initiative lets urban areas make a decision that'd largely affect rural Colorado.’
Why is it that so many comments that claims "I come from a rural background", "I am a resident in X", "I am a blank" go on to attack what they claim to be and mostly in a misleading and sneaky way? I normally see this in vegan related post, "I eat meat" and then goes on list the vegan manifesto, but it is spreading everywhere it seems.
[1] "A recent online survey from Colorado State University showed 84 percent of Coloradans support the reintroduction effort."
Coyotes are prolific in places where wolves have been eradicated. If your chihuahuadoodle goes for a walkabout, seems like he's more likely to become coyote food than wolf food.
I see wolf tracks and poop in the trails behind my house fairly regularly, there's a couple of wolf packs in the valley. There's also multiple people on my street who have "free range" cats that have managed to stay alive for 10+ years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wolf_attacks_in_North_...
Surely an event that only happen 4 times in more than 50 years is not worth mentioning.
Also, I lived in the Yukon for 4 years, roamed all over YK and AK in the summers and winters, saw tons of wolves. Never heard of a single person ever having problems with them, it's simply not a thing.
AFAIU, fear of humans is both a learned and instinctual behavior of large predators. The latter can take thousands of years to develop, but the former requires active management, such as hunting and killing. To the extent that learned element isn't there and wolf populations continue to encroach on settlements, I would expect increased incidents.[1] And that seems to be reflected in the data.
Though, that's a pretty abstract argument. The risk still seems miniscule and inconsequential. OTOH, from a political perspective consequential is defined by public sentiment, not empirical data and calculated risk assessment.
[1] A quick Google search suggests that wolf hunting has been legal and practiced in Alaska since 1994. Though, maybe it's always been legal, even after wolves became protected in the lower United States. EDIT: It seems wolf hunting never ceased in Alaska (https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=intensivemanageme...), though by the 1980s even land hunting (as oppose to aerial) required permitting, which suggests people could freely shoot wolves before then, and presumably did when people felt insecure--see conclusion #5 at the very end of the page.
Sure it happens, but it is extremely uncommon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_dog_attacks_in_t...
Cats will be much safer. Wolves equal to more saplins alive, thus increase in wolfes = increase in trees, and more trees around, mean cats climbing to safety with just an elegant jump.
Moreover, cats are perfectly able to fight back and they keep routinely german shepperds at bay. An angry cat can scratch a dog eye really fast.
Plus the benefit of 100 coyotes fleeing the area and more bird nests at soil level = Happier cats.
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The effect in dogs will be less clear, but will be positive in some aspects at least.
Wolves will put warnings of "do not enter" for dogs to sniff all around the place. Small dogs in wolf territory are not so prone to escape and will remain closer to their human owner. Most dog owners would appreciate that as a good thing.
Dogs close to a human are safe. Wolves will not approach or touch any human with a ten foot pole. Coyotes instead... well is a different history. Coyotes are much, much, bolder and will grab walking dogs practically from the hands of the owner if they have the opportunity.
If you are a responsible owner shouldn't let your dog roam alone in the forest at night. Wolves will not kill them, cars will do. Small dogs should sleep also inside or in a secure area at night, not chained outside. Irresponsible owners will lose pets, as usual, with and without wolves. This is not the wolves fault.
Wolves in the area mean less dogs lost, killed or severely hurt after being lost trying to chase a deer.
Can fall to mention there that the "but think in the pets!" argument is a litle hypocritical. I don't see any of those people asking for erradication of boars so the pets will be safer. A boar can severe the spine of a dog in no time. A Deer can impale a dog's neck or torax easily also.
> Moreover, cats are perfectly able to fight back and they keep routinely german shepperds at bay.
Not sure why you think ylu are qualified to talk about cats or pets at large. Cats fend off german shepards because the dog wants to instinctually chase and play. Cats are routinely eaten by single coyotes and large birds, much less dedicated packs of wolves (who admittedly rarely bother with cats). Cats will try to stay closer to the home/farm pulled by instinct to roam/expand their territory and chase prey, presenting a perrenial danger.
Reintroducing wolves is reasonable, but dont simultaneously undercut your message with astounding ignorance.
LOL We are not talking about Higgs' Boson. Is because my human brain that I'm qualified (Is awesome that we have evolved this pink thing if we think about it). In the planet earth, even toddlers are qualified to talk about cats. Pretty common stuff.
You admit that wolves will rarely would bother with cats at least. Is a start.
Exactly. It's laughable to imagine cats are better off because they can claw at well-fed dogs. SMH
Let me express that in a nice tone. You never owned a cat, do you?
https://www.nationwide.com/business/agribusiness/farm-insura...
Besides, what exactly would the farmer do when the drones detects a wolf? It's illegal to shoot or bother them in any way.
What would they do if they detected one. They'd shoot it. Just like they do now. It may be illegal but it's not stopping anyone.
There is a reason why the bumper sticker "earn a buck, shoot a wolf" exists.
2. I'm pretty sure that if (when?) a company develops drone-powered mass-surveillance technology, they will be doing it for someone other than ranchers.
3. This whole thing is really a non-issue. Individual wolf packs kill few cattle per year, and there are a lot of published papers with similar numbers. In fact, the removal costs of the wolves can exceed the potential lost profits.
By your standards, voting is a conflict of interest.
Voting? Well, people often vote against their own self interest, but it is hoped (by me, at least) that people will vote for their self interest, within reason. That reason is that you aren't voting for something that benefits your group more than another group. That would be a bad use of self-interested voting. A good use would be voting for "medicare for all" because you think it will benefit you and others.
I don't think they meant the business-context "conflict of interest" rather the more general "conflicting interests".
Have they even raised cattle around wolves recently?
https://www.capitalpress.com/ag_sectors/livestock/record-num...
Even if the wolves do venture out into the plains, it would be much appreciated because my office currently smells like cow shit given that there's a north-easterly wind and Greeley is in that direction with it's horrendous feed lots.
You could work in Commerce City and be smelling the hydrocarbons all day, and maybe even getting cancer.
This seems to be mostly just an emotional appeal rather than a practical one.
Also, we should totally get rid of the refinery too, I'm all for equal opportunity environmentalism.
Cow excrement is absolutely not just fermented grass. It contains pathogens that can be harmful to humans and end up in drinking water. Cows have existed in this area for less than 200 years, out of the millions of years the biome has existed. It's absolutely an emotional issue if you don't understand how ecosystems work.
I'd rather not give out too many personal details of my living situation but it's safe to say my little car doesn't get much use at all.
You could sabotage the market/product however you see fit, with the justification that it will get it figured out.
It's just not always figured out in the way regulators assume it will be.
Assuming that ranchers will want to continue to raise cattle amongst protected wolves is just as irrational.
I wonder how humans living amongst wolves could raise and even create all races of cattle in the last 4000 years.
This a problem that we had solved yet with shepherds and shepherddogs. You can find people raising three thousands of sheep all alone and just with the help of a few dogs. They never lost a sheep and they live in one of the european areas with more wolves.
Reintroducing them undoes that, and if they're going to be a protected species, the same solution that's worked forever no longer will.
Different rules, different behavior.
And most dogs are primarily to alert people. One on one, a wolf is usually going to win. Packs of dogs evens things out some, but it's not a sure thing. Although if dogs end up being the main protection loophole, I'll be interesting to see if people move towards more aggressive dogs.
Managing key species as a bussiness only for a minority of the society leads often to lots of money lost for all citizens. We talk of species absolutely necessary for having a healthy ecosystem.
Wolves create economic damages but also pay generously for them. They clean lyme, keep cattle diseases under control in wildlife reservoirs, improve pastures and build forests and rivers. Wolf's work literarily create entire biocenosis with decens of new animals linked.
In Yellowstone the wolf build from nothing a $5000000/year bussiness in a few years. Those new opportunities attract and fix young human population and put children in some states that need it.
Alive wolves trigger a lot of unexpected benefits for both humans and animals. We could never pay its environmental services, or the lifes of humans saved by wolves directly or indirectly
But we don't want that money, of course.
I had to watch this video [1] for my biology class. It's interesting how the wolves changed the entire ecosystem by just changing the behavior of deer (they avoided grazing near the river because that's where the wolves wanted to be). The ripple effects are fairly significant.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/scientists-debun...
Wolves had an effect. Is it overly simplistic in the video I linked? Yes. But is it inaccurate? No. Is there more to learn, describe and understand? Yes.
It changed all sorts of things, including breeding patterns.
Also I know the San Diego wild animal park put predator animals upwind of prey animals and saw behavioral changes / different sleeping patterns and more "wild like" behavior just from being exposed to the smell.
They’ve had episode with industry experts on Wolf genetics, conservation, migration, reintroduction, hunting, habitat control and more. Recently they’ve had a running commentary on wolves and Isle Royale[1].
0: https://www.themeateater.com/listen/meateater 1: https://www.themeateater.com/conservation/natural-history/is...
First, not all wolf reintro's are the same. Each ecosystem is different and the scientific justifications need to be done for each, and the papers for one do not necessarily apply to the other. The Yellowstone program may have been a success, but other places are not Yellowstone, and it is a mistake to use it as a way to handwave away criticisms. Also, sometimes the justifications are pretty weak, and could easily be made up with by increase in hunting tags or adjustment of hunting time windows and area restrictions.
Second, there are jurisdictional and public control issues at the heart of the matter. There are people who actually have to live in these areas and they are major changes. I strongly dislike the attitude of some that locals should have no say. The people in our area voted against the reintro program and it was done anyway, with the governor saying "I don't care what the people want, the reintro program is happening". That is a problem. I have also seen the effects of fresh Forest Department/BLM phd types ignore the locals wisdom and advice and pay the price for it, and the same "We know better than you back country bumpkin" condescension tends to be at play in the reintro programs. These things have real consequences. For example, as a kid my grampa who was a logger in the area in the 70's and many other loggers were saying the Forest Service needed to let the loggers thin the forests out and to do more control burns. I being young thought the old loggers were just old-fashioned and the PhD's knew what they were doing, until reality happened. The holier than though attitude of the credentialed people prevailed, then the pine beetle infestation hit, and within a decade we had two ~500,000 acre forest fires that the forests are still recovering from.
Third, there are often claims that wolves never attack humans, and those claims are blatantly false or are using very carefully selected statistics (North America only, etc) to craft a narrative. Beyond that, it vastly changes the safety profile of being in the forests, in a way that discourages people from experiencing it. Many locals from my area have posited that this is an intentional side-effect. Even more so when the rumors of a grizzly reintro program started floating around (I don't know if these are just rumors, but who can blame the locals for being afraid of an unelected unaccountable bureaucracy who already ignores them from doing something else against their wishes). We used to be able to only have to worry about bears or mountain lions, who both have pretty easily avoided confrontational profiles, but now locals don't go anywhere without being armed.
Fourth, the dismissal of the cattle ranchers is far overrated. Cattle ranching, especially in this day in age, is a science in itself, and in the forest is a vital part of forest maintenance. Silviopasture/agroforestry is also often studied by the kids of the old ranchers who then come back and apply that knowledge. Thoughts of the ranchers as dumb hicks is a foolish and insulting stereotype. Not only that, but often the forest service and BLM are underfunded and undermanned, and many of the ranchers who are paying public land leases do a good job assisting in maintaining the forest, and unlike the new kid who just got shipped in from across the country after getting a degree, they live there and have passed down local knowledge for decades if not longer.
I know it's easy to see something like a wolf reintro program and assume it's a great thing and just jump on the bandwagon, but maybe a perspective from someone who grew up in one and have heard out the locals on the issues might help color your view on the topic a bit.
Otherwise you just end up with a bunch of locals that around the campfire say "It's all about the three S's... shoot, shovel, and shhhhh".
This smacks of fear-mongering. I wouldn't say never, but I can count the number of wolf attacks in the lower 48 states in my lifetime on one finger. Furthermore, that one wolf attack was by a captive pet wolf[1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wolf_attacks_in_North_...
You're saying wolves don't attack often by citing numbers in an area where they've been mostly killed off in populated areas.
There aren't many tiger attacks in North America, but that also has little bearing on future attack numbers if introducing a wild population. The comparison makes little sense.
I find this hard to believe - who would make such a claim ?
One would have to be almost entirely illiterate in both historical accounts of American settlement and rural accounts of frontier areas in Europe and middle-Asia and many, many well-respected fictional accounts of wolfpack/human interactions all over the world.
The wedding story from _My Antonia_ comes to mind ...
I'll admit the statistics of wolf attacks in NA are small, but they fail to take into account many things, for example the high number of national forest disappearances a percentage of which could have been animals attacks we don't know about. Also, just from personal experience, when in wolf territory statistics are hardly a comfort when you hear the yips a ridge over...
Some have said it's fear mongering...I wonder is there such a thing as statistics-mongering?
2. Locals have say, but they don't have the final say. They get to vote like everyone else so it is ridiculous to say that. Also, anecdotal is not the best.
3. Umm... who claims that? It feels like you made a straw man just to fight against.
4. I have no clue why you even brought that up. It seems like you are just ranting.
Literally a guy in this comment thread claimed it.
Also, this site just autoplays the segment? :(
What if the flock was protected by a pack of large herding dogs, like German Shepards?
Edit: Apparently guardian dogs defend from wolves. Herding is a different job. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livestock_guardian_dog.
https://youtu.be/x4eImh13-ow?t=1072
It appears to be a Georgian documentary, and they describe a Caucasian sheepdog as being larger and stronger than the local wolves.
When I try to Google this topic, I'm mainly getting junk about some speech from American Sniper.
It also looks like the dogs have to stick to the right tactics and have limitations. The dogs stay put in defensive positions and defend the flock as a pack. They'll kill a wolf that gets too close, but they usually just chase them away. They can't chase too far or go out individually or they risk being killed by wolves. They're also more effective when the weather is such that they can use their sense of smell.
Edit: I posted this upthread, but apparently guardian dog is the term for dogs defend against predators (but they do not control its movement), herding dogs control the movement of a herd (but do not typically defend it well).
Edit this is interesting: https://www.facebook.com/notes/cinco-deseos-ranch-livestock-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boerboel
My old neighbor had one, and prior to meeting him I had heard from others the he owned a 'bear'. One of the biggest dogs I've ever seen, and all muscle.
I've seen one pick up a coyote with it's mouth and break its neck, they are crazy territorial and mean.
What did we do where you live?
All of this country used to be wilderness, including what are now cities.
And there's a lot less of the wilderness left in the cities than on ranches.
What always gets my goat in particular is ranchers pay $1.35/head/month to graze their cattle on public land.
At that price, which is about 5% of the market rate to graze on private land, I don't feel like we the public owe the ranchers particularly much.
At this one the ranchers using public lands are nothing but a lazy welfare case from my point of view.
There is very little overlap in area.
Also, cheap meat is not a good reason to eradicate a species from an ecosystem.
Besides, you can just run a compensation program to offset the damages. If you scroll down in the article you'll notice they already have an estimate for that.
"The term is used to refer to suboptimal traits that such a process may produce as a result of having to compromise between the requirements and viewpoints of the participants, particularly in the presence of poor leadership or poor technical knowledge, such as needless complexity, internal inconsistency, logical flaws, banality, and the lack of a unifying vision"
The initial decision of what to prioritize and what "expert" to consult is still inherently political.
Wolf reintroduction is major change with the potential for disproportionate impact on a small group of people (or at least there's a huge fear of it), and combined with a very real sense that some outside elite authority is just autocratically dictating without listening there is great potential for it to go sideways. (Keep in mind that centralized power structures dissipate with distance/isolation - witness rural sheriffs refusing to enforce specific laws in some states, etc.)
In general there should be a second angle: how to support the community, make the program successful, and have buy-in. This means maybe there should be some combination of communication, support, insurance, or grants to mitigate community concerns, and that it should be treated as an ongoing back-and-forth that tries to balance concerns for long term success, not as a dictate to people who are ignored.
Sounds like maybe said ecologists and biologist were part of the original problem?
But today I doubt you'd find many ecologists argue you should remove a native species wholesale outside some very strange situations.
Like all science you take the mistakes, learn, and keep doing better.
Ecologists and biologists did what were allowed by the current laws to do, and what were hired to do. Not more, not less. There are around 22 american people trying to save the last 15 american vaquitas or so. Their ships are shooted and harassed rutinely for removing illegal nets.
When the animal will go extinct in a few years, we all will see how some people still blame on they. I'm 100% sure of that.
No. In a Democracy, we should be letting voters decide.
Of course any decision has multiple impacts: even if biologists and ecologists agree, what about stakeholders? Should farming and ranching experts have a seat at the table? What about climatologists (after all, maybe wolf flatulence better or worse than deer flatulence)? What about mining interests, who might need to adjust physical security? What about suburban homeowners, who might need to do likewise? What about urban renters, who might really want to see those suburbanites move into the city?
And of course even if we limit the discussion strictly to scientists who can be strictly objective about the decisionmaking, they can still be wrong, because the settled science at any point in time can be incorrect (cf. phrenology, the safety of leaded gas and the immediacy of self-driving cars).
At the very least, if we make the vote democratically, whatever happens can be blamed on everyone collectively.
Wolves are back in my country, and we didnt do anything special for it? Usually things go wrong when humans intervene.
Zero evidence, zero citation. Where is your data that this is going to harm the ecosystem? I could spout off an opposing view easily, that apex predators enhance ecosystems by culling herds and allowing balance between herbivores and their plant-based food sources.