We need the wolf
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
I don't really think this theme was sustained through the article, but it just starts off in the wrong spot. Nature isn't balanced in any meaningful sense. It lurches from one equilibrium to another in a haphazard way [0]. Equilibriums only appear because all the many unequilibriums die out, so by evolution everything rapidly reaches equilibrium.
Also this idea that humans are somehow above nature is not realistic. We are nature, in the same way everything else is. What we are doing is pushing the world to a new equilibrium. The history of everything will class us in the same pool of "sorta-terraforming" species as cyanobacteria. If we can make the world work without wolves, that is the new natural and there is no particular reason to believe there is some sort of cosmic doom awaiting us for our hubris.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotka%E2%80%93Volterra_equatio...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiversity#Human_health
Re-reading my comment I realize it sounds like low-key creationism BS which was not my intention.
I suspect whether to draw the line to make 'nature' include or exclude humans is very similar to whether to include or exclude the observer in quantum mechanics.
Both perspectives are entirely reasonable, but they are useful in different circumstances.
Sure, but now that we have this evolutionary mechanism we also have more responsibility than cyanobacteria (which is what my original comment was about).
But my point here is more that we are not consciously-created products, at least not yet. For now, we're still the results of a "natural" evolutionary process.
> existing in or derived from nature; not made or caused by humankind.
So when you are trying to say that what is caused by humans is natural too, then you are clearly contradicting the dictionary definition of the word. Which is what I was trying to draw your attention to when I asked the question.
So what would you rather have? A few sheep gone missing or the lurking danger of a debilitating, potentially life threatening condition carried by an insect the size of a needle pin?
Interestingly, parasites with complex lifecycles are good indicators of biodiversity in general, because they lodge in multiple different hosts across the different levels of the ecosystem.
Wolves hunt deer. Deer carry ticks. Ticks threaten humans.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/02/ticks-ca...
And whether humans like wolves depends on whether eg we'd want to hunt deer for food.
Sure, ticks may kill deer and I guess you can call that a predator but not in the same way as a wolf. Ecosystems are incredibly fragile. The consequences of replacing one species with another are completely unpredictable.
I am saying that the changes in Yellowstone are pleasing to humans eg because we value diversity, but it's hard (or impossible) to make an absolute judgement call.
I recommend Adam Curtis' "All watched over by machines of loving grace" as an exploration of the theme.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_o...
The point of my comment (and of Curtis' series) is that there is no magical "natural balance" that we could strive to return to. It just doesn't exist, and never has. However, and without wanting to make this into a flamewar: the concept of a natural order of things is very convenient for people in power, or even just people in comfortable, moderate luxury, to justify their privilege over others' misery.
The idea that there is a "sweet spot" for ecosystems that they return to was unfortunately firmly established in the mind of many while it was "scientific consensus" (scare quotes to indicate what a fraught concept that is).
While the idea was being popularized, the idea of natural balance was already being scientifically dismantled, but by then the "damage" was done, and now we get to still discuss this...
To further internalize your point, rather than talking about "ideal" wolves, which as you established is not a thing, I will think of it as the ideal change in wolves. That number could be positive or negative as a function of time and location.
This is a very big if and of great consequence to humans. We make conscious decisions but we are not omniscient.
There is indeed a cosmic doom awaiting us if we blindly follow our hubris. We can't know the consequences of life without wolves. Our ability to realize that and acknowledge what we do not know then override our instincts is what separates us from the cyanobacteria.
A desert is at equilibrium, if we plant stuff and water it, it's more diverse and ecologically better.
Often conservation requires active maintenance to keep the benefits. Usually this maintenance occured as a side effect of historical human activity (resource extraction, grazing, hunting, fire).
As humans do less interaction with the environment as they progress in cities they make nature less bio diverse paradoxically.
Perhaps we can stake a claim to this when the modern civilization building, terra-forming human has existed for million years. Meanwhile natural processes have been at it for billions.
Here is part of an article at Wikipedia on wolves in Yollowstone describing the changes there when wolves were reintroduced.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wolves_in_Yellowsto...
The range of effects is astonishing.
It’s still worth looking at the Wikipedia article, though, because the Yellowstone section of the Guardian article doesn’t go as far into how wide ranging the changes were in Yellowstone, such as stabilizing the water table and reducing erosion.
If the authorities want to keep both sheepgrazing and wolves in existence, they need to reimburse torn-down sheep quickly. Sheep are really prone to massive slaughter and if the governmental response is to investigate the event for 10 months trying to find a reason not to pay, the shepherds will find a way to get rid of the wolves, especially in countries with liberal gun laws.
Sheepdogs are a good solution for sheep, but they are dangerous to people. More so than wolves themselves, who tend to hide away from humans. In my country, hiking is somewhat of a national sport, the landscape is criss-crossed with marked trails. That brings hikers close to flocks of sheep and sheepdogs have a strong protective instinct and will stand their ground.
I like big predators, but finding a new equilibrium will take decades, especially in densely populated countries. It can be done, but the more people (and sheep) around, the higher the costs. Europe can definitely afford them now, though.
Wolves are loving family oriented creatures that only hunt for survival. They have a complex pack order and prioritize the pack over all.
Just like the war on drugs, time has twisted reality and now we have a fear and hatred for the wolf without a real explanation.
It would be interesting to rewild much of the land mass as well. However, politics is often against that. Eg see those heartfelt efforts to rescue dying towns in the Appalachians or the Great Plains in the US. Or the general subsidies for suburban / exurban living (like eg the whole structure of USPS).
Fish farming would be colonization.
If you want people to move away from those areas so that wilderness can take over, you should not subsidize them to stay there.
Whether you like rewilding more or the critical service that the USPS provides, is up to you. But you should recognize that they are at least somewhat in conflict.
The USPS is more of a service to guarantee equal opportunity than it is a subsidy. This year is a great example of that. The USPS is the organization tasked with collecting and transporting ballots. That's not the kind of thing I want entrusted to the free market.
You have presented a false choice between rewilding and the USPS. They are entirely separate topics.
People need mail service where they live. Taking away basic services to force them to move is inhumane.
Many other countries do just fine without a government monopoly on mail that subsidizes rural areas. Private carriers can serve just fine.
There has been attempts at mass re-locations of people before. It usually didn't turn out well.
I actually found the idea really interesting. Though one of my parents is living a quiet life on a small piece of land and I entertained that idea myself, I personally find the sacrifice worth it. However, some difficulties would have to be addressed first:
1. Lack of trust in each other, authorities and institutions—in some cases, deserved (rogue actors). Who has to leave first, who gets a better view from their new home in a futuristic skyscraper, entry permit fairness and enforcement (there will be long perimeters to protect, albeit it could be a good source of jobs), etc.
2. Ensuring healthy human habitat in dense urban environments (pollution, clean energy, as well as psychology).
Many of those hurdles are societal/organizational/psychological, and are not liable to be solved by accelerated technical progress alone. Frustratingly, since the best time to do this is probably ASAP.
The physical part is easy since most people will see cities as cramped nightmare-fuel regardless of who moves there first.
The psychosocial part will be a nightmare to handle, though. You won't just be moving people from A to B; you will be erasing countless generations worth of cultural identity, placing people in an unfamiliar environment where their previously acquired skills will be largely irrelevant, so you need to re-educate most of them. And you will be doing it using force, because I guarantee you there will be a lot of opposition.
Oh, and you need to get the current urban population to accept that they need to pay for it all, because, you know, you'll be taking everything from the rural population. Furthermore, they need to integrate and intermingle with the recent arrivals to prevent them from becoming a new underclass.
I see what you're trying to argue, but we've got several recent waves of migrants facing less problems and which European societies still failed to integrate properly. If we can't do it with a few million immigrants, then I assure you that it can't be done with the 115 million people living on the European countryside.
Edit: one caveat is that there may be legitimate disagreements about the science, e.g. what probabilities to consider sufficient and what models to use when predicting whether such an expensive effort to revitalise the planet will in fact give the desired effect.
Also, there is at least one objective downside to localising human presence to ultra-dense habitats that I have missed: a catastrophic black swan event could suddenly wipe out a much larger percentage of human population at once. This downside theoretically could be thoroughly addressed through technology, but that technology is probably very far out as of now.
Even if we somehow managed to solve the practical issues, I'd have to spend a lifetime in therapy just to stay sane. I know, I tried. My therapist told me to move back to the countryside again because the pace city life wasn't good for my mental health. :)
In the long run, there is no silver bullet to fight climate change, pollution, over-population, decreased nativity, poverty, geopolitical power-play, consumerism, good old greed, and the other things that we humans use to screw up the planet. We need just as many different solutions as there are problems.
What we need is a cultural change that swings people from "doing nothing" to "doing something". If we keep trying to look for ways to force others to do what we want then we'll just keep fighting about it. I've planted 20 trees this week. With luck, I'll do another 50 this weekend. The plan is to turn our second, unused, field into a forest. I encourage everyone to set a good example by doing their part rather than trying to find ways of forcing others to do things for them.
Making my argument I felt being pushed into idealistic-communism-like tropes, but I think that idea could be achieved in a free world.
You're also assuming that cities are a universal solution. What if living in a more decentralized way is actually better for the environment?
Considering our growing population, it is achievable through ultra-dense habitats, and this way it is more feasible to implement wilderness entry controls than when living in a decentralised way.
It is obvious that currently there are people who’d just like to live in sparse areas, planet be damned—I bet that'll change.
I don't think centralization and separating ourselves from nature alone is a viable solution. We need to coexist and find more sustainable and environmentally friendly ways to exist in general.
The premise itself, the idea put forward by OP, is not without downsides and fundamental hurdles that I listed and acknowledged, though it is an interesting idea.
For what it's worth, large parts of the remote and sparsely populated areas are being slowly de-populated anyway. Things like coal mines and other obsolete resource extraction sites are shutting down, and most people move on over time. And then there's morons like me and my family, who moved out because we want to. There's more people like that, but it's not really enough to worry about.
Long story short: If someone is staying behind when businesses, stores and schools close, and the ageing infrastructure crumbles, well, then you're not going to convince that person to move anyway.
I'm skeptical of anyone who is convinced of anything. Especially that we can do a better job than nature.
People are well and truly capable of living with nature without killing whole forests. Its a matter of putting our interests above those of others that is the issue.
Eg. The government permits loggers to cut down 1000 year old trees in a forest, permits mutlinational Ag companies to cut down and burn much of the forest to plant some inane plant species that has marginal benefit to squeeze out an extra 10 cents on a human consumed product because ultimately the quarterly results have to improve. All these abstractions have seemingly nothing to do with a dead forest.
We should have instead, enforcable policy that puts a high price on environmental projects of any scope larger than..say an acre. It would force companies to innovate and invest in R&D. Use those big brains.
When you say we should limit human presence to 50% (of land?) that implies enormous development.
The world is already rewilding without segregation[1], but I’ve benefitted massively from backcountry camping and hunting, it’s turned me into an ardent conservationist, and I think we’d have a better more respectful relationship with nature if some more of us did the same.
[1] https://longnow.org/seminars/02015/jan/13/nature-rebounding-...
I like wolves, but if they gain a critical spread, there will be conflicts with civilization.
And of course you need to hunt them at some point to keep them away from urban areas. Didn't take 5 years after their immigration for my country to allow to hunt them again because they primarily attack grazing animals even if they are only present in tiny numbers.
We have too many boars and there is truth in the argument about ecological balance, but they aren't the preferred prey if there are that many sheep around. They aren't that stupid.
edit: Hunters also request anonymity for hunting wolves because they fear retaliation. You cannot make this up...
But with the modernization of farming and urbanization, marginal land too steep or too depleted to be worth the effort falls into disuse, bringing back step by step wild vegetation, small animals and bigger carnivores. There are an estimated 12,000 wolves in Europe now, far more than in the US. As shown at the Yellowstone national park, the reintroduction of wolves has influenced the behaviour of their preys, not daring to graze everywhere anymore, hence allowing wilder vegetation.
Scotland could start bringing back wolves too in order to manage naturally the deer population. But this plan meets resistance from shepherds who can't efficiently protect their herd. There is no serious consideration of releasing wolves into the UK countryside.
" He has 17 of these guard dogs now. They are expensive animals, each one worth far more than a sheep. “Last year, I had to explain to my seven-year-old daughter that I couldn’t get her a Christmas present because I had to buy a new dog. That was heartbreaking.” He doesn’t own his land. At this rate – the extra costs of security, the growing losses – he never will. For even with the dogs, his flock is not safe. "