Bill to kill up to 90% of Idaho wolves heads to governor
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Then why are they doing it? This sounds like a bad decision being made in haste. Why not explore options like relocating them to somewhere they're needed?
https://www.idahopress.com/postregister/farmandranch/idaho/w...
I wonder if it’s liberals and conservatives looking from different vantage points. Liberals see massive cities and sprawl and call it too much, conservatives surrounded by fields and trees and nature say some more industry couldn’t hurt.
The anti-environmental stance on the part of Conservatives is a result of Reagan-era policies meant establish a pro-business, anti-regulation base among corporate donors and undermine Jimmy Carter's legacy[0].
Also, after the 1960s, environmentalism became associated with "leftist" politics via feminist and antiwar activism (the hippie movement.) Trump's heavily mocked tweet about climate change being a Chinese hoax comes from this longstanding general mistrust among Conservatives that environmentalism has a secret Marxist/Communist agenda behind it, due to those associations.
Finally, there's Al Gore. Much of the modern distrust of climate change (and by association, environmentalism) is fallout from effective Republican Party propaganda mocking his activism, and particularly An Inconvenient Truth.
[0]https://www.vox.com/2017/4/22/15377964/republicans-environme...
Example: Promote beavers everywhere- beavers are terraforming animals, flooding fields and carving out caverns beneath the soil, into which tractors sinks and breaks.
If you report that "damage" you get compensated (here in europe) - aka you get 50 $ for 5000 $ damage. And you then get to read that you, the evil farmer, were compensated by the nature lovers in the local newspaper.
Real dangerous animals are promoted as "friendly co-existing species" and evidence to the contrary buried. Coyotes and wulfes will attack humans, when easy food runs out and times are desperate - winter & numbers high, or opportunity knocks, aka they spot irregular movements (children, elderly).
Again, this is all legislation parked on people who experience the beauty of nature every day. And that beauty is rather grim and dark.
Seems that here is a ecosystem of environmentalists and environment dwellers, where one overpopulates and expands laws, only then to run into the other, and be fought back in a fury.
Nature returns, the world is healing, our absolutes are the virus.
In my observation, its usually people with a bad consciousness from their work for a cooperation, who join a compensation cult. Which is a immature reaction. Cause these cults do not really act, they merely display action, which then promptly falls apart longterm. Displayed action is NOT real longterm action and change. Its smoke and mirrors, hollywood, not real. A Potemkin village and a bad framework to create real change.
If you want to change the world, the state,politics and the law is the only way to act properly and persistent. For within the framework of law, people can acquire proper compensation for law caused property devaluation and then live and let life.
One of the things politicians say is "we are going to follow science" to avoid making a value decision.
Science can tell you the risks/benefits/tradeoffs of a decision, but you have to ultimately make a value judgement about the best course of action.
Science can tell us various things about what the wolf does and what its loss or population reduction is expected to do within a certain confidence interval. Politicians are the people, ultimately charged with taking that information and making a value decision about what to do.
For example, the pandemic, it seems most people agreed that shutdowns and masks were acceptable to save that many lives. However, politicians did not make the trade-off argument. They generally just challenged the science completely. First, that the pandemic was even real, then that it was deadly, then that shutdowns helped and that masks helped at all.
So yes, arguments of values can be made, but it seems rare that these frank discussions actually happen in politics. At least not in public.
The conservative argument on the danger of the virus is that it’s dangerous to old people and those with preexisting conditions, but not very dangerous to healthy people who are relatively younger. This is a valid subjective interpretation of the science. Whether something is safe or dangerous is a value judgement.
The CDC originally said don’t mask, that you can get it from surfaces, that it spreads through the air instead of droplets. For the lockdowns, the conservative argument was that they were too extreme given the costs, something like “destroying the global economy disproportionately hurts the people least affected by the virus: labor, small business owners, children, students, and so on, while having little effect on the relatively richer but more affected old”. The point was that lockdowns didn’t justify the costs.
I don’t agree with most of this, but you’re so far off the mark with the strawman of these arguments that I don’t think you’ve seriously understood them beyond immediate dismissal on partisan grounds.
If we did this pandemic over again, but it was a dem President going into an election year, I think Dems being anti lockdown would’ve been the most obvious outcome, because lockdowns hurt the exact people the party calls its constituents: lower classes, people of color, labor, young people, etc, while most benefiting the wealthier and older population.
And that's factually wrong. COVID is a BIG DEAL and has not been blown out of proportion; the countries that didn't treat it as such, like Sweden and Brazil, are now feeling the pain.
> but not very dangerous to healthy people who are relatively younger. This is a valid subjective interpretation of the science.
All available science suggests that COVID can cause permanent issues with cardiovascular function, even in healthy adults.
Just cuz polio didn't kill you doesn't mean it couldn't, say, leave you wheel-chair bound.
Additionally, the hospitals are full. You may not have much to worry about COVID, but if you're in a car crash or fall off a roof or get stabbed you won't be able to get treatment -- they just don't have the space / time / bodies.
> the conservative argument was that they were too extreme given the costs, something like “destroying the global economy disproportionately hurts the people least affected by the virus: labor, small business owners, children, students, and so on
More bollocks. What in the past 30 years has the conservative wing of the GOP ever done for labor, small businesses, children, and students? This is the party that is openly and aggressively stomping on all those groups -- and now is arguing in their favor? What BS. They're not concerned with these people in any way, save for using them as a political cudgel to force re-openings -- re-oepnings that were unambiguously asked for by big business.
> I don’t agree with most of this, but you’re so far off the mark with the strawman of these arguments that I don’t think you’ve seriously understood them beyond immediate dismissal on partisan grounds.
It sure sounds like you do. If you're rehashing questionable talking points for the sake of discussion (the Alex Jones "I'm just asking a question") -- you're effectively just advocating for it.
Don JR says covid is being blown of out proportion, you say it’s a big deal, these are subjective.
Conservatives say young people are relatively safe, you say they aren’t. What is the objective standard for relatively safe exactly?
You’re convinced conservatives stomp on all those groups, conservatives don’t see it that way and plenty of those in the listed group vote conservatively. What is the objective standard for advocating vs “stomping on”, and regardless of that: the conservatives argument is the above, attacking the conservatives who make it as disingenuous doesn’t contend with the actual argument at all.
I’m simply explaining to you what “the other side” with a different perspective actually says and believes, and you’re insistent that your value judgement is correct on the basis of zero evidence and more of “this is how I feel about the facts”. That’s precisely my point: all of this boils down to value judgements, and like I predicted: you’re so insanely ideological that you can’t stop to recognize that and consider these arguments to successfully refute them.
I’d suggest you go talk to a conservative and genuinely listen. You probably won’t change their mind and vice versa, but at least know what the real arguments are instead of the filter you seem to hear them through. Besides, you’ll likely find that your key differences are “same facts, different values”. Covid is dangerous in that it can kill or harm you or others. Perhaps you say that risk of harm demands closing done. Perhaps a conservative with the same facts makes their own risk assessment that softer measures are better. You drive your car everyday even with the risk of harm, others refuse to because of the risk of harm, who is objectively correct?
We need a much more nuanced analysis than just don't interfere with a key-stone species.
Just google "keystone species" and the first result features a case study on grey wolf removal and restoration in Yellowstone: https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/keystone-s...
Wolf impact on livestock is minimal, coverage is overblown, and in most states is investigated and compensated for by state authorities.
This is a terrible political move.
https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/news/2020-01-14/25-yea...
https://www.idahopress.com/postregister/farmandranch/idaho/w...
same thing in michigan.
it's emblematic of how the culture has shifted far to the conservative. environmentalism is out, the farm lobby is powerful, and now we'll straight-up shoot the wolves we spent so much time reintroducing.
at this point it's just another bullet in the culture war more than anything. farmers want them gone and doing so will piss off the libs, so why not?
> “That was the camel’s nose,” says former Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter. “The unintended consequences were the fact that after the introduction, even with the denials, the populations of wolves exploded, the federal government had control of them, and they weren’t going to turn it over to the states.”
killing the wolves will piss off the libs and show Washington who's boss and that's what conservative states want.
Personally though, I think if you want to start a sheep ranch in an area where wolves have lived for thousands of years, I’m not going to feel too sorry about what happens. You’d be smarter to pick a different place.
No one’s reintroducing them into new habitats, just their legacy habitats.
Having said that, possibly some animal introductions are not particularly desirable. My younger brother was once savaged by a coypu (not a European species) in the French countryside, and had to have stitches and tetanus and rabies injections. Also, they destroy river-banks.
I’d happily let predators into my urban area, cause the deer and geese cause their own damage. If some house cats get eaten, that’s not so bad for the native bird population either.
The Grizzly is on the California state flag, it’s a symbol of the state, and it’s an embarrassment that the legislature of that state looked the other way as it was killed off.
Then several other studies that tried to tease out if coyotes cause additive predation (increase in mortality rates) or compensatory predation (killing deer that would die anyways). Found a summary of the related research papers claiming "None of these studies found any evidence that coyote removal caused an increase in the deer population." another two studies found "Removal studies with white-tailed deer populations also show that coyote removal does not affect overall population growth."
Seems like the general conclusion is that coyotes have stabilizing effect on deer herds, which seems about right from a healthy ecosystem point of view. Similarly wolves help stabilize various populations, even of distant species like song birds, beavers, trees and other plants.
Thanks for the correction.
* deep crusted snow that the prey couldn't run on top of, but the coyotes could
* steep (40-45 degrees) slopes (harder on large animals)
* dense tree cover (makes whirl and kicking less effective)
* lack of deer
Lawmakers would still be free to draft and vote on so-called binding policy resolutions that directly alter regulations based on laws already in effect, operating within the constraints of the authority and intent of the law but altering implementation to best suit the need of the moment.
It's very reminiscent of the software industry where we just cannot seem to stop tinkering.