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Comment by myshpa | Hacker News Reader

"Despite these ecological benefits in desert environments, feral animals have long been denied the care, curiosity and respect native species deservedly receive. Instead, these animals are targeted by culling programs for conservation and the meat industry."

"However, there are signs of change. New fields such as compassionate conservation and multispecies justice are expanding conservation’s moral world, and challenging the idea that only native species matter."

We should be kind to all kinds.

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I think there's an argument that if an animal is having a negative effect on the ecosystem (having a negative effort on other animals) removing it can be a net good.

Humans then?

Well no, we’re special and the universe exists for our pleasure.

It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the big bang again.

Why not? The universe is a blank canvas upon which we can write our own purpose. Human pleasure seems like as good of a start as any.

Because we tend to do this at the expense of every other living thing. It’s also very presumptuous.

I think the most effective motivation to keep nature and life has historically been to maintain it for human pleasure

Similarly I don't think there is anything to offend with presumption, or at least anything that cares.

All the other species that aren't humans probably care.

Sure? I mean, we obviously don't want to eliminate humans, but it would probably be nice to have fewer of them. The ZPG movement isn't terribly controversial.

We're working on it!

Not humans, but farming practices and human diets. We have to reform agriculture to stop and reverse biodiversity loss.

Deforestation and farming practices (incl. pesticides/herbicides, pollution) are the main drivers of biodiversity loss.

https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/our-glob...

Our global food system is the primary driver of biodiversity loss

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26231772/

Biodiversity conservation: The key is reducing meat consumption

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22287498/meat-wildlife-bi...

The way we eat could lead to habitat loss for 17,000 species by 2050

Two recent studies underscore the danger the meat production system poses for biodiversity.

> We have to reform agriculture to stop and reverse biodiversity loss.

Sure! Do you have a proposal to make agriculture more eco-friendly without impacting quantity, quality and cost of the food produced?

> The key is reducing meat consumption

No! If you really want to achieve something, rather than just talking ecology, the key is not to try and force change on the general population.

> Do you have a proposal to make agriculture more eco-friendly without impacting quantity, quality and cost of the food produced?

Sure.

https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets

If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/917471

Feeding 10 billion people by 2050 within planetary limits may be achievable

A global shift towards healthy and more plant-based diets, halving food loss and waste, and improving farming practices and technologies are required to feed 10 billion people sustainably by 2050, a new study finds.

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/21/14449

How Compatible Are Western European Dietary Patterns to Climate Targets? Accounting for Uncertainty of Life Cycle Assessments by Applying a Probabilistic Approach

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/15/4110/htm

Which Diet Has the Least Environmental Impact on Our Planet? A Systematic Review of Vegan, Vegetarian and Omnivorous Diets

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-023-00795-w

Vegans, vegetarians, fish-eaters and meat-eaters in the UK show discrepant environmental impacts

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...

Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth

> If you really want to achieve something, rather than just talking ecology, the key is not to try and force change on the general population

The change is absolutely needed.

https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/sustainability...

One study estimates it would take just over 5 Earths to support the human population if everyone’s consumption patterns were similar to the average American.

We don't have those extra Earths, and won't anytime soon.

> the key is not to try and force change on the general population

Sure, solve the biggest problem we've ever faced, but don't change a thing.

That is such a clear example of Chesterton‘s fence, it makes me mad people can’t see it.

Not by any means do we understand enough about ecosystems to justify the hubris to declare any animal as a net negative effect to the environment.

In western Europe, hunters argue they need to cull deer, for example, to keep the forest in balance. That is only true because a) they make an effort to feed the animals during the winter, helping more to survive than otherwise would, and b) because natural predators have been eradicated in the previous centuries.

Don’t ever trust someone that attempts to justify culling a species for the greater good.

I don't disagree that our hubris gets us in trouble, but we do have eyes, some animals when introduced cause very quick changes to ecosystems and I don't think it's hubris to say "oh fuck, we goofed". I don't condone cullings specifically but I think conservation absolutely requires controlling non-native species in certain circumstances. New Zealand has had enumerable species go extinct thanks to introduced species.

The obvious one is usually feral cats, which end up killing birds in large numbers if they haven't dealt with cats before. And a lot of those tend to be escaped house pets.

> feral cats, which end up killing birds in large numbers ... escaped house pets

I'd argue that it's also a problem of biodiversity (at least in the U.S., don't know about New Zealand). If we hadn't eradicated almost all wolves, coyotes, foxes, birds of prey, weasels, and I don't know what else, nature would have solved the problem already.

Problem of biodiversity is one way of putting it. New Zealand did not have any mammals apart from bats. When those arrived, the native wildlife were not equipped to deal with them.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoat_in_New_Zealand

Even a common rat caused a number of species to go extinct in NZ. I can't imagine any conservationist would agree that we should let a common rat kill off dozens of incredibly unique species of such a one of a kind ecosystem, just in case the rat has a net positive effect in the long term.

Now that is hubris, what the hell do we know about long term net positives? Selfish warm feelings, while watching the reality of introduced extinction take place in a matter of mere decades. Pardon me.

many of the predators we eliminated also ate the same birds and rodents that the cats ate.

N = 1 but the cats I’ve seen around my neighborhood seem to be quite well cared for and simply killing for the sport of it, toying— ok, perhaps I’m anthropomorphizing— with their prey and often, IME not eating it at all

(in North America) and if we hadn't hunted and driven away the bobcats lynx and ocelots that would have killed those bird for food (along with the weasels stoats ferrets ermine mink foxes and other predators) how many birds would they have killed?

Generally speaking, if prey and predator evolve together then the prey have adapted and have a fair chance of escape/survival.

Non-native introductions usually have the issue of such a sudden population explosion that the prey cannot adjust in a timely fashion and get killed very quickly, very suddenly.

Fortunately for the birds then wild cats such as lynx bobcat and ocelot close cousin species to house cats were among those species we removed from the ecosystem before we introduced Felix catus.

We’ve introduced millions of cats into areas that haven’t had cats at all, like the entirety of Oceania.

Sure and that was bad. However using New Zealand as an excuse for pearl clutching in North America over cats, when there were several species wild cat here already not to (mention many other predators) that we decimated the populations of is disingenuous at best.

The counterpoint to this is the real issue overpopulation of whitetail deer has caused in the eastern US over the past 30 years or so.

I grew up in Virginia so here's one specific example: https://dwr.virginia.gov/wildlife/deer/deer-management-progr...

> b) because natural predators have been eradicated in the previous centuries.

Sure, but it doesn't change the fact that the population really does need to be culled.

Or predators could be reintroduced.

With deer, the problem is often not an excessive population but rather their tendency to stay in one place, destroying young shoots and plantings and hindering the growth of the plants we care about.

In contrast, with predators they cannot stay in one place for long enough, allowing most plants to outgrow their vulnerable size and survive.

It isn't Chesterton's fence though. We removed the fence (wolves in your example) and have now discovered why the fence was there, and have now stepped in to build a new fence.

Also removing native species and sending the balance out of whack is different to removing a non native species that has sent the balance out of whack.

> We removed the fence (wolves in your example) and have now discovered why the fence was there, and have now stepped in to build a new fence.

This isn’t quite accurate, though. Between removing the fence and getting fence construction inclinations, a lot of time has passed, and in the meantime, nature did lots of stuff we hardly understand.

Assuming otherwise is just repeating the same mistake again. Feral donkeys might be part of a new ecosystem now.

Maybe, but that's just an excuse to never do anything.

And we can be fairly sure about some things.

Rats in new Zealand, rabbits in Australia, cane toads in Australia, etc, etc.

Further it takes time to remove these populations, so you can observe what happens when they're removed from a local area.

In most cases, we objectively do know. Unless there's a yet unheard argument for cane toads and feral camels.

> I think there's an argument that if an animal is having a negative effect on the ecosystem (having a negative effort on other animals) removing it can be a net good.

Are you suggesting Genocide? /s

Animals migrate and habitat new areas over time, as well. Many “native” animals were once “invasive”.

Yes, suddenly introducing a new species can be disruptive, but it can also not be disruptive.

The definition of a native species is one that arrived without human intervention. You are correct that animals migraine all the time.

Insects can travel accross oceans under certain favorable wind conditions. I live in an island nation, New Zealand, and insects from Australia show up every so often after getting blown here. They usually don't establish themselves as the conditions are not right for them to thrive.

We should be, but we end up treating cats and dogs differently than we do rats and centipedes.

Because we're not quite there yet.

And "pests" are pests usually due to human-caused imbalances in ecosystems. Addressing the root of the issue, such as biodiversity loss, would solve a lot.

That's quite the romantic view of nature. My view is that nature is indeed red in tooth and claw, and that almost every species regard almost every other species as pests.

Homes, human or otherwise, are virtually defined by the absence of undesirable critters. If cows could be rid of flies buzzing about, they would. Increasing biodiversity would most likely also mean increased diversity of pests. Would we not be bothered by mosquitoes, if we had a lighter footstep on the environment? I'm sure cavemen also got bit and stung.

Funny enough that’s exactly what happens here in Oregon. Most of the wetlands were drained for farming, or just because we could. Turns out our selfish human geo-engineering had benefits to humans.

Whenever we restore a wetlands, the area goes from “surprisingly low amounts of mosquitoes most of the time” back to “fuck I can’t go outside”

https://www.opb.org/news/article/restored-marsh-breeds-swarm...

There are ways to somewhat mitigate this through more intelligent wetland design methods, but ultimately no way to even mostly resolve the problem without more intensive control methods, which sometimes end up being pesticides.

> Whenever we restore a wetlands, the area goes from “surprisingly low amounts of mosquitoes most of the time” back to “fuck I can’t go outside”

You haven't restored biodiversity; you've simply flooded an area. You need to wait for all the animals to return and propagate.

> without more intensive control methods, which sometimes end up being pesticides

Yep, that'd be the opposite of intelligent solution.

> Increasing biodiversity would most likely also mean increased diversity of pests

The exact opposite is true.

https://www.caryinstitute.org/science/research-projects/biod...

In ecosystems where predators are removed, the population of their prey, in this case, mice, often increases due to a lack of natural control. This process can lead to an increase in the tick population, as ticks often feed on mice. This is especially true for the white-footed mouse, which is a common host for ticks in the eastern and central United States. When the mouse population increases, ticks have a higher chance of obtaining their first blood meal from a mouse, which often carry the bacterium that causes Lyme disease. (less predators => more mice => more ticks)

https://theconversation.com/as-biodiversity-declines-on-corn...

As biodiversity declines on corn farms, pest problems grow

"We found that communities with stronger networks – that is, more linked species – had fewer pests. Not only this, but network centrality was important; communities with several groups of highly linked species, including insects that prey on others, don’t have the pest problems that loosely linked networks have. Thus, in addition to species diversity, the strength of interactions among species within a community seem to be related to when and where pest outbreaks occur. This research suggests that practices that reduce diversity in cornfields will aggravate pest problems over time."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4646789/

Decisions that reduce insect diversity and decrease the network strength in insect communities result in higher pest abundance.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1821039116

Tree diversity regulates forest pest invasion

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/97811182318...

Biodiversity offers great potential for managing insect pests. It provides resistance genes and anti-insect compounds; a huge range of predatory and parasitic natural enemies of pests; and community ecology-level effects operating at the local and landscape scales to check pest build-up.

> Increasing biodiversity would most likely also mean increased diversity of pests

It’s not the opposite that is true but that the net effect is not that negative.

Anecdotally, from my backyard food growing experience, biodiversity increase means more pests, but once more species come in, there comes a balance that exists in nature. Year 1 of my backyard farming, I had plentiful bounty. All my crops did extremely well, and I thought I was some kind of genius that disproved the decades of agricultural progress re:chemicals in farming. Year 2, was my biggest and most ambitious growing season and I could barely get anything out of it. The pests came, from insects to rodents and nothing survived. Year 3 and year 4 were my learning days. I introduced more plants to my garden, native plants, plants that provided food in late summers to next spring for the fauna, more varieties of food crops, etc. I welcomed everything in my garden, including pests. Eventually I hit a balance. Aphids suddenly affecting plants? The wasps are here. Rats and squirrels eating my strawberries? The owls and crows came to rescue. Slug problem? The neighborhood possum took care of it (though I had to put up a fence around some of my veggies for the possum). Overall I think with the constraints of the size of my backyard, I still need some proactive measures of pest control, but most of the time nature takes care of it and makes sure the problem is only temporary.

> most of the time nature takes care of it and makes sure the problem is only temporary

Absolutely, good point, thank you.

I do not understand the fetishization of “biodiversity.” If an animal removes all others it will quickly begin competing with its own, evolving into new species. We all come from the LUCA after all.

Scale matters. Species are currently going extinct at a rate orders magnitude greater than the historical average, due to humans. This breaks normal feedback loops and is absolutely something to be concerned about, even if you value all non-human intelligent life at zero.

Wonder why you’re greyed out. It’s not something we want to hear but it’s happening regardless.

> Species are currently going extinct at a rate orders magnitude greater than the historical average

Nobody has a good idea how many species there are currently, let alone how many there were in the past and how many of them went extinct. Estimates for the current species count are from 3 to 100 million[0], which is a range too wide to be useful in this context.

Of the mass extinction events in Earth's history, we may be peeking above the baseline rate[1]; the most severe statement we can make is that vertebrate mammals don't appear to be doing very well in recent times, which stands to reason, considering that Homo sapiens is by far the most competitive vertebrate mammal, doing a good job of crowding others out. But there's a lot of life and biodiversity outside of vertebrate mammals.

[0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3160336/

[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/mass-extinctions

[2]: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1400253

Think of biodiversity as the entropy source for all of the random number generators that drive biological innovation.

When biodiversity goes down, there are fewer potential biological resources that can be tapped to solve new problems.

You are correct that biodiversity has a natural upwards component from speciation. But the timescale (which you describe as "quickly") is many orders of magnitude slower than the timescale of the downwards component that extinction has. A species that took literally tens of millions of years to speciate and evolve can be wiped out in months.

Has me thinking just how invasive of a species we humans are.

we are the ultimate invasive predatory species, there is no doubt about that outside of the possibility of some awful multispecies viral/bacterial threat; nothing else comes close to be as destructive as humans to ecosystems.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-47444297 "Villagers have been whipped with belts, attacked with machetes, beaten unconscious with bamboo sticks, sexually assaulted, shot, and murdered by WWF-supported anti-poaching units, according to reports and documents obtained by BuzzFeed News."

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