Hacker News Reader

Comment by joshtbradley | Hacker News Reader

Also collapsed the elk population from 18,000 to 2,000 and they’re worried the bison will eat the trees… I understand nature is incredibly complex and intelligent, and I’m curious what the end effect will be. But from an anthropocentric perspective, this is silly. When will the first human death occur?

View on HN

Why would a single human death, or even a few deaths a year matter to the policy? Dogs kill people, bees kill people, lots of things kill people and plenty of those things don't even serve as much of a purpose as wild wolves. If there are benefits to be had as a result of this policy, the question isn't some artificial zero-tolerance policy towards human death and injury, it's the usual balance of pros and cons.

Fair point. Except for “don’t even serve as much of a purpose as wild wolves.” I’d argue dogs, bees, and let’s say cars, all serve an enormous purpose to humanity. The pros/cons of replenishing an ecosystem is a good framework to analyze this through. I am selfishly an advocate for humanity, and safer forests with more wild game for hunting seems like a bigger pro to me. Of course, I could be disastrously wrong. But we don’t know yet.

If you’re going to exterminate every species that kills humans, there’s gonna be a lot of very angry dog owners on your doorstep.

That’s not my argument. I’m saying wolves are dangerous, and as a human, I don’t want to have to worry about wolves when I’m hiking Yellowstone. Call me selfish but I’d rather be alive than feel good that the forest is back to its natural state.

Yup that is pretty selfish.

Have you considered that you might trip and fall when hiking Yellowstone? Perhaps we should pave it.

No steaks either. Cows kill nearly as many humans as dogs (~20/year vs ~40/year)

> When will the first human death occur?

what?

Right? The first human death happened millions of years ago.

You can usually understand this kind of phrase as having the qualifier "in a way relevant to the current discussion", meaning in this case "first human death caused by re-introduced wolves".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com