
When One Protected Species Kills Another - pseudolus
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-one-protected-species-kills-another-what-are-conservationists-to-do1/
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rdiddly
So here's a radical idea that's fun to think about. Usually we think of nature
as "conditions before humans came along." And we figure that if humans
disrupted it, then humans should try to undo the disruption.

But that's just fixing one intervention by means of another intervention, and
the fix likely has just as many, if a different set, of poorly-understood and
unintended consequences. So lately I've started to define nature a little
differently - maybe "nature" isn't what earth looked like before humans, it's
what earth would look like if humans disappeared. Or to put it less
fantastically, a scenario of minimal human intervention from this point
forward.

In that context, the blackberry, kudzu and ivy vines that we introduced, are
the new landscape, the new nature, the thing that ends up taking over the
sites we disturbed. Similar dynamics would presumably play out in the oceans
and everywhere else.

The thing this definition of nature has in common with the more usual one, is
that phrase "minimal human intervention." The difference of course is that it
doesn't try to undo the recent past, which in general throughout the universe
but also specifically in this context, I think is pretty much impossible. So
this definition, and the course of action that follows logically from it, has
the bonus attribute of being a bit more consistent with current reality.

Of course it'll never happen that way unless _homo sapiens_ really does
"disappear," i.e. suffers a dramatic decrease in either demand for
intervention (read: population), or ability to intervene, in ecosystems. But
it's interesting to think about.

~~~
daenz
"Nature" could also include humans. I haven't seen anything to suggest that
the natural outcome of billions of years of evolution isn't some highly
intelligent, dominant organism that ends up shaping its environment to an
extreme degree.

~~~
vageli
> "Nature" could also include humans. I haven't seen anything to suggest that
> the natural outcome of billions of years of evolution isn't some highly
> intelligent, dominant organism that ends up shaping its environment to an
> extreme degree.

I wonder if the narrative that humans are not of nature makes it easier for us
to harm the environment, since we do not feel part of it (as evidenced by our
use of the word nature as some _other_).

~~~
ksdale
I think this point has merit and it’s important for us to think of ourselves
as part of the environment, but also, there are lots of other animals (like
most of them?) that don’t care at all about the environment and the only
reason they don’t destroy it in pursuit of their vital resources is that they
can’t. There are endless stories of animals eating and breeding until their
ecosystems are destroyed and they suffer massive die offs. Of course that
tends to happen most often to invasive species, but nature certainly does not
keep itself in balance through conscientiousness.

~~~
gridlockd
> here are endless stories of animals eating and breeding until their
> ecosystems are destroyed and they suffer massive die offs.

I believe the hypothesis that we're _not_ one of these animal species may well
prove false.

> Of course that tends to happen most often to invasive species, but nature
> certainly does not keep itself in balance through conscientiousness.

Neither do humans. We tend to fuck things up until they become real problems,
then mitigate the damage, sometimes with success. That's not really
conscientious, that's "winging it". This is the true nature of the human
being.

------
Nasrudith
It probably wouldn't be practical and woukd require a lot of preresearch and
funding to get right but I could see a "buffer" common species to make a more
appealing prey. Say getting a huge hatchery full of fish and mass releasing
them to boost non-endangered prey numbers for example. Of course doing that
without making another disaster would be easier said than done.

~~~
xg15
Yeah, looks like the old engeneering strategy "solve problem A by creating
problem B, solve problem B by creating problem C, solve problem C ... etc
etc."

Not that I have a better idea how to get out of this mess...

------
gridlockd
99% of species went extinct before humans arrived. Adapt or die is how life
works. Can't survive alongside humans? Tough call.

That's not to say conservationism is futile, I fully agree we should save
those Pandas, or various sea mammals, or monkeys and apes. Why? Because
they're _fascinating_ and _adorable_. Not out of principle.

But let's be real, even if it wasn't for humans some of these would've been
destined to go extinct with just a minor tilt of the ecosystem.

------
qazpot
we should leave nature alone.

~~~
soulofmischief
Most endangered species would not be so if it wasn't for human intervention
and over-consumption. It's arguable that saving a species from extinction _is_
leaving nature alone.

------
obpacheco
I was listening to an interview of Shane Dorian, a well-known big wave surfer
from Hawaii. He was remarking on how, when he was growing, when there was a
shark attack the locals would go on a shark hunt, killing numerous sharks.
Around the nineties sentiments around these hunts changed, and that combined
with the depleting of fisheries, shark attacks in Hawaii have risen
dramatically. I think it's time we brought back these hunts in the name of
protecting otters. I am obviously not just saying this as a biased surfer...

~~~
crooked-v
Hawaii's population has also increased from 1.1 million people in 1990 to 1.4
million people today. There's no great peculiarity around the fact that more
people means more encounters with sharks.

Also, "dramatically" is quite the claim, when there's a total of only 137
recorded shark attacks in Hawaii ever (including incidents without injuries)
dating back to the 1700s.

~~~
obpacheco
I was just parrotting the interview I listened to but after looking into it
it's not false to say that shark incidents are definitely increasing in
frequency from using information from [https://dlnr.hawaii.gov/sharks/shark-
incidents/incident-grap...](https://dlnr.hawaii.gov/sharks/shark-
incidents/incident-graphs/)

Just eyeballing here there was 6 shark atacks from 1980-1985 to about 50 in
the last 5 years. Seams like that backs up his claim that there has been a
dramatic increase.

