> Perhaps predators are needed to bring nature back into balance.
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.
The equilibrium with lower biodiversity is more fragile and less beneficial for us[0]. Having said that, we are _not_ nature. We make conscious decisions and so we should hold ourselves in a higher standard (both from a practical and moral perspective).
If tomorrow we find proof that dolphins make conscious decisions, will they cease to be nature?
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.
Tomorrow? Of course animals make conscious decisions. This orangutan had, prior to implemention, made a conscious decision to build a hammock by tying a sheet to the cage bars.
The orangutan's ability to build a hammock does not change its responsibility towards its environment (as its ability to alter it is still very low). However, my ability to start a fire does come with significant responsibility.
If we plotted potential for environmental impact(Y) vs moral agency(X), beavers would be up and to the left, orangutans bottom right and humans up and to the right (beating both on both axis).
Yes to your link, no to “humans / conscious decision-making are not nature.” Moreover, morality is itself a naturally emergent phenomenon of evolution. Charles Darwin even proposed this, and we have found it to hold true again and again.
"morality is itself a naturally emergent phenomenon of evolution".
Sure, but now that we have this evolutionary mechanism we also have more responsibility than cyanobacteria (which is what my original comment was about).
Humans certainly are nature. In a very real sense, every part of us is "natural", and we are emergent properties of the natural world. Figs do not grow on thistles.
Well, it's certainly hard to define. Just as any grocery store can slap an "all-natural" label on nearly any product, so too can we.
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.
The first definition of natural returned when I google the word is
> 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.
Came here to write this, but you formulated it much clearer than I would have. Personally, I'd prefer a world with those animals. But that's an ideological (spiritual?) stance.
I recommend Adam Curtis' "All watched over by machines of loving grace" as an exploration of the theme.
I'm not so sure, we are still largely natural creatures. We are more nature than machine, certainly. Air is far more important to me than electricity. Wolves serve an important role in the ecosystem, it is unclear to me that we can so easily survive without them.
I actually agree. The point is not that it would be easy, or desirable to have an engineered ecosystem without wolves. It wouldn't; the article makes the against it being easy, and I'm opinionating the point about it being desirable. :P
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...
Ah yeah I totally agree with that. Our arguments are orthogonal to the point. I'm simply saying the ideal number of wolves is almost certainly more than zero. You seem to be arguing that there's no ideal number of wolves, which is reasonable. The ideal number could easily change over time as well. Before the industrial revolution wolves posed a larger threat than they do today, for example.
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.
I believe Lyme disease is a symptom of the wolf and bear populations getting driven into extinction. Deer populations prosper and tick spread also prospers along with them. Ticks multiply on deer. Mice and small bird populations also prosper. They're reservoir species for Lyme but I fail to see the connection to wolves. Most likely also a smaller predator species like weasel, polecat, stoat, ferret, mink and wild cat are also driven into extrinction along with wolves and bears because of deforestation and habitat fragmentation. It's really a very complex issue, but it kind of boils down to huge swaths of woods getting fragmented and cut down for agriculture, forestry, entertainment (ski resorts), residential use. Residential areas are also growing into the woods, triggering more interaction with big predators and driving them into extinction where they're not already extinct (Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe).
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?
If one predator like wolves goes away, another predator like ticks picks up the slack.
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.
When wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone they changed the behavior of deer in a way that went as far as reducing erosion and redirecting rivers.
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.
Yes, agreed. They have different effects, things are complicated and hard to predict. And even hard to analyze after they happened.
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.
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.
Conservation and biodiversity is about humans manipulating the environment away from a natural equilibrium to something better.
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.
>> 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.
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.
For the past 10.000 years we're living in unprecedented stable temperatures compared to millions of years. This zone is the foundation of human civilization rise and fall. Biodiversity will contribute to this stability, or is even the foundation. See latest Netflix documentary by David Attenborough.
I don’t know if they are in Europe, but in some ecosystems wolves are a keystone species. That’s a species that if removed leads to cascading changes with large effects throughout the ecosystem.
Here is part of an article at Wikipedia on wolves in Yollowstone describing the changes there when wolves were reintroduced.
The story of wolves in Yellowstone gets a very prominent mention in the article and seems to be cited as an inspiration for the movement to reintroduce wolves to Scotland. They don't directly state this, but right after talking about the huge changes observed in Yellowstone there's a section on how Scotland has issues with management of the deer population and suggests that wolves could help.
Huh...you’re right. I skimmed some of the article the first time and missed that it included Yellowstone.
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.
This is an interesting article. Our wolf population (Czechia) has been expanding for years now, so the problems are very well known.
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.
Artificially supporting and re-introducing wild life has its hazards too. In my country, romania, we have grown a huge bears population, totally disconnected from a natural food chain as you can get. They usually go into cities and villages for food, stopped hibernating because of the availability of food during winter, and keep reproducing. Some have actually moved in abandoned places near cities terrorising locals. The bears are not hunted, with no natural predators and unlimited food...
The sadest thing is that wolves are demonized world wide as a nuisance/danger. Movies like "The Grey" where Liam Neeson faces down grey wolves that are hunting him is a great example of this.
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.
We should rewild 50% of the world and ban humans from entering without a permit. Permits should only be given to those with legitimate professional requirements.
Hahaha. I dont disagree with the sentiment but I think its misplaced.
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.
Humans become less human and lose their understanding and capacity to value the natural world without simplistic sentimentality when they are divorced from experiencing it. There’s a balance.
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.
Urban densification including urban farming in skyscrapers. Desalination would need to go mainstream too. Of course many will be upset they can't live in a pile on 4 acres. I also have little confidence this would be a popular move given the outrageous individualist fundamentalism we've managed to create in society but I am convinced it is essential to avoiding systemic collapse.
How is that better than living in harmony with nature? A handful of acres can support a family if properly cared for. Why is living in boxes and pretending the world doesn't exist preferable to coexisting with it?
I'm skeptical of anyone who is convinced of anything. Especially that we can do a better job than nature.
We still need our cities to be in harmony with nature. Humans are frighteningly destructive. Everywhere we go gets destroyed be it by industry or careless individual actions. We cannot leave this to individual choice fraught with conflicts of interests and sociopathy.
They don't need to be at odds with nature either. Think more solarpunk than cyberpunk. Every building should be designed to provide habitat for nature.
And those of us who are living a quiet life on a small plot of land in one of those areas? Forced relocation into a physically and culturally unfamiliar place? "Sorry, you're not a part of the problem, but you live in the same area as those who are. Off you go!"?
There has been attempts at mass re-locations of people before. It usually didn't turn out well.
Were there ever mass relocations of people done with the specific goal of preserving and re-wilding nature?
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.
No. Many re-locations were supposedly for the common good, though.
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.
We seem to be mostly on the same page, although I think the biggest barriers arise from mutual distrust and rogue actors. (Re)education, adjustment, integration, the logistics of the move—all would be possible given willing understanding citizens, fair and efficient management of the process, international cooperation, and just a few more technological advancements (which, compared to the rest, starts to look like the easy part).
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.
Yes, we are on the same page in regards to the problem statement, but I have no illusion about this being feasible, unless you are suggesting we forcibly take hundreds of millions of people from their homes, rob them of their cultural identity, and place them in re-education camps. Your belief in humanity's ability to work past our differences is admirable, but unrealistic. For both our sakes I hope you are right, because this isn't the last time someone comes up with ideas like this.
My point though is that people would be willing to leave if those issues were addressed. (I.e., they would agree that saving the planet is beneficial in long term, and all that stops them is insufficient information and distrust.) No need to force anyone.
Some people are simply not well-suited for living in a city. I'm one of them, and I know many others like me.
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. :)
You say “simply” but there obviously must be a cause. If can be addressed, it could, and if it is a fundamental condition then you’d qualify for an exception—assuming nobody pretends to have psychological issues in order to not have to leave (and thus undermine the whole project and the future of their own descendants), that would be just fine.
Why must there be a cause? You can't just "make people better", just because they aren't having the same priorities, desires and morals as you do? That's the mistake the guys that did the mass-relocations of old did. ;)
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.
Yes there are all those hurdles, but assuming they are figured out there’s no way someone would consciously choose to sacrifice planetary ecosystem in the name of “you know, I’d just hate to move”.
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 are describing simple differences in human beings as problems to be solved. This is an extremely dangerous position to take. Who is to say people in the city are not the ones that need to be "healed".
You're also assuming that cities are a universal solution. What if living in a more decentralized way is actually better for the environment?
You seem to have missed a point upthread. That’s the premise, rewilding 50% of the planet and specifically not allowing humans to enter—not to heal people somewhere but for the sake of the humanity and the ecosystem it’s part of long term.
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.
If you disagree with the premise, then you are misplacing your argument. I was replying to a comment that argued this cannot be done nicely and mentioned forced relocations of the past. I argue that there was no precedent for relocation of people done in the name of wilderness preservation, which can be voluntary and with downsides mitigated.
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.
The entire premise is a bit shaky and I am not convinced planned re-locations will result in a net positive for the environment. It's quite possible for a human to live in the wilderness alongside the aforementioned wolves (I saw a pack in the distance as late as yesterday). As you say, this sub-thread isn't about that, though. :)
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.
This seems to imply we could develop half the world, which seems like a lot more than we have done today. Your description of controlled access sounds like the BLM. 50% is too arbitrary to be compelling, what makes you pick that number?
Half of all habitable land is used for agriculture. 37% by forests... much of that managed forests which are used for human resources. The ones we aren't managing we are felling, irreversibly destroying million year old ecosystems.
Luckily, most of the globe is still wild. We have barely started colonizing the oceans after all.
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).
The oceans might not be colonised in a traditional sense of the word but they’ve very much felt the effects of our presence and are in pretty dire shape.
The USPS provides a critical service. While some rural areas may have reached the end of their viable existence the USPS still exists to serve places where the market has not yet offered a solution. It's a critical service to the functioning and growth of a nation of our size.
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.
Yeah, no. You don't get people to move by making their lives horrible. see: coal country.
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.
Heh. I think you are correct though. Having a few packs could be beneficial, but while city dwellers are mostly in favor, hunters and farmers see it more critically.
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...
I started reading this article, got about four paragraphs in and realized it was really fluffy and extremely long and then stopped. Concision is extremely undervalued. If anyone was braver than I and has a TLDR, I and other readers would love to hear it.
By 1700, wolves had long been extirpated from the current UK, though their old territory is commemorated in the toponyms.
In Europe, those that survived retreated to rare enclaves and mountains.
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.
Yeah but it seems that the kind of dogs who can scare off or fight off a pack of wolves are quite expensive:
"
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.
"
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...