> Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence and maybe we are just not looking carefully at it. Or maybe the damage was yet done.
If it existed, then enemies of ferrets like yourself, who go so far as to trot out anecdotes about raccoons halfway across the world, would know after all these decades. And the California state regulators would quickly invoke it in their defense. It doesn't exist because it doesn't exist, not because no one cares or is ignorant.
This whole topic does illustrate the benefit of federalism in serving as 'the laboratories of democracy': if ferrets were banned federally, how would we ever know how absurd and false all your arguments about the vast ecological harms of ferrets were? It would be a case of the seen and the unseen. But with federalism, we can simply look at the other 49 states and roll our eyes at the hyperbole. They aren't perfect natural experiments, but they do fine here.
You would be surprised about how many things we still don't know in Biology.
But we do know a few things... for example that European and American polecats are mammals in the same genus and close genetically.
So close that both are susceptible to the same diseases and in particular to the same viruses. How do I know that? Because I'm interested in pathology of vertebrates.
We know also that the American polecat went extinct, and that diseases played a main role in that. Check the bibliography.
Are you following me?
So when you say that there was "not any measurable effect". Yes, in fact there is a clear perfectly observable effect. The closest carnivore to European polecats went extinct in the wild. Why?
> benefit of federalism in serving as 'the laboratories of democracy':
I refuse to enter in political stupidity molasses. We are talking about nature problems here.
If it existed, then enemies of ferrets like yourself, who go so far as to trot out anecdotes about raccoons halfway across the world, would know after all these decades. And the California state regulators would quickly invoke it in their defense. It doesn't exist because it doesn't exist, not because no one cares or is ignorant.
This whole topic does illustrate the benefit of federalism in serving as 'the laboratories of democracy': if ferrets were banned federally, how would we ever know how absurd and false all your arguments about the vast ecological harms of ferrets were? It would be a case of the seen and the unseen. But with federalism, we can simply look at the other 49 states and roll our eyes at the hyperbole. They aren't perfect natural experiments, but they do fine here.