"On December 13, (Worland) was on a snow machine, trying to scare off a herd that had come within half a kilometer of the lot. No one else witnessed what happened, but one of the animals charged him. Worland received a fatal laceration to his femoral artery, and by the time emergency responders arrived, he had bled out."
Of course, Curtis Worland's death is a tragedy, and my heart goes out to his loved ones. But danger is a part of life, and humans simply don't belong everywhere. There's precious little space remaining on the planet for wildlife.
Sometimes, we have to decide that the animals have the right to defend themselves, even when it means fatal risks to the humans intruding on their habitat.
> “We understand that muskoxen are here and that they will not go away, but we feel that they have been mismanaged and that we don’t have the right to protect ourselves and our property without risk of us being prosecuted for defending ourselves.”
What seems to be the issue is the humans aren’t being allowed to appropriately defend themselves. Humans and megafauna can cohabitate, but it’s not always sunshine and kisses. You can allow people to be territorial without putting them in unreasonable danger or massacring the wildlife.
A lot of city folk are pretty delusional about animals. Plenty of rural folk are as well. Mutual respect of nature means participating in it and that isn’t always free of violence but it can be done responsibly. People have to actually understand what reasonably means though.
> Keeping a dog lot anywhere requires a constant loop of chores: feeding dogs, running dogs, scooping up dog poop. But keeping one in Nome comes with additional responsibilities: monitoring threats from muskoxen, stubborn, shaggy animals with formidable horns and a record of attacking dogs.
I vote that we finally retire the term "yak shaving" and replace it with "fighting muskoxen".
As in you want to create a personal blog so you first have to set up a VM, research static site generators, try to get random ruby gems to work, then figure CI/CD on Github actions, and before you know it you're in the Alaskan tundra fighting muskoxen.
"Fighting muskoxen"doesn't really roll of the tongue tho, it's too long for one, and I feel like it would have a better ring to it if the verb came last(like it does inthe original phrase)
Of course, Curtis Worland's death is a tragedy, and my heart goes out to his loved ones. But danger is a part of life, and humans simply don't belong everywhere. There's precious little space remaining on the planet for wildlife.
In the past 40 years, Earth has lost fully HALF its wildlife (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/29/earth-lo...) and 97% of Earth’s land area may no longer be ecologically intact (https://www.frontiersin.org/news/2021/04/15/97-of-earths-lan...).
Sometimes, we have to decide that the animals have the right to defend themselves, even when it means fatal risks to the humans intruding on their habitat.