Deer and how to deal with them

[krtek a houby]

On one island over here, monkeys and deer hang out

 

[8ball]

Wolves will just need to eat one dead hiker or climber and will be wiped out again.

Be even worse for them if they eat an alive one.

 

[dylanredefined]

Be even worse for them if they eat an alive one.

Yeah, that would be worse. Not sure if wolves hunt and eat people doubt if some climber falls to their death they wouldn't pass up free meat though.

 

[DotCommunist]

I bet those siberian taiga dwelling wolves have eaten their fair share of people. Probably the wrong sort of wolf for here anyway.

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Yeah, that would be worse. Not sure if wolves hunt and eat people doubt if some climber falls to their death they wouldn't pass up free meat though.

Having wolves and bears (especially polar bears) in the UK would make hiking much more exciting.

 

[redcogs]

I think it's an idea that has legs, but only alongside other ideas and other considerations. I find some of the assumptions behind it questionable. What is 'wild'? Its definition appears to be something like 'an environment without humans in it'. Well that's not the world we live in, and it appears to include ideas of human exceptionalism, placing us somehow apart from nature rather than part of it. In many parts of the world, including the UK, most environments are going to have humans doing their human things in them or nearby. How do we produce healthy, sustainable, biodiverse environments with humans in them or nearby? That's a harder but perhaps more fruitful question to address.

aye lbj, i hear you, and of course i ache to see property relations revolutionised so that the aristocrats and corporations grip of the land is broken and replaced with democratic stewardship. Trouble is, in my misanthropic dotage i can feel myself losing optimism with each passing day. Our area of Scotland, although beautiful to the casual observer, is replete with monocultured crop fields of green or yellow or purple, offering an impression of wildness and nature - when actually it is pretty sterile terrain which has been so bulldozed or drained over time by agribusiness practices that it can appear 'green', when actually it aint. Acreages of regimented fast growing conifers which sustain nothing much in the way of wildlife are also become the norm. i'm afraid we have largely lost the magic of the properly wild areas, and it saddens me. i think i know where Monbiot is coming from. Humanity has to get a balance between the natural world and itself, at the moment there isn't one.

 

[danny la rouge]

I think it's an idea that has legs, but only alongside other ideas and other considerations. I find some of the assumptions behind it questionable. What is 'wild'? Its definition appears to be something like 'an environment without humans in it'. Well that's not the world we live in, and it appears to include ideas of human exceptionalism, placing us somehow apart from nature rather than part of it. In many parts of the world, including the UK, most environments are going to have humans doing their human things in them or nearby. How do we produce healthy, sustainable, biodiverse environments with humans in them or nearby? That's a harder but perhaps more fruitful question to address.

I agree that one of the main things humanity needs to learn is that The Environment isn’t something over there, while Humanity is something over here.

We are part of the environment: at the atomic level, we are carbon and water and minerals made from elements forged in ancient stars. At the individual level, we breathe the oxygen, eat the organic matter, live on the soil of the planet, and eventually return to it. At the species level, we roam and herd over the planet’s surface, using its resources, while shaping and being shaped by its processes. We are the environment, and the environment is us.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

Recently I've been enjoying these from Aldi. So I'd certainly support more deer in discount supermarkets if there are some spare.

 

[krtek a houby]

I agree that one of the main things humanity needs to learn is that The Environment isn’t something over there, while Humanity is something over here.

We are part of the environment: at the atomic level, we are carbon and water and minerals made from elements forged in ancient stars. At the individual level, we breathe the oxygen, eat the organic matter, live on the soil of the planet, and eventually return to it. At the species level, we roam and herd over the planet’s surface, using its resources, while shaping and being shaped by its processes. We are the environment, and the environment is us.

We are the world, we are the children

 

[danny la rouge]

We are the world, we are the children

Well, yes. I know it sounds simplistic, but I think it’s a genuinely deep perceptual error in human thinking.

 

[krtek a houby]

Well, yes. I know it sounds simplistic, but I think it’s a genuinely deep perceptual error in human thinking.

Am in agreement with you, just that bloody song came to mind

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

Having wolves and bears (especially polar bears) in the UK would make hiking much more exciting.

As someone who hikes in Griz country... yes, it does. You know to follow certain rules to improve your chances of safety and keep alert to changes in your environment.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

Yeah, that would be worse. Not sure if wolves hunt and eat people doubt if some climber falls to their death they wouldn't pass up free meat though.

People who oppose wolf reintroduction claim this, but before wolves were removed from the environment in the US, there was only one death from wolf attack noted in 100 years. This was traced back to a starving pack who didn't have any other food. Bears kill many more people than wolves, and falls kill more people than bears.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

That's the main reason that estates have controlled burning on the heather to produce lots of new growth.

Some plant species need fire to germinate their seeds. Fire is part of the ecosystem in many places, but not on the scale its going on in Canada and Maui.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

This, 'wild animal x will destroy their food source unless we kill them all' thing was crap when it was sparrowhawks eradicating garden birds, crap when badgers were murdering all the hedgehogs and crap now deer are eating all the trees.

Natural systems are not steady-state, there are booms and busts. You can't claim to care about living things and then whinge about them behaving as all living things do. Stop breeding sheep and cattle for slaughter, leave the land and the creatures on it to do their own thing and see whether we still have a problem with excess wild herbivores or if the problem was us all along.

The problem with grazing animals is that they'll stay in one place and eat everything to the ground. Yellowstone had problems with this and actually had a ranger crew to keep them moving (and stop tourists from doing stupid shit). The elk were getting into streambeds and eating everything, including critically endangered plants. They found that reintroducing wolves keeps them moving and the plants get a chance to recover. They've seen a comeback of a number of rare plants. It's not about overpopulation, it's about how the elk use their space in the absence of predators. Ecosystems are dependent on having an intact ecosystem. You can't randomly pull species out of the system and have it function as "designed."

 

[farmerbarleymow]

As someone who hikes in Griz country... yes, it does. You know to follow certain rules to improve your chances of safety and keep alert to changes in your environment.

British people are notoriously unfit so the presence of apex predators with a taste for human flesh would also do wonders for the nation's health.

 

[danny la rouge]

British people are notoriously unfit so the presence of apex predators with a taste for human flesh would also do wonders for the nation's health.

We have apex predators already! Badgers.

 

[farmerbarleymow]

We have apex predators already! Badgers.

Badgers are lovely but not as cute as a polar bear - they're just giant teddies

And I've never heard of badgers killing and eating humans so they're a bit dull really - and they eat hedgehogs.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

Badgers are lovely but not as cute as a polar bear - they're just giant teddies

And I've never heard of badgers killing and eating humans so they're a bit dull really.

That's because nobody has ever been found.

 

[SpookyFrank]

We have apex predators already! Badgers.

Foxes. Raptors.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

Shooting them works really well.
Unfortunately its an expensive hobby. So not really enough people shooting deer as a hobby. Wolves will just need to eat one dead hiker or climber and will be wiped out again.

That may be a condition of where you live. Poor people hunt in the US for meat all the time. It still costs money, but it comes out much cheaper than the supermarket. Even those costs can be limited by processing the deer yourself.

As an aside, I was surprised to hear that backyard greenhouses exist in the UK. Here they're expensive items only the rich can afford.

 

[farmerbarleymow]

As an aside, I was surprised to hear that backyard greenhouses exist in the UK. Here's they're expensive items only the rich can afford.

That's interesting - I always assumed they were common everywhere. There's nothing better than the heady smell of tomato plants in a hot greenhouse - that's why I buy vine tomatoes so I can sniff the stalks.

One neighbour in the 70s had one, whereas we had the back garden turned over into growing veg. Us kids had a row we had to look after - I was far more interested in watching the caterpillars destroy the crops though so not many plants survived.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

That's interesting - I always assumed they were common everywhere. There's nothing better than the heady smell of tomato plants in a hot greenhouse - that's why I buy vine tomatoes so I can sniff the stalks.

One neighbour in the 70s had one, whereas we had the back garden turned over into growing veg. Us kids had a row we had to look after - I was far more interested in watching the caterpillars destroy the crops though so not many plants survived.

I bet your parents appreciated that.

I got in trouble because I love peas. I'd go out and eat them off the plants.

 

[kebabking]

Foxes. Raptors.

Neither Foxes nor Raptors will kill deer or goats more than a week or so after being born.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

Neither Foxes nor Raptors will kill deer or goats more than a week or so after being born.

Those losses can be lowered by having livestock guardians like stock dogs or alpacas. One of my rural neighbors tried sheep ranching and sold out after losing his entire spring kidding to coyotes.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

That may be a condition of where you live. Poor people hunt in the US for meat all the time. It still costs money, but it comes out much cheaper than the supermarket. Even those costs can be limited by processing the deer yourself.

As an aside, I was surprised to hear that backyard greenhouses exist in the UK. Here they're expensive items only the rich can afford.

Small greenhouses are common here. The kind maybe two people could stand in at a time.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

People who oppose wolf reintroduction claim this, but before wolves were removed from the environment in the US, there was only one death from wolf attack noted in 100 years. This was traced back to a starving pack who didn't have any other food. Bears kill many more people than wolves, and falls kill more people than bears.

Pet dogs kill way more people than wolves ever have done.

Wolves in their natural habitat are generally emotionally stable animals that tend to stay away from humans. As do bears. If a bear has a close encounter with a human it's usually because the bear has made a mistake and didn't see/hear/smell the human coming.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I agree that one of the main things humanity needs to learn is that The Environment isn’t something over there, while Humanity is something over here.

We are part of the environment: at the atomic level, we are carbon and water and minerals made from elements forged in ancient stars. At the individual level, we breathe the oxygen, eat the organic matter, live on the soil of the planet, and eventually return to it. At the species level, we roam and herd over the planet’s surface, using its resources, while shaping and being shaped by its processes. We are the environment, and the environment is us.

Monbiot has taken aim at agriculture. His solution, inasmuch as he has elaborated on one, is to use high tech to intensively farm a smaller area. There are other interesting ideas that involve farming more extensively in ways that promote biodiversity. Monocultures are the real crime here.

I take aim at slightly more recent targets than Monbiot, such as Aristotle, Christianity and Islam. That's where I see the roots of the perceptual error you speak of, placing humans either apart from or at the pinnacle of 'nature'.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

Small greenhouses are common here. The kind maybe two people could stand in at a time.

I've only known two people with greenhouses. One was the wealthy wife of a local doctor who was teaching me knitting. She also had a pond and large grounds and outdoor kitchen. Her house and its amenities are now part of my plans for a dreamhouse (unlikely to be fullfilled).

The other is a rural neighbor who tried running a commercial tomato growing greenhouse. He failed after a couple of years, and it still sits there empty.

 

[iona]

I've only known two people with greenhouses. One was the wealthy wife of a local doctor who was teaching me knitting. She also had a pond and large grounds and outdoor kitchen. Her house and its amenities are now part of my plans for a dreamhouse (unlikely to be fullfilled).

The other is a rural neighbor who tried running a commercial tomato growing greenhouse. He failed after a couple of years, and it still sits there empty.

The standard UK ones are much smaller than you'd use for commercial scale growing. You can get a brand new 4x6 foot one for about £400 or under £300 ($380 US) if you get polycarbonate instead of glass, and second hand ones quite often come up on eBay or freecycle if you're prepared to dismantle, transport and rebuild it yourself. You can get smaller lean-to style growhouses for even less money too.