RE: Preying on the predators
January 25, 2021 at 3:50 pm
(This post was last modified: January 25, 2021 at 4:25 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
There are tons of examples, but there's not much difference between them in practice - so lets focus on one that's been running since the 40's.
NRS researchers have maintained an experimental setup in the Allegheny National Forest whose sole purpose has been to determine the relationship between deer and trees. Between the 40s and the 80's, they primarily tested deer vs no deer. Since the 80's, enclosure based studies with varying populations. Essentially, patches of forest are enclosed with varying levels of deer and no deer. This allowed them to derive the average density per square mile for their deer in their conditions below which undergrowth could recover. About 20. More on that in a second.
It also allowed them to discover overpop precursors that they could then go out into the unenclosed areas of the forest to correlate. In areas with high deer density and low deer forage, an environment called a fern desert crops up. Basically, all that was left, are things that were deer resistant. You can find pictures of them, they're very pretty - most people would think they look like "nature" - not realizing what they actually are. They also discovered indicators of past overpopulation which was on an improving trend. Which is to say, the deer were no longer there, but their effects were - and edging in on that were trillium and mayflower. A site demonstration project tasked landowners with applying the lessons of the enclosure study - and found that when populations were controlled between 28 and 15 deer per square mile, the fern deserts gave way to trilliums and mayflowers and the undergrowth would begin to bounce back. The high end surprised them - so they went back to their enclosure studies.
Following up on these sites they observed two things. One, that their number of 20 per likely had to do with the abundance of deer forage in the respective enclosures. Less, and you could see 15, more, and up to thirty or so and you'd still be at minimum levels. Two, trophic cascade. Where communities of varying density had profound effects on the whole enclosure system for decades after the fact. Short term variations can lead to centuries long effects.
Now they started to wonder whether having too few deer would cause the same effect out in the wild as it did in the enclosure studies - so they went out looking for pin cherry. In the enclosures, it was massively overrepresented at the lowest levels of deer pop then being studied, 10 per. Sure enough, tagging and tracking and mapping backed up the relationship. There was such a thing as too many deer, but also too few.
These studies, and the methods they devised for measuring deer wihout even needing to see them, and for quantifying their effect at varying levels on the environment, are the set of data that allegheny national forest uses to manage it's 517k acres - which is, ofc, huntable public land.
So now you know how they arrive at and manage for those numbers, and why. My question to you, from the point of view of animal activists, would be this. How would you do it? What would you do when there were too few deer, what would you do when there were too many? How would you know what situation you were in? Who would collect the data, who would carry out the work, and where would they get the funding? Sure, we can rethink management. Just because we have been doing something one way doesn't mean we have to, or that we will in perpetuity - but until some credible alternative -to that- is presented..we're probably going to keep doing it the way the allegheny national forest does it.
-While you're laying out whatever proposal you've seen that you think is a credible alternative to conservation hunting, I'm going to continue on with some other things that the NRS data suggests.
It suggests that if we could engage even more people to put even more money and time into a full court press on their numbers for something like a decade - we could create a forest that takes progressively less effort and direct intervention to preserve with every passing year. Ten years now could give us a century of upward trend in measures of biodiversity and animal health. We're in desperate need of that ,right now (yesterday..), in the same areas that the deer have been rebounding the forest cover has returned to something like it was before the revolutionary war - but the quality of those forests is low. We can bring this right back around to things like coyotes - because low quality forests don't reliably produce enough food for their predators no matter how big they are - and that means it's time to raid trash cans and prey on livestock.
NRS researchers have maintained an experimental setup in the Allegheny National Forest whose sole purpose has been to determine the relationship between deer and trees. Between the 40s and the 80's, they primarily tested deer vs no deer. Since the 80's, enclosure based studies with varying populations. Essentially, patches of forest are enclosed with varying levels of deer and no deer. This allowed them to derive the average density per square mile for their deer in their conditions below which undergrowth could recover. About 20. More on that in a second.
It also allowed them to discover overpop precursors that they could then go out into the unenclosed areas of the forest to correlate. In areas with high deer density and low deer forage, an environment called a fern desert crops up. Basically, all that was left, are things that were deer resistant. You can find pictures of them, they're very pretty - most people would think they look like "nature" - not realizing what they actually are. They also discovered indicators of past overpopulation which was on an improving trend. Which is to say, the deer were no longer there, but their effects were - and edging in on that were trillium and mayflower. A site demonstration project tasked landowners with applying the lessons of the enclosure study - and found that when populations were controlled between 28 and 15 deer per square mile, the fern deserts gave way to trilliums and mayflowers and the undergrowth would begin to bounce back. The high end surprised them - so they went back to their enclosure studies.
Following up on these sites they observed two things. One, that their number of 20 per likely had to do with the abundance of deer forage in the respective enclosures. Less, and you could see 15, more, and up to thirty or so and you'd still be at minimum levels. Two, trophic cascade. Where communities of varying density had profound effects on the whole enclosure system for decades after the fact. Short term variations can lead to centuries long effects.
Now they started to wonder whether having too few deer would cause the same effect out in the wild as it did in the enclosure studies - so they went out looking for pin cherry. In the enclosures, it was massively overrepresented at the lowest levels of deer pop then being studied, 10 per. Sure enough, tagging and tracking and mapping backed up the relationship. There was such a thing as too many deer, but also too few.
These studies, and the methods they devised for measuring deer wihout even needing to see them, and for quantifying their effect at varying levels on the environment, are the set of data that allegheny national forest uses to manage it's 517k acres - which is, ofc, huntable public land.
So now you know how they arrive at and manage for those numbers, and why. My question to you, from the point of view of animal activists, would be this. How would you do it? What would you do when there were too few deer, what would you do when there were too many? How would you know what situation you were in? Who would collect the data, who would carry out the work, and where would they get the funding? Sure, we can rethink management. Just because we have been doing something one way doesn't mean we have to, or that we will in perpetuity - but until some credible alternative -to that- is presented..we're probably going to keep doing it the way the allegheny national forest does it.
-While you're laying out whatever proposal you've seen that you think is a credible alternative to conservation hunting, I'm going to continue on with some other things that the NRS data suggests.
It suggests that if we could engage even more people to put even more money and time into a full court press on their numbers for something like a decade - we could create a forest that takes progressively less effort and direct intervention to preserve with every passing year. Ten years now could give us a century of upward trend in measures of biodiversity and animal health. We're in desperate need of that ,right now (yesterday..), in the same areas that the deer have been rebounding the forest cover has returned to something like it was before the revolutionary war - but the quality of those forests is low. We can bring this right back around to things like coyotes - because low quality forests don't reliably produce enough food for their predators no matter how big they are - and that means it's time to raid trash cans and prey on livestock.
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