Preying on the predators

[arewethereyet]

This is bullshit and you know it.

This is another of your bash OLB diatribes.  Maybe post another dozen or so links, that'll bring everyone over to your way of thinking.

Why don't you just stay away from OLB posts...save yourself and the rest of us the heartburn of your dick waving contests.

1. Nope I say it without fear or doubt conservation is an excuse nothing more 

2.Nope has zilch to do OLB and you can whine about presenting evidence for my case all you like.

3.How about instead I post where ever I want and criticize whatever I want and you just don't read it.

How about walls of links are looking sort of spam-like.

Chill a bit.

Both sides can find links to support their views.

We really don't need dozens of links because you have an axe to grind.

Just so you know - Part of my function here is to monitor posts.

[The Architect Of Fate]

1. Nope I say it without fear or doubt conservation is an excuse nothing more 

2.Nope has zilch to do OLB and you can whine about presenting evidence for my case all you like.

3.How about instead I post where ever I want and criticize whatever I want and you just don't read it.

How about walls of links are looking sort of spam-like.

Chill a bit.

Both sides can find links to support their views.

We really don't need dozens of links because you have an axe to grind.

1.I would hardly call that a wall of links let alone spam

2.I am chilled seriously 

3. Yes they both can now come to the question of which has the better evidence 

4. Says who? and no I don't have an axe to grind 

5. Monitor away

[The Grand Nudger]

It's absolutely going to be easy for activists to point to poorly managed lands. To my mind, that's an argument for better management, not an argument for no management. It's going to be easy to find where well managed lands just aren't doing enough, too - but here again, to my mind that's an argument for doing more, not less.

[The Architect Of Fate]

There's always room for improvement, but if that were just true - then we would have yet another reason for creating well-managed hunting areas.

Or we could completely rethink our concept of management 

Ill let you let wonder lead you to knowledge on this one.  Maybe check a few of your own links? I'm not sure why you think you could refute a site demonstration in the first place. That's not how that works. They exist. We could suggest that they won't work here or there or for this species or that species for any number of reasons, but denying that deer are managed on hunting land in such a way as to promote their health and the biodiversity of the managed land is a fool's errand. It's what we're doing, we'd like to do it even better.

So no examples then?

Well, that's obviously not going to work - so those hunters either have to be educated or they're not going to get what they want any way.  Big pops of healthy animals in stable forests don't just happen.  It takes alot of time and money and effort.  

Your right it's not going to work and they don't care.

Their alternative, planning to have no solution and calling whatever happens Natural™.  That is not a credible alternative, even if hunting is a bad solution.

You know not true and even if it were you can't just say it's not credible and sticking to a bad policy is still sticking to a bad policy 

It's absolutely going to be easy for activists to point to poorly managed lands. To my mind, that's an argument for better management, not an argument for no management. It's going to be easy to find where well-managed lands just aren't doing enough, too - but here again, to my mind, that's an argument for doing more, not less.

Or rethinking the concept of management

[onlinebiker]

Oh and I prefer my mini-14 to an AR-15. I like the look of my folding stock.

You have an older one?

There has been a barrelnupgrade that greatly improved accuracy. Turns out the original tooling was out of spec - and nobody caught it.

My BIL upgraded his and went from 3 inch groups at 100 yards to well under an inch. He is convinced..

[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.

[The Architect Of Fate]

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.

1. Source 

2.I'm not an animal activist 

3.I have no issue with collecting data 

4. As I already pointed out more non-hunters fund conservation than hunters 

5.Then your doomed flawed policy

[The Grand Nudger]

What would be doomed or flawed with using conservation hunting as a tool to bring up levels of deer where the forest shows damage based on their absence, or to bring down levels of deer when it shows damage due to their being overpop?

The only entities that put more into conservation here in the us are federal land management grants. I just explained what that land was being managed for, and the metrics they were using (and, fwiw, it's not just the deer and the biodiversity they want and get from the way we manage forests, it's quality timber as well). I get that you don't mind collecting the data - but hunters are the ones collecting the data right now. Paying for the privilege, while they're at it. They were the ones who managed the deer in all of those enclosure studies. Who do we replace them with, and what money do we pay them with?

On an even more fundamental and selfish note, if Cletus T Ruralamerican is no longer allowed to hunt... how long do you think that the taxes which appropriate those federal monies are going to survive his elected politicians? With respect to coyotes and pretty much anything else, outside of a managed hunting program, people aren't going to stop shooting them anyway - they just won't be managed and conservation will be out those funds.

---

Or, perhaps an even more specific problem. One referenced earlier in your links. Significant overpop, unhealthy and undersized, too many females to males, damaged forest.

In the conservation hunting model, they could slot to achieve whatever numbers their enclosure studies dictate. Massive harvest below size x, a middle restricted to y amount of does only in-slot, and a top end trophy restricted to bucks by tag. Keep going into the forest every year to assess the changes made by reference to indicator species and interactions. Alter the slots and the in slot restrictions as required.

What would the no hunting solution to this problem look like?

[The Architect Of Fate]

1. You realize there is data that contradicts both assumptions 

2.Once again for funding that simply isn't so. More non-hunters than hunters fund conservation.

3.Hunters are paying to collect data they are paying to shoot animals and grudgingly producing data. The idea they can't be replaced is absurd.

4.If the only reason he is willing to pay taxes is to shoot the animals I think that rather backs my point about their motivations.

5.Yup will likely shoot animals. That doesn't mean we need to endorse it, And again about the funding.

[The Grand Nudger]

What data contradicts what assumption? None of the enclosure studies are assumptions, for example. They are observed trends that have been persistently identified and recreated since the 1940s. The numbers of deer in a area have an effect on the types of plants which grow, and how - and this ripples all the way up and down the ecosystem. There's nowhere where they haven't found this to be the case. The specific groups and their relationships, and the density numbers can, ofc, differ by place and time. In florida, for example, it's usually not fern deserts (though I've seen a few small ones) - it's palmetto. The numbers are higher but that's because the deer are just flat out smaller and available forage goes further, and neither the deer nor the wild flora has to overwinter. I can tell you about those studies too, if you need more examples.

Who do you think puts more money into conservation than hunters? Do you, does anyone you know?

I think that you don't understand hunters enthusiasm for being part of this process. They can go out there and kill the deer without collecting any data at all. On the fishing side, they've (the state) started to pay for tags sent back to them - so that's the state of play with respect to how many volunteers there are to replace these folks. I'm sure they could be replaced, but by whom, and how would we pay them?

We can all assume the worst about motivations - but that was the point. Wouldn't you expect to see taxes for conservation dry up? You know how we feel about taxes here in the states. If we're premising the survival of species on the notion that americans are going to fall over themselves to pay for pest deer and coyotes to be protected by non hunters who breed and cull on restricted lands owned by the public........then friend...deer and coyotes aren't long for this world. Assuming the worst of them and their motivations, ofc.

What does not endorsing hunting look like, practically? Not hunting? Or opposing successful hunting conservation programs that produce funds and repair the environment? For groups like the humane society of the us, it's very much the latter. Hunting is bad, therefore no amount of success or benefit from hunting is legitimate. In an impressive show of bad faith, you'll find that they actually reference the work of the NRS in Allegheny and other places as why hunting should be illegal. In your own links. They do so by selectively employing the data on what happens when there are too many and too few deer - and leave the reader to assume that hunters are the cause in both cases...which....they're not. Hunters are the people doing the work to try and get the numbers to acceptable levels. In the absence of predation, and that's what we are, those numbers fluctuate wildly with all of the attendant effects on the forests and the deer pops themselves - effects which we know can be comprehensive and last for decades or centuries.

Nature, iz nt vry smrt....and it's definitely not up to the task of repairing the damage we've done left to it's own devices. The low quality forests and fern deserts and cherry thickets and palmetto wastes and chronic wasting disease and tb......literally -are- natures devices.

-and I get that it might be that none of this reflects where you are. You may have predators in your region that we don't have and never will have on the east coast. Different pops, different forest comps. Nothing that I've been discussing applies one for one with mule deer in the plains, for example