A bit off topic, but I know you enjoy bird watching:
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@Randy As it happens there are two different things people mean when they say rewilding, and I have differing views on both of them:
If by rewilding you mean restoring nature on a large scale, including the reintroduction of lost species such as beavers and lynxes, I am for that 100%.
However if by rewilding you mean āstepping backā and/or restoring nature to how it was before human interference, I feel that is a failed system, which does not work in practice. I like to give the example of there being lower tiger density in the human free core of the Chitwan national park in Nepal. Another example would be the Heather moorland of Britain, which is a completely man-made ecosystem, one which would quickly disappear once left alone, yet one which is a major carbon sink and provides important habitat for rare species such as the red grouse, a subspecies of the willow ptarmigan which has evolved to solely feed on Heather.
George Monbiot endorses such a problematic system here:
Rewilding, in my view, should involve reintroducing missing animals and plants, taking down the fences, blocking the drainage ditches, culling a few particularly invasive exotic species but otherwise standing back. Itās about abandoning the Biblical doctrine of dominion which has governed our relationship with the natural world
He is right though that the Bible opposes such a view. To be fair on Monbiot, he recognises that indigenous people have been unfairly kicked off their land in the name of conservation, but his own view opens the door to such a system.
Do check out Monbiotās book Feral, itās pretty good, minus a few misguided and unfair attacks on the Hebrew Bible.
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Is anyone else amused that Wikipedia has an entry on Flatulence? Just me and my junior high sense of humor, Iām sure.
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I note that you didnāt provide a convenient link (so we could watch the little number go up as more with said humor and curiosity click on it). I just enjoyed seeing at the top of the article that priceless phrase: āFart (disambiguation)ā. I also was delighted to see a little mp3 audio in the article so that audio learners arenāt left out. (though their audio sample is a bit disappointing I must say).
Should this be its own thread? A forum like ours here isnāt complete until weāve explored all these high-pressure topics.
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Thatās very interesting. I can see that there can be quite a controversy about what is actually best for an ecosystem. I donāt know the answer, and agree that it sounds like overzealous folks can cause more harm than good. Are indigenous peoples part of the ecosystem, too (one could argue not as the ecosystem probably predated them by more thousands of years than they had been there; on the other hand, they have been there for thousands of years, too, and the ecosystem has evolved to fit them)?
In Michigan, where I live in the US, elimination of the dense old growth pine wood in the 1800s, decimation of wolves, elk and moose, and replacement by farm land in the southern Lower Peninsula and deciduous forest in the northern Lower Peninsula has exploded the deer population. In turn, similar to Yellowstone, there has been evidence of over-grazing of trees, winter kill of deer from excess burden that reach starvation point midway, and perhaps itās influenced the arising of chronic wasting disease (a prion disorder that kills deer that live close together; hunters canāt set out bait because of that risk).
Government agencies have encouraged the re introduction of wolves in the UP and coyotes in the LP, and there have been evidences of cougars passing through; the wolves and coyotes are efforts to decrease deer and smaller animal pressure, as well as to clear up carrion. I live at the edge of the Manistee National Forest, and black bear are making a comeback here. In a town 10 miles from our house, people no longer can feed the birds and have to lock up their garbage cans in sheds to avoid a 300 lb bear making their yard his playplace.
The deer are beautiful. Weāve had fawns hiding in our woods, 50 yards from the house, and turkeys tramp around our house in the snow, looking for seeds. However, while hunters like the deer, and we enjoy seeing them, is it good to have about 2 million deer in the state? I know people who have died in car-deer crashes, and have been in (a minor) one myself. We havenāt really had any wolves or cougars in the LP yet; but the thought of seeing them in the woods nearby makes me empathize with Africans who have to live with lions and hyenas!)
Anywayāthis is a very interesting subject, and one that is not at all black and white to me. I always thought of the heathery downs of the UK as being beautiful and wild, and was surprised to learn that they used to be wooded. I havenāt read Monbiot, but he sounds very interesting. I may be able to find him on Audible sometimeā¦ Thanks.
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Cows feeding on grass is about 20% more methanogenic than grain fed cows, due to the difficulty in breaking down cellulose. Free-range cows of course take up more land and are not as efficient as creating beef or milk.
It is not intuitive to think of anything in the scale of millions or billions, and this can explain the difficulty of conceptualizing evolution, climate change, or whatever is not visible beyond the horizon.
Neither is statistics intuitive, and this may be the downfall of humans in the information age.
Very true. I doesnāt prevent many of us from trying though. Usually by thinking of very small things.
For example, we all [should] know how big a millimeter is - easily visible when you look up close at a meter stick. So when you walk a kilometer, youāve gone a million of those little things!
For a billion, just imagine a cubic meter, and now imagine having ābuilt upā that cubic meter by stacking all the tiny 1mm x 1mm x 1mm blocks (which would require 1000^3 of them) and you have a billion. But when we try to imagine millions or billions of ābigā things (like years), our minds are blown.
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Thanks for the interesting look at Michigan. Do you have much of a tick problem there? Here in Maine tick populations have increased a lot even from when I was a kid, and since many are deer ticks, Iām told the growing deer population plays a part, and itās probably all tied in to climate change one way or another. Crazy how interconnected ecosystems are.
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yes, itās really interesting. We actually have more ticks whenever we have a heavy snowfall, which probably plays into global warming a bit. the snow cover insulates the ticks and keep them from freezing This is the first year that Iāve heard of Lyme disease actually coming up in our County. Iāve known people who have contracted it elsewhere, but havenāt actually heard of a case being contracted in our County. Iāve heard that the state of Maine has actually got more moose than we do
Thatās trueā¦ weāre doing pretty well for ābig game,ā especially in the northern parts of the state. But lyme is on the rise here too ā I know several people who have it or have had an acute version. Weāre teaching our kids to do thorough tick checks every time we hike or go into the woods, and have still pulled 3 or 4 attached ones off them this year.
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If I am reading this correctly, and assuming the reliability of the source, there are methods of raising beef which actually have a carbon negative footprint. Iām hopeful because I really enjoy red meat 
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And then there is this. Maybe should be in the humor post, but fits here.
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