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Lions and bears and... elephants?

  • Thread starter Cynic81
  • Start date
  • #21
[b said:
Quote[/b] (ALLOSAURZ @ Aug. 20 2005,1:16)]We already have wild horses in America though and Camels aren't as likely to take over as the Cane toad. Look at the Dramadary (sp?) Camel in Australia. It was introduced and is thriving but isn't causing problems.
yes but wild horses and burros are destroying habitat for the various bighorn sheep subspecies in the lower 48. so much so that wild horses and burros are the number one cause of their decline at this point. especially since the general public is againt the shooting of thee feral critters.
 
  • #22
I don't understand why people who happily accept chickens, pigs, and cattle living and dying in absolutely barbaric conditions get upset about wild horses and burros being culled to protect sensitive habitat.  Maybe all horses, burros, cattle, and ranchers that abuse federal lands should be shot.  If they don't leave after a warning shot, of course.
 
  • #23
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]I think I have a slightly more practical solution... terraform mars. Move humans to Mars. Leave Earth the Hell alone! I don't think some introduced animals like camels and horses would hurt the ecosystem that much but Lions? and Elephants? Creatures that have nothing to keep them in check? What about our native fauna? This has disaster written all over it and I don't want to ever see lions in my back yard.

I'm quite certain that terraforming Mars isn't a more practical solution. It'd take... "quite a while." See, what I find funny is that you (and many others) are saying, preserve our ecosystem- go change Mars! While it's not in your back yard any more, it's still a big deal. If there is even one colony of one milimeter worms found, I'd say terraforming isn't worth it. What I would rather see is the opposite of what we have here- instead of having "nature preserves" we have "people preseres." I realize it's a while before we really need to worry about someone trying to terraform Mars, but I suppose it's better to address it early. But unless we have it 100% proven that there is no life on Mars, then I wont support terraforuming (and I'm a pretty scientifically-oriented guy.) If we do terraform Mars, I wanna see it done for Mars' sake, not our own. (just as a note, I'm not trying to pick on you, but I think it's an important issue.)

Yeah, I think introducting elephants would be pretty much darn impossible. It takes a lot of force to keep an elephant from just going where ever it wants. You bring up a good point about native megafauna- we shouldn't me importing from other places when we've got plenty of our OWN endanged predators. Of course, there have been attempts to get bear numbers and wolf numbers up- but we then have cow-people pooping in their pampers and hopping up and down, then taking in to consideration our governments association with big buisness, well it doesn't look like we'll be seeing Mountain lions, or bears, or any of our own stuff being given a hand any time soon.
 
  • #24
The horse family originated in north america but died out here a couple thousand years ago, wich is a blip in time compared to other similar things.


They protest because there pretty horsies
 
  • #25
Move everyone into massive city systems (interconnected buildings a mile or two high) with suburbs, farms, etc radiating outward from them... connect them with elevated superhighways for moving goods around (or better yet, get flying vehicles off the ground)... and let the world rebuild itself in those three hundred mile spans between cities where not a soul can be found. If all the other species are stuck in certain ecological niches, we should be too.
smile_n_32.gif


Whatever we do will be very expensive in the end. But the problem has already been more expensive than the solution if you factor in all the future reprecussions.
 
  • #26
Ah ... the modernist city of Le Corbusier.  The history of part of that movement is at http://www.open2.net/modernity/4_2_frame.htm.  It had an enormous influence on the postwar development of communist bloc cities and on the construction of public housing here.  Most people don't think of those with any fondness.

I like a city full of 2-4 story buildings.  It'll sprawl more than a city of mile high buildings, but the people are saner and it takes a fraction of the land US metropolises sprawl across.
 
  • #27
[b said:
Quote[/b] ] If there is even one colony of one milimeter worms found, I'd say terraforming isn't worth it.
personally I think our ecosystems are worth more than a million colonies of 1mm worms :p
 
  • #28
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]personally I think our ecosystems are worth more than a million colonies of 1mm worms :p

Well, if you think taking the many many years it'd take to terraforum Mars would be fast enough to save our ecosystems instead of working to save them (read: stop screwing them up,) then sure. Besides, just imagine the biological value of species completely foreign from this planet. But I suppose we don't need to go very far for unresearched life, we've got plenty of our own. In any case, with the subject at hand, I think that there's a general consensus that bringing in lions and elephants and so on is a bit silly...
 
  • #30
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]Well, if you think taking the many many years it'd take to terraforum Mars would be fast enough to save our ecosystems instead of working to save them (read: stop screwing them up,) then sure.
oh, of course I think we should save our ecosystems here, but if the terraforming was possible and stuff, I'd rather have a whole other planet full of our ecosystems than of a colony of 1mm worms... just in case. I care more about the thousands of species in ONE terrestrial ecosystem than 1mm worms :p
 
  • #31
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]I care more about the thousands of species in ONE terrestrial ecosystem than 1mm worms :p

Where there's a worm there's a way! Or something like that... The fact is that if evolution is doing it's thing on Mars, then I'd rather leave it be. If you find worms, then there needs to be some sort of predecessor, and odds are that things are going to keep evolving. Yes, I realize evolution takes place over a long time scale, but I just can't feel right (scientifically or morally) destroying their possabilities. What we could learn from one worm (or any other organism) from another planet could completely change the way we think of life. In any case at all, the way that we are treating our own planet doesn't make me feel confident that we could handle terraforuming and caring for a second planet which is even father out of our grasp. I think it's better to take care of our mess here than have our heads in the clouds dreaming of Mars saving our species. Fair enough, no?
 
  • #32
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]well it doesn't look like we'll be seeing Mountain lions, or bears, or any of our own stuff being given a hand any time soon

get your facts straight. grizzlys are federaly protected in the lower 48. California outlawed the hunting and harrassing of mountain lions (now the mountain lions are now eating the occational jogger and family pets on a regular basis) heck im getting reports of more and more mountain lions in my neck of the woods. wasnt 2 moths ago that 2 mountain bikers were stalked while out riding in the badlands on Makoshika State Park in western North Dakota. mountain lions(other than the subspecies of florida panther) are increasing in numbers and doing quite well. wolves were in the yellowstone area before the reintroduction on a limited basis and they go there through no help on our part. the hunting of any bear species and subspecies is very well controled throughout the USA and Canada. grizzlys(interior grizzlys) brown bears(coastal grizzlys) and black bears are not endangered in the slightest. neither are grey wolves or mountain lions. heck the occational jaguar is even being treed by mountain lion hunters using hounds in the south west. our mega preditors are making comebacks quite well where there is room for them and in the case of mountain lions they are coming back into areas such as the suburbs of Seattle, Portland, Sacramento ect.
 
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