Re-establishing the natural balance - Americas and Exotics

[Robson Valley]

The very worst of all invasive species around my place are people.
It's the very same demographic group that are always getting killed in avalanches.
Darwinian Theory in action.True accidental misfortune is rare.

Our Mountain Caribou populations are declining despite the best of efforts and extinction is on the horizon.
No logging corridors for annual migrations, etc. That travel is just like clockwork just 50km west of me.
So, some human exclusion zones have been declared off limits to things like snowmobiling.
The snow compaction (and refreezing) creates a hard trail that the wolves use to hunt caribou.
Some winters, it's been good. I don't know how many were caught this winter but more than ever before.
Their capacity to create back country & alpine disturbance is amazing.

Sure looks like, even with our apparent wilderness, things go wrong and the ecology can't be fixed.

 

[Janne]

The only place where H. Sapiens are not invasive is Africa, if the theory where Sapiens started is correct.

Still waiting for publication about the hominid tooth they found in Germany though......

Much older than what they found in Africa. No doubt the ice destroyed a lot in Northern Europe.

 

[Robson Valley]

I'll bet there's great quantities of evidence but it's all under water at the present time.
Sea levels have been bouncing up and down with Ice Ages for that past million years.
BC west Coast. The spectacular flooded cave system just discovered in Florida. Biggest ever.
Doggerland.

Right where I'm sitting, right now, did not see the light of day until maybe 8,000 years BCE.
So much of the mountains was ground up, pulverized, that we have a district of sand dunes
about an hour east of me! Jackman Flats. Living creatures that look like dog ka-ka.

In far older places inhabited by humans, like Europe, sure the glaciers wiped the slate clean but for some caves
and maybe there were nunataks?

 

[Janne]

The oldest finds in areas that the ice covered are post glacial.
Of course there are lots of fossils in the rocks where you usually find fossils, but I do not count those.

 

[Robson Valley]

Since the ice has come and gone (4 recent times here), our landscapes must be changing constantly in very subtle ways like from erosion.
Nothing is constant. Add substantial human disturbance and there's no chance that we could ever run things backwards
and recreate lost ecologies or even stall them.

What are the aspects of your environment that you would like to stabilize? Is that really a good thing to try?
What are the visual quality objectives which keep you coming back? Any habitat enhancements to try?
No harm in being a caretaker to take away visual waste.

I can't fix it but I can make some changes which are stabilizing in the very short term, for my benefit.

A few avalanches are just snow like cornices or slabs. All of a sudden, we are getting a week long airstream from California.
The valley bottom melt is fast in warming sunshine. Up top must be softening quickly in the wind.
From my kitchen window, most avalanches now are dirty great rivers of snow, rock and logs.
Drive through a big chute in September and even the forest is laid flat like you combed your hair.

 

[Janne]

We had a huge problem with moose and deer in Sweden, the population exploded some decades ago. Lots of traffic accidents.

The state introduced very liberal limits on hunting.
I believe the population of those two species in ‘ just enough’ now.
The reintroduced wolves have not done much for that balance, still not enough of them, and they seem to prefer tasty sheep.

Wolves in UK? Too many roads, not enough one-piece forests.

 

[Robson Valley]

Long ago, both Sweden and British Columbia used the same management model, built on political legs, not biological.
In short, the strategy was to shoot the bulls and never touch mommy and the kids. Over grazing was an issue, wildlife encounters
was another. The date of the rut was changing such that calves were younger and later and smaller going into their first winter
with the expected increase in survivorship risk.

Then, in Sweden, biologists convinced government to change the model and to crop off an expendable fraction of every age class in the population.
That meant calves, cows and bulls of all ages. With the very best estimates, some of each.
The rut changed. The population habitat damage dropped off. Wildlife collisions are still an issue, nobody has a slick fix for those.

Here in Wildlife Management Region 7, a similar biological harvest model as had the very same positive results. The same.
Heaps of background research into age determination and conception dates (rut). Monitoring as the regulations changed
Most of all that got done in the lab next door to my office for decades. I smelled burnt teeth for many weeks each year (growth rings like trees)
So much of now is a managed lottery license draw. Everybody got used to it. So many of this, so many of that.

In the UK, change the regs to hunt a slice of both sexes and every age class. Up the bag limits.
Give the bow hunters a chance. Give them 2 weeks to themselves. You say there's no bow hunting? Fix it.
Give the cross-bow brigade something to do with really attractive bag limits. Those can be adjusted every year.
Never written in stone any more.

 

[Janne]

A thought, politically insensitive and incorrect:

When I lived in Sussex, it seemed that hunting was an ‘upper class’ sport.
Be it deer, duck or pheasant. (Pheasant I understand, as they all are brought up and managed)

The farmers living around me basically only shot rabbit and some other bird.

In Sweden, hunting is a cheap sport. Managed.

 

[Robson Valley]

Broch made exactly my point. Thank you for your insight. = None of this stuff can be fixed, repaired, sustained or backed up.
Not even equal opportunity. Politically managed for the almight money and little else.
Here, you do some course work and gun tests, buy a tag and get on with it.

Janne: Depends on what you class as cheap. It's a mistake to lay out the monetary costs in front of most partners.
Our seasons are usually 10 weeks in length, September, October and close November 15 (here in Region 7)
I like to hunt birds 10-20 times each season. I have a good time and rarely every come home skunked.
My partner has become a good bird hunter. She can't bear the thought of going home while there's still shooting light.
Nobody blinks when we talk costs or gun prices. I am expected to be an endless fount of 12 gauge shells.

I have been hunting for more than 50 years. When you're hot, you're hot. When you're not, you're not.
The food & fuel and busted vehicles, licences, the 4AM starts, all of it.
I sleep in. I live well. Since 2001, I have been on an annual bison hunt with my cheque book.
Let's just say that a side is a very attractive price! And, I'll barter for game like elk, moose & deer, a little bear ham.
Cut by cut, bison is gold. I could never afford it. A whole side, the ranch is 15 minutes away, the butcher is 2 blocks away.
Why not?
Muntjak hunting sounds appealing. .243 ought to be good pills?

 

[Janne]

By a cheap sport I mean that everybody can afford it. The worst is taking holiday time off during the hunting season.
There are around 300 000 registered hunters in Sweden.

 

[santaman2000]

By a cheap sport I mean that everybody can afford it. The worst is taking holiday time off during the hunting season.
There are around 300 000 registered hunters in Sweden.

That doesn't sound like very many to me:

LEADING DEER HUNTING STATES
(Licensed Resident Deer Hunters)
Pennsylvania 1,299,372
Michigan 1,005,000
Wisconsin 894,543
New York 812,446
Texas 645,000
LEADING WHITETAIL STATES
(Estimated whitetail populations)
Texas 3,748,000
Michigan 1,900,000
Mississippi 1,750,000
Wisconsin 1,600,000
Alabama 1,500,000
LEADING DEER-KILL STATES
(Total Whitetail Kill, Gun and Bow)
Wisconsin 469,555
Texas 442,000
Michigan 440,000
Pennsylvania 430,583
Georgia 375,100
LEADING FIREARM STATES
(Licensed Resident Gun Hunters)
Pennsylvania 1,000,000
Michigan 675,000
Wisconsin 656,164
New York 643,534
Texas 570,000
LEADING BOW HUNTING STATES
(Licensed Resident Bow Hunters)
Michigan 330,000
Pennsylvania 299,372
Wisconsin 238,379
Ohio 190,000
New York 168,912
LEADING BOW DEER KILL STATES
(Total Whitetail Kill With Bows)
Michigan 97,000
Wisconsin 69,269
Pennsylvania 54,622
Mississippi 40,000
Alabama 40,000

 

[Janne]

120 000 - 150 000 deer per year
80 000-0 - 100 000 moose per year.

Duck, geese, ptarmigan, other birds? No clue. Many.

No, we are not as manly as the average person in the US, including women.

 

[santaman2000]

120 000 - 150 000 deer per year
80 000-0 - 100 000 moose per year.

Duck, geese, ptarmigan, other birds? No clue. Many.

No, we are not as manly as the average person in the US, including women.

The above chart is for White-tailed deer only (our most prolific deer species) And yeah, a lot of the hunters are women or young girls. Of course in some of those states a license isn't required for 14 year olds and younger so the actual numbers will be higher.

Back on point, even with that hunting pressure from humans (and the added pressure from coyotes and cats) we ain't making a dent in the white-tailed deer population. Not even with the help of the occasional gator

 

[Janne]

If the population is stable all is good.

 

[santaman2000]

If the population is stable all is good.

No, all is not good. The white-tail population is far, far in excess and growing.

 

[Robson Valley]

Like I said, if populations are managed for political reasons, not for the biology, things are bound to go wrong.
Famine or pestilence are the next possibilities for the Whitetails. Even if you upped the bag limit to 10/year or more. it won't help.
The city people will bitch about flower beds and shrubs being trashed and eaten but NEVER cull those deer.
That is exactly what happened even in my little village and the deer are a bit more aggressive than children should need to face.
Romantic as it seems to the tourists, the deer are a real nuisance.

A population of animals is like a big pile of money in a bank.

The biotic potential, the genetics, of the species creates enough offspring that the population can afford to lose some to predation. That's interest that gets spent.
The individual animal takes in food (Gross Production). Some is used in the business of staying alive (Respiration.) The rest is Net Production. GP = R + NP.
Now for that critter to stay alive, they have to have enough NP to give some away to parasites. This is interest from each individual.

Thousands of generations of interactions has pretty well fixed reproductive rates and you can't change that.
Women don't all suddenly have 20-30 kids at a time. Fish don't drop from thousands to 1 or 2 babies.

 

[Robson Valley]

Two/day and no season limit? You, sir, really do have a problem!
Added to the pigs, what a meat supply.

 

[fenix]

A thought, politically insensitive and incorrect:

When I lived in Sussex, it seemed that hunting was an ‘upper class’ sport.
Be it deer, duck or pheasant. (Pheasant I understand, as they all are brought up and managed)

The farmers living around me basically only shot rabbit and some other bird.

In Sweden, hunting is a cheap sport. Managed.

I have worked on large shooting estates in Kent and Sussex. Generally deer populations are surveyed, quiet often by an outside contractor, and the required number of female deer will be shot to control the populations. This is also how the big land owners like the National Trust operate. The occasional paid for stalk might be let, but populations were controlled separately to the let days. Estates incomes come from a combination of places, farming and forestry are a large part of the mix so they will not want a heavy deer population.

The shoot I am a member of costs a couple of bottles of whisky a year, everybody I shoot with comes from a normal background, most are farm workers or work in forestry.

Here is how many people get in to shooting
www.kentwildfowlers.co.uk

 

[Janne]

That is excellent. Did you ever work in a place called Heathfield Park in Old Heathfield?

The shooting I did cost me a bit more than a couple of bottles, but for sure I did "consume" quite a bit after the shoots!

 

[santaman2000]

Two/day and no season limit? You, sir, really do have a problem!
Added to the pigs, what a meat supply.

Then there's this