Rewilding. Is it me?

[Nicepix 5,650]

If you break the wolf / bear .v. sheep predation then what replaces the sheep? Ibex and mouflon haven't returned in enough numbers to be a viable source of food which is why they are still regarded as protective species. The sheep aren't wild. They belong to people so those who introduce the bears are effectively stealing some one else's livelihood.

These animals disappeared from that region for a reason. There aren't enough wild animals that require culling to justify bringing in a predator. There might not be housing estates in the Pyrenees but there are people dependant on farming sheep and as such it is they who are paying the price for a totally unnecessary  and unjustified program. Thr shepherds didn't need guarding dogs and electric fences until the politicians started messing with their lives. There is no upside to this. It has not benefited tourism and the animals do not perform a useful task in wildlife management.

 

[terryd 8,029]

No room around here any way. Every little bit of spare woodland or scrubby field is getting bought up and people clearing and sticking little carvan or a shed on it. All trying to grab there little bit of countryside. Dam near impossible to walk the dog anywhere now with out bumping into some one

[Greyman 25,164]

1 hour ago, Nicepix said:

If you break the wolf / bear .v. sheep predation then what replaces the sheep? Ibex and mouflon haven't returned in enough numbers to be a viable source of food which is why they are still regarded as protective species. The sheep aren't wild. They belong to people so those who introduce the bears are effectively stealing some one else's livelihood.

These animals disappeared from that region for a reason. There aren't enough wild animals that require culling to justify bringing in a predator. There might not be housing estates in the Pyrenees but there are people dependant on farming sheep and as such it is they who are paying the price for a totally unnecessary  and unjustified program. Thr shepherds didn't need guarding dogs and electric fences until the politicians started messing with their lives. There is no upside to this. It has not benefited tourism and the animals do not perform a useful task in wildlife management.

 

I think you have hit the nail on the head, the problem with all reviling is the obsession to put things back without working out why it went in the first place, I have found a lot of dead otters during there reintroduction due to them being moved on through territorial disputes or a lack of food I no of one drainage ditch with very few fish in that has been stocked 3 time with otters and I found 6 of them dead on the road trying to move to find food, there was a big captive breeding program undertaken some years back of barn owls and when it was over there were actually less of them

[chartpolski 20,378]

Interesting . There's reasons why animals like wolves and bears are extinct in the UK.

The UK now is unrecognisable to the UK when these animals roamed. It's an ecologically different country !

Deforestation, agriculture, livestock protection, has made the country inhospitable to these large carnivores, not to mention public apprehension !

I think some of these "rewiiding" efforts are simply vanity projects, who needs Great Bustards reintroduced when we have native birds dying out ?

Do we REALLY need beavers back, ( did they actually live here before ? ).

Lynx, wolf, bear ? Sounds romantic, but hardly practical.

Cheers.

[Tyla 3,179]

3 hours ago, Nicepix said:

If you break the wolf / bear .v. sheep predation then what replaces the sheep? Ibex and mouflon haven't returned in enough numbers to be a viable source of food which is why they are still regarded as protective species. The sheep aren't wild. They belong to people so those who introduce the bears are effectively stealing some one else's livelihood.

These animals disappeared from that region for a reason. There aren't enough wild animals that require culling to justify bringing in a predator. There might not be housing estates in the Pyrenees but there are people dependant on farming sheep and as such it is they who are paying the price for a totally unnecessary  and unjustified program. Thr shepherds didn't need guarding dogs and electric fences until the politicians started messing with their lives. There is no upside to this. It has not benefited tourism and the animals do not perform a useful task in wildlife management.

 

We will have to disagree on this. 

I see the environment as a whole as a poorer place without its wildlife, both predator and prey. I think there ought to be be room for them in the wild places, even if its a fraction of their original range. If that inconveniences farmers or forces them to change their management in those small areas I'm OK with that.

I repeat, I am not talking about wolves in the UK.

[MH1 1,800]

2 hours ago, chartpolski said:

Interesting . There's reasons why animals like wolves and bears are extinct in the UK.

The UK now is unrecognisable to the UK when these animals roamed. It's an ecologically different country !

Deforestation, agriculture, livestock protection, has made the country inhospitable to these large carnivores, not to mention public apprehension !

I think some of these "rewiiding" efforts are simply vanity projects, who needs Great Bustards reintroduced when we have native birds dying out ?

Do we REALLY need beavers back, ( did they actually live here before ? ).

Lynx, wolf, bear ? Sounds romantic, but hardly practical.

Cheers.

I've said it before but we need to introduce salt water crocs around the Kent coast

[JDHUNTING 1,817]

4 hours ago, Nicepix said:

If you break the wolf / bear .v. sheep predation then what replaces the sheep? Ibex and mouflon haven't returned in enough numbers to be a viable source of food which is why they are still regarded as protective species. The sheep aren't wild. They belong to people so those who introduce the bears are effectively stealing some one else's livelihood.

These animals disappeared from that region for a reason. There aren't enough wild animals that require culling to justify bringing in a predator. There might not be housing estates in the Pyrenees but there are people dependant on farming sheep and as such it is they who are paying the price for a totally unnecessary  and unjustified program. Thr shepherds didn't need guarding dogs and electric fences until the politicians started messing with their lives. There is no upside to this. It has not benefited tourism and the animals do not perform a useful task in wildlife management.

 

Good points and back to your original post re footpaths closed to dog walkers it's exactly that kind of thinking that gets my back up. If a mountain goat cant evade someone's pet pooch on a mountain then it deserves to be extinct.

[Born Hunter 17,622]

15 hours ago, Tyla said:

I wont be popular but I don't agree at all.

People co existed, competed and hunted these these species for millenia before technology and increasing population made them extinct. 

Is it so bad that they are coming back? The numbers you are taking about are tiny, 60 wolves in the whole French pyrenees?

Shepherds were sucessfully shepherding sheep there for 1000's of years alongside much higher populations. Livestock management was probably different, livestock guardian dogs were probably a huge part of that. If you look at their use in Namibia guardian dogs reduced cheetah predation by 90% and reduced leopard predation but i can't remember by how much. That reduced pastoralist and predator conflict and allowed both to continue.

From a financial stand point I would expect that the income from wildlife tourism, including big game hunting, is considerably more than could be earnt from subsistence grazing livestock. Have a google of Ivan Carter, he is an interesting guy. A conservationist first and foremost but a realist. He can see the value in wildlife through hunting which allows the continuance of both. i would think that should be quite popular on here.

Otters is the UK is another one. Anyone would think that fish and otters hadn't coexisted before. There were both fish and otters for much longer than there have been fish and no otters.

I personally think, as a species, we have most of the space and resources already. Is it so bad that we allow some of the other species to come back a little bit?

 

I agree with JDHunting but equally with you. Frankly saving ecosystems is every bit if not more important than saving industries. For too long we have put our progress in front of conservation.

[tilimangro 1,013]

There was a rewinding programme in Europe a few years back

i think they introduced a previously extinct species of dear or cattle

they and the resident populations all starved to death

huge failure

im not opposed to it but people need to do their homework properly and not listen to people who have qualifications an absolutely no clue

[Tyla 3,179]

26 minutes ago, tilimangro said:

There was a rewinding programme in Europe a few years back

i think they introduced a previously extinct species of dear or cattle

they and the resident populations all starved to death

huge failure

im not opposed to it but people need to do their homework properly and not listen to people who have qualifications an absolutely no clue

I think that is still running, called aufwasasplazen (?) the idea of it was just to let nature run its course but, obviously, without any predators the big herbivores ate themselves out of food. Even though the place is massive its not big enough for them to migrate about finding new grazing while the last patch recovers.

Distinct lack of common sense and forward thinking. I think they had to intervene on welfare grounds in the end. 

On the upside it was a huge success for migratory wildfowl and a lot of the smaller species. 

Rewilding is a land management system in its infancy. I still think its a worthwhile idea and has the potential to do good in places where its practical.

[Neal 1,784]

The problem is that people doing things like this often focus on the big superstar species and forget about the big picture. 

I remember seeing a programme with Dr George McGavin and several other big names surveying an area new to science and he was pointing out how people often forget to look at the whole foodweb and focus on, for example, mouflon, ibex, bears and wolves, forgetting about moss, grasses and a myriad of invertibrates. As someone said above (I think it was balaur) the benefit of beavers is not beavers per se but the rare habitat they create i.e. a wetland that humans won't normally choose because it's sod all good to us as a species.

Another problem is that the swathes of non-hunter-gatherers with their tofu or cellophane wrapped meat-derived products don't like REAL reality. They're all for reintroducing red squirrels but then will threaten to report me to the RSPCA if I walk home from the local wood carrying a dead grey squirrel.

 

[Nicepix 5,650]

5 hours ago, Tyla said:

We will have to disagree on this. 

I see the environment as a whole as a poorer place without its wildlife, both predator and prey. I think there ought to be be room for them in the wild places, even if its a fraction of their original range. If that inconveniences farmers or forces them to change their management in those small areas I'm OK with that.

I repeat, I am not talking about wolves in the UK.

But you cannot give a valid reason why the bears should be reintroduced. You just think that it is a good idea. Those local people who rioted to stop mare bears being introduced obviously don't think that it is a good idea.

There is no natural food chain of prey animals other than two species that are already endangered and farm animals. The inconvenience to shepherds isn't just about losing a few sheep for which they will be compensated. They are only compensated if they can bring a carcase in to be examined by a vet or government official. The ones carried away or killed in remote places will have been devoured by the bears and latterly vultures leaving a pile of bones and no evidence. Then there are other issues. Shepherds aren't  being subsidised to own dogs they didn't need before the bears were introduced or for the electric fencing the government advises they should be now using. And, more importantly; the shepherds now feel it necessary to carry guns when out working with their sheep. 40 bears might not seem a large number, but on the north facing slopes of these mountains there are lots of areas where there is no grass so the flocks and bears become concentrated in small areas that benefit from more sunlight.

There are lots of reasons why the bears should not have been introduced in the Pyrenees, but no valid reason why the should have been. Where does this end? There is evidence that lions roamed this area at one time. Should we re-introduce those too?

[Greb147 6,808]

10 minutes ago, Nicepix said:

But you cannot give a valid reason why the bears should be reintroduced. You just think that it is a good idea. Those local people who rioted to stop mare bears being introduced obviously don't think that it is a good idea.

There is no natural food chain of prey animals other than two species that are already endangered and farm animals. The inconvenience to shepherds isn't just about losing a few sheep for which they will be compensated. They are only compensated if they can bring a carcase in to be examined by a vet or government official. The ones carried away or killed in remote places will have been devoured by the bears and latterly vultures leaving a pile of bones and no evidence. Then there are other issues. Shepherds aren't  being subsidised to own dogs they didn't need before the bears were introduced or for the electric fencing the government advises they should be now using. And, more importantly; the shepherds now feel it necessary to carry guns when out working with their sheep. 40 bears might not seem a large number, but on the north facing slopes of these mountains there are lots of areas where there is no grass so the flocks and bears become concentrated in small areas that benefit from more sunlight.

There are lots of reasons why the bears should not have been introduced in the Pyrenees, but no valid reason why the should have been. Where does this end? There is evidence that lions roamed this area at one time. Should we re-introduce those too?

The difference being is  that lion is now extinct whereas the bear species is still going strong. 

I think us humans have too much of a monopoly on mother earth so I'm all for it providing it's not financially detrimental to any working family. 

[Ken's Deputy 4,456]

27 minutes ago, Nicepix said:

 leaving a pile of bones and no evidence.

I think Gman may beg to differ on this

[Bobtheferret 1,223]

I think it’s all about the situation of each area that the reintroduction is planned for, from what nicepix has said bears where a terrible idea in the Pyrenees but in an area with plenty of natural food and space why not? Frankly, although I am not actually suggesting it, a few wolves round me would be a good thing to control the deer population which is frankly out of control. You can see herds of over a 100 fallow no problem at all round here and with no natural predators it’s down the cars and people to control them and with no market to take that volume of deer most stalkers seem to just take the odd one which doesn’t even dent the numbers. They do far more damage than rabbits to crops also. That’s what happens without natural balance. Yellowstone’s large herbivores have benefitted massively from the introduction of wolves as has the park in general as over grazing has stopped and allowed natural meadows and flowers to flourish again after being stripped bare before. A better balance all round creates a better ecosystem. The herds are now smaller but the remaining animals are stronger and have more food to eat. Natural selection at work.