"I hate to pull out the education card here,"

Then don't. I have a PhD too, and most of my work involves social science and landscape ecology. I've published stuff about human evolutionary ecology, so it's not entirely out of my league.

"Both hunters and predators kill game species, but this is far from saying they occupy the same niche."

The error is in assuming that any two creatures occupy the same niche. They don't.

My point is that hunters, courtesy of game and fish departmens, make much more consciuous decisions about our effects on prey demography than do wild animals. The latter take prey more or less consistently with an optimal return rate -- most meat for least effort. There's no service of any kind to the prey species. Merely a constany dynamic interaction of predation and effort to escape same.

"First off, the assertion that predators eat mostly fawns is on its face ridiculous."

Of the ungulates that they eat, they eat mostly fawns. Fawns are the easiest to catch and provide the most bang for the effort. AZGFD studied the effects of drought on deer populations and came to the interesting empirical conclusion that in sustained droughts the deer population would probably remain stable, were it not for the coyotes eating fawns.

Wolves, now, feed on all manner of foods, because IIRC they are omnivorous. And they take everything from rodents to large ungulates. But the fact remains that they'll take fawns first and foremost, as opportunity permits.

"I'm not saying you have "DisneyItis" but predators killing fawns is actually a good thing. Ungulates evolved their social structure and mating habits under the constraint that predators would cause a low calf recruitment rate."

You're mistaking outcome for optimization. Sure they evolved their social dynamic under pressure from wolves. Under different selective pressures the dynamic would presumedly be different, not necessarily worse. Under pressure from humans their organization may change. That's fine.

"Predators killing what fawns they can eliminates genetic and behavioral traits that are long term harmful to the species (careless mothers, stupid fawns, etc...) Hunters don't do this at all."

That's disneyitis. You presume that the fawns most killed are the ones who are genetically inferior. That's not how predators work. They just take targets of opportunity. There's far more dumb luck inolved than there is genetic fitness, IMO.

"Also, by thinning the yearling population you assure that the ones that do survive have a better chance of making it through the winter since the foliage will be less taxed."

Human hunting achieves the same effect.

"Is completely at odds with what an ecologist or evolutionary biologist would tell you."

No, it's not.

Congress is quick to pick on symbolic targets, without any knowledge or expertise whereof regarding their target, without any real risk of consequences to themselves, and without regard to the US Constitution.

This is as dumb an idea as the ban on horse slaughtering for meat.

This should be a decision that Alaska is makes, not some politicans from CA. CA cant even run its own states budget, they should spend time worrying about their own state and not others.

I do agree that shooting wolves from a helicopter should not be classifies as hunting, but management. Is it necessary, I am not sure, but being that I live on the east coast, it does not affect me, let the citizens of alaska decide if they want to ban it.

Folks need to keep their emotions out of it. Folks who aren't educated on the matter shouldn't be involved either, esspecially politicians, they are like bench warming sock puppets for the hippies they represent. To call this hunting is also a bit of a stretch, it's more of an effective management technique. Folks need to think about what they eat, and remember that everytime they eat, something must die for them to fill their stomachs.

muddog,

first off, know that I am one of the few people on this site who largely agree with your assertion that predators are necessary for a healthy ecosystem, and should not be held to artificial levels far below what is natural in order to satisfy us hunters.

(which is not to say that predators shouldn't be hunted)

I have a few questions to ask you though:

#1) you assert that:
"If it were not for the "Leftists" we would not have ANY wild places left"

Who do you think started the "wild places", conservation movement? Who was the first President to established these wild places?

For me, names like Teddy Roosevelt and Aldo Leopold come to mind. Nearly all of the early conservationists were political conservatives.

Though granted, most people associate the term "conservative" with the Republican party, and over the past couple decades the Republican party has become beholden to the evangelical movement, making them staunchly anti-science.

This anti-science-ness makes them generally opposed to environmental legislation, since its justification is almost always based on... you guessed it... science! The same science supports evolution and says the earth is more than 6000 years old! gasp!

Also, I'm 99% sure that if Leopold and TR were around today, Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh and the bunch would call them bleeding heart liberals for following the scientific method and supporting legislation that favors the environment to the expense of some businesses.

#2) Could you please explicitly define "trophy hunter"?

We were discussing it on a recent HSUS post and there seems to be a great deal of confusion on the definition of that term.

for example, There is a MONSTER 12 point whitetail that has been showing up in my woods and in my neighbor's corn fields.

This fall, I have every intention of saving my buck tag for him, passing up smaller bucks, shooting him, having his rack mounted for my living room wall and savoring all those delicious venison roasts, burgers, and jerky.

does this make me a trophy hunter? after all, I am going into the woods, hunting, and specifically targeting a trophy.

Mike Diehl
I agree with you 100%. The first step to taking away hunting rights and eating animals is when congress banned horse slaughtering. This would be another step closer. I think it would be good to allow licenses for the wolves to average people, but don't think they should pass any legislation to ban hunting from helicopters. I think there is nothing wrong with it, and if I had the chance to do it I would. I would also have a nice wolf skin hanging on my wall afterwards.

Sure, but what's wrong with that? Shifting the predator prey balance in our favor by eliminating competitors is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Other predators do it all the time. Bears drive each other away. Lions kill hyenas, and leopards, and other lions when they compete for game, &c.

I just don't see a problem here.

The only way to manage Wolves in that part of the country is by air. Nobody has ever said it was for sporting purposes, it’s for control. I lived in Alaska for 4 years and the Tundra is rough and unforgiving just ask our 4 Tundrateers who tackled "Ice-Out by Ice Road: Fishing Backcountry Manitoba by ATV!" If you think there should be a law against it, you do not have a clue what you’re talking about !

Let's put Feinstein in a valley with a pack of wolves AND a rifle. Let's see how cute and cuddly these old boys are then. Stupid California politicians.

"Extending the "our hunting opportunities are more important than the role the predator plays in the ecosystem" idea leads to the natural result that the predator is either exterminated or held to such low levels that its niche in the ecosystem goes essentially unfilled"

Ah. But the fact seems to me that the niche DOES NOT go unfilled. We hunters fill the niche. We probably do a better job of filling the niche than wild predators do. The number one take among ungulates by wild predators is healthy fawns. I'm not saying you're laboring under the burden of DisneyItis, but the whole notion that predators "Help" a population by "Culling the sick and lame" thereby providing a harmonious and happy relationship between predator and prey a la The Lion Kind is baloney. Predators eat fawns mostly. Yes they also take the sick and lame.

"I would hold that the system is too high-order, nonlinear, and uncertain to make this assertion."

Let me say that I am skeptical of the general claim that things not well understood are nonlinear. But if anything is, outside of computer simulations, ecological systems probably are, because they seem sensitive to small perturbations. The thing is, ALL ecological systems are probably non-linear (and by definition more or less complex adaptive systems) with or without humans. It seems to me as much of a fantastic assumption to call a human-less or human-reduced ecological system a "better" system than any other.

"When dealing with continental-scale ecosystems like this, the state space so hyper-dimensional its scary. That state space has a multitude of attraction basins and the system's high degree of uncertainty means that even if we could explicitly define the edges of those basins it would be impossible to develop a strategy to avoid them."

But, since we're talking SFI stuff here (whither I spent a year learning what they're about, some decades ago), I feel compelled to point out that all ecological systems MAY have basins of attraction. I'd have to flip back to my Stu Kauffman stuff, but AFAIC all attempts to simulate ecological systems produce 'em. And I suspect (probably others have written as much) that niches work like BsOA. There's always going to be room for an algae eater... or an elk eater and indeed probably more than one in competition. Fixating on the notion that a nonhuman one is necessarily preferable to a human one seems to me to be quite a stretch. Especially when you consider that humans have been part of the equation in North America for at least 10K years.

"In other words, I say we are kidding ourselves if we think we can alter the fundamentals of a system this large and complex and still be able to predict the outcomes."

I think we're kidding ourselves if we think that any choice we make either to kill wolves or not does not alter the fundamentals of the ecology.

"Think of how many times over history man has thought, I understand nature, I can control it. how has that worked out?"

Hard to know. Sometimes well and other times not so well. But natural selection has produced its share of niche disasters too. Spruce budworm comes to mind.

"I would change "genetically" to "genetically or behaviorally", seeing as how behaviors are passed on from parent to offspring just like genes."

Not everything that is done is a consequence of inferior behavior or genes. Like I said, there is a dominant factor of "stuff happens."

"Then I not only presume that is true, I insist that by shear logic it must be."

The question is how determinative? Big Evolutionary Change happens when selective pressures are very strong, as far as I understand punctuated equilibrium. What you and I are discussing seems to be tinkering on the margins of wolf population. It's not like the management here occurs in an information vacuum.

"The mere fact that any one individual is killed means that it had to have done something worse than the other members of its species."

No that's not correct at least I mean I think I disagree. Sometimes it's just a matter of bad timing or sheer dumb luck.

"However, this is a dramatic shift in the rules of the game, evolution is now trying to optimize the species under an entirely different set of constraints. Obviously, the hunter's prey selection criterion are wildly different from that of a keystone predator."

Sure? And....?

"Basically, I stand on my first point and assert that we can't predict the long term effect that "changing the rules" will have, therefore we should avoid the risk."

Hmmm. Like you said, we just disagree. IMO the fact that we're actually conscious of our effects on population dynamics probably makes us a much more stable (ecologically speaking) form of apex predator, WHEN we manage populations for sustainability of course. I would argue that your examples of disasterous human impact derive primarily from decisions NOT to manage populations sustainably -- in short -- from times when we essentially allowed individuals to follow their own short term goals, after the fashion of wolves.

I guess I am torn on this Mike,Ken you both have good statements and Im going to throw my 2 cents in. Now I have heard of Gov trappers using aircraft for coyote control around ranches and whatnot but I would not call this hunting and I would not call shootin a wolf out of the air hunting or any other game animal. In these economic times you would think the state would like to benifit the profit by selling the tags.

"An apex predator is necessary for the health of a species; they take out the weak, injured, and diseased animals."

With respect to ungulates, apex predators OTHER than Homo sapiens in game-managed environments primarily take out fawns.

"If only the premier animals of a species get to breed, then the species benefits as the offspring are stronger and more likely to avoid predators and breed."

That is an illogical tautology. Wolves don't "benefit the species" nor does any apex predator other than human. The *selective* effect of wolves results in ungulates that are *less vulnerable to wolves.* It doesn't make the species "improved" in any way except with respect to avoiding being eaten by a wolf.

"Hunters who look to take big bucks and bulls offset this balance as they take out the top animals from the population and cut out that genetic potential;"

Which potential? This seems like the same tautological error. Humans who cull large bulls impose a selection regime that favors smaller or more wary animals. That does not make the species "worse" or "inferior" it simply results in animals less likely to be eaten by hunters.

"while wolves most often kill old, female, or young animals as they cannot bring down a healthy mature male."

Ha!

"It's called NATURAL SELECTION, and is a basic middle school biology concept."

Then you need to go back to school and do a little more learnin about it.

why exactly is this necessary? why can't regular hunting permits just be issued?

There seems to be no shortage of people out there who are just salivating to kill as many of those evil wolves as possible.

Leaving PETA and California congresswomen aside, why do we need to spend tax payer money to send contractors up in helicopters when there are so many people willing to PAY the government to do it recreationally?

I agree with you Ken. While it shouldn't be banned, I also don't think that taxpayers should be footing the bill.

Curious....

How did the Caribou and Elk "Survive" for the last, oh 5,000 years before "Management"?.

Mother Nature was doing just fine before Humans "Managed" wildlife.

As a hunter I am sick of UNnatural management of species.

As a Fly Fisherman I am sick of “Managed” wildlife, like the diluted and delusional hatchery fish debate.

I will take a biologists / Scientists take on what should be done rather than US Fish and Game and those who want to hunt.

Arial killing of Wolves is cowardly and stupid from a PR standpoint.

Also not sure where the US Constitution has to do with this, but if the Wolves are killed on PUBLIC lands and ALL citizens are not allowed to speak their concerns on the matter then that could be un constitutional.

To say that ALL Caribou and Elk would disappear is an outright misstatement and factually un true.

I am totally for science based management NOT what is politically expedient.

Even those who do not hunt support management and culling if necessary for long term health of the species.

yooperryan-

When I say recreational hunting, I mean regular recreational hunting, as in from the ground.

Ken Mcloud
I gave you a -1 and will do so anytime I don't agree with you. I give them as I read through them, and then I write my comment. Give me them back if you don't like it.

I'm sorry mike, but the concept that predators help game species is about as far from "lion king disney-itis" as a scientific concept can get.

I hate to pull out the education card here, but I've taken biology and ecology classes from more than one avid hunter who happens to have a phd in the field.

Go pick up any evolutionary biology or ecology text book and look under the "selective pressure" chapter.

Both hunters and predators kill game species, but this is far from saying they occupy the same niche.

First off, the assertion that predators eat mostly fawns is on its face ridiculous. Fawns are born in the spring and by fall are matured enough to be just as capable at evading predators as an adult. By this definition fawns only exist for four or maybe five months of the year. Granted, during that time predators will focus on them, but do you expect me to believe that the predators simply diet for the other 3/4ths of the year? of course not! they're eating the adults that are easiest to kill.

Secondly, back to my selective pressure point. I'm not saying you have "DisneyItis" but predators killing fawns is actually a good thing. Ungulates evolved their social structure and mating habits under the constraint that predators would cause a low calf recruitment rate.

Predators killing what fawns they can eliminates genetic and behavioral traits that are long term harmful to the species (careless mothers, stupid fawns, etc...) Hunters don't do this at all.

Also, by thinning the yearling population you assure that the ones that do survive have a better chance of making it through the winter since the foliage will be less taxed. Exact same concept as thinning our your garden in the early summer so that you have a few strong plants instead of dozens of feeble, weak ones all competing for the same resources.

The same basic point applies to the general population, not just the fawns. Predators prey on the weak, sick, slow, inferior individuals, thus removing them from the breeding pool so that their genetic and behavioral traits do not get passed on to the next generation. Hunters do the exact opposite by (usually) removing the most fit, prime breeding stock from the herd.

I'm not saying that there isn't any overlap between what hunters do and a keystone predator's niche. Nor am I saying that hunters don't do any good for a species. But I am asserting that the statement:

"We hunters fill the niche. We probably do a better job of filling the niche than wild predators do"

Is completely at odds with what an ecologist or evolutionary biologist would tell you. Please do not take my word for it, pick up some books on the subject written by academics in the field and see for yourself.

there are two sentences in your post that sum up our disagreement.

First,
"Under pressure from humans their organization may change. That's fine."

I would hold that the system is too high-order, nonlinear, and uncertain to make this assertion. I'm not saying its false, I'm saying its impossible to assess its validity with any certainty at all so we shouldn't take the risk if we don't have to. (and we don't have to)

When dealing with continental-scale ecosystems like this, the state space so hyper-dimensional its scary. That state space has a multitude of attraction basins and the system's high degree of uncertainty means that even if we could explicitly define the edges of those basins it would be impossible to develop a strategy to avoid them.

In other words, I say we are kidding ourselves if we think we can alter the fundamentals of a system this large and complex and still be able to predict the outcomes.

Think of how many times over history man has thought, I understand nature, I can control it. how has that worked out?

Can it be done on private ranch somewhere for a few years? sure! but we are talking about at applying this philosophy for decades or even centuries on a continental scale.

Second,
"You presume that the fawns most killed are the ones who are genetically inferior."

I would change "genetically" to "genetically or behaviorally", seeing as how behaviors are passed on from parent to offspring just like genes.

Then I not only presume that is true, I insist that by shear logic it must be.

The mere fact that any one individual is killed means that it had to have done something worse than the other members of its species. It wasn't as alert as it could have been, it let the fawn wander too far, it didn't use cover effectively enough, etc...

These things are not necessarily "flaws" but the fact that an individual was preyed upon means there was something it could have done better.

The predator removes those less than optimal genes or behaviors from the pool. Thus, making the species an infinitesimally small bit "better". I emphasize "infinitesimally" because this is mostly a process that takes centuries, not a generation or two.

Granted, hunters do something similar by removing genes and behaviors that are less than optimal at avoiding hunters. However, this is a dramatic shift in the rules of the game, evolution is now trying to optimize the species under an entirely different set of constraints. Obviously, the hunter's prey selection criterion are wildly different from that of a keystone predator.

Basically, I stand on my first point and assert that we can't predict the long term effect that "changing the rules" will have, therefore we should avoid the risk.

Vis a vis basins. Actually, by some models you can be in a flat spot and immobile. If you're not in one you're not necessarily moving away from it. That'd be homeostatic equilibrium, but it's not a terribly important point.

Vis a vis wolves. They were essentially extinct in the lower 48. I'm not convinced the lower 48 was poorly served by their absence.

Finally:

"...But if I am to believe my economist friends, everything is subjective and objectivity is just a fantasy that we scientists and engineers tell ourselves so we can sleep at night."

They're wrong. They're saying it to excuse the fact that economists have demonstrated by their performance that their knowledge of the economy is to the economy as alchemy once was to molecular interactions.

As for objectivity I can only refer you to an old anthropological notion called the "structural pose." In seeking to be objective, a really rationalist oriented person can in fact be totally objective for certain tasks, at least for brief but usable windows of time. It's not everyone that can muster the discipline to do it though, which is why relatively few of us are engineers or scientists.

"You still haven't responded to my three scenarios yet, I'd really like you to .."

I thought that it was obvious that I'm in favor of managed hunting.

"There are NO fawns during the late fall, winter, or early spring because last year's have grown up and new ones haven't been born yet."

By most estimates, 36% of the animals taken by wolves in any year are fawns. The implication is that during calving season and early postpaturation, the wolves are MOSTLY killing fawns. I don't know what the take is on recruitment -- that is whether or not it's half the fawns or 2/3 of the fawns or what. Wolves aren't something I've researched in detail. It remains the case, however, that with all apex predators other than humans, fawns are the targets of choice. And I also know that where coyotes are the big deal, even in drought years, deer herds would remain stable were it not for coyotes. The rest of your argument isn't particularly germane without more details. We know that pregnant cows are also a preferred prey because their condition makes them Large Slow Targets. The idea that wolves, coyotes, big cats, killer whales, etc, primarily take the aged, infirm, sick, injured, etc, is just flat out incorrect.

"Since the "no fawns" period of time is longer than the "fawns" period of time I hold that its impossible for predators to eat MOSTLY fawns over the course of a full year."

About 36% fawns, 33% antlerless adults and juveniles, and 31% bulls.

"I think we are in agreement that wolf-optimized populations are DIFFERENT from hunter-optimized populations but the question is, which is BETTER?"

I don't pretend to know. Natural selection doesn't do "better." I do know that as a hunter I'd rather have a higher success rate regardless. However that comes about is ok with me.

"#1) I point out my earlier argument that we know, from natural history, that predator-optimized ungulate populations are stable over long periods of time (millions of years)."

No we don't. I don't know what you mean by "optimized" either that's just word substitution for "better." Again, natural selection doesn't DO better. It doesn't do optimized. It just does. Todays "perfect species" is tomorrow's failed experiment is the ONE primary lesson from natural history on the paleontological time scale.

"Since ecological systems are self limiting.."

I worry that you're introducing irrelevent jargon here. "Self limiting" in what way? Are you claiming that no species ever went extinct until humans invented gunpowder? It sounds like that is what you're trying to imply.

"I will define instability as being any trajectory that converges to an equilibrium point on one of the axes of the state space, in other words, where one of the states equals zero."

Instability would, by your definition, be the chronic persistent state of ecological systems.

Put it this way. Were elk in the lower 48 terribly off for the 100 or so years when there were effectively no wolves hunting them? If the reintroduction of wolves didn't solve a problem, from an management pov, who needs wolves?

"When we start retroactively redefining common words like "mostly", the debate has lost interest for me, so this will be my last post."

No one retroactively redefined anything. Not interested in a language debate but the numerically the most frequently wolf eaten ungulates are fawns. Hence "mostly." I could have used "modal" too, which would have been more precise, but I didn't anticipate that you'd be trying to tell me 'what I really meant.'

"I'm using "optimized" in mathematical or engineering sense rather than a grand, subjective, metaphysical one."

No. You're using it in a metaphorical sense. Demonstrate to me mathematically that the animals are optimized for their predator. I want to see the constants, the parameters, and the difeq. Otherwise, you're claiming they're "optimized" but you can't demonstrate it and you can't specify how. That's metaphor, not mathematics.

"I meant that an iterative process was underway whereby each step produces a smaller and smaller value of the cost function."

Prove it in re wolves and elk. I don't care that you can imagine an equation. If you want to claim that there is such an optimization function let's see the data that supports it.

"Funny, the paragraph after I define "self limiting" starts out "This is relevant because..."."

I know. And I still don't see the relevance. I don't see how what you think is relevant really is relevant. Something missing there that you're thinking of that I'm not seeing.

"No tautology, Disney-itis, or idealization here. Strait up math."

Pure tautology and no math at all. You claim that an optimization function exists (but you can't demonstrate it) and therefore claim that the species is optimized (but you can't specify how). All you've done is state that you believe that natural selection makes a species 'better' except that you keep trying to substitute words for better. Problem is, I know the words too, and I'm not convinced that your argument is anything other than rhetorical word substition in defense of an empirically unsupported claim.

Natural selection doesn't improve species because it's not goal oriented. It doesn't optimize species for anything. The primary consequence of natural selection is extinction.

Vis wolves and elk. Wolves MOSTLY eat fawns. Numerically, their most frequent kill is fawns. Of the older animals, they MOSTLY eat the senescent, which are animals that are basically past reproduction. Wolves aren't goal oriented in managing ungulate herds to maintain a healthy herd, or to optimize their capture rates. Their only goal is immediate maximum return for effort. Towards that end, they eat fawns first and foremost, then pregnant cows, the injured and the aged.

The idea that they "improve the species" is Dinsneyesque balderdash.

Fish and Wildlife is NOT to be trusted. They are @ the whim of whatever party is in power, end of story.

If it were not for the "Leftists" we would not have ANY wild places left, full stop, no debate.

The so called "Leftists" have been pushing for wild places long before the hunting crowd found it cool, I.E. Ducks Unlimited, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation etc.

To claim that wolves would decimate elk and Caribou heard is absurd @ the very least and @ worst a lie.

1st and foremost wildlife should be managed for their own good and the long term survival of the eco system, not some short term fix to keep hunters fulfilled.

I do not see the “Sport” in killing something you cannot eat. Trophy Hunting really is not hunting.

logan.vandermay-

What do you disagree with in my post? you haven't yet said anything in contradiction with what I said.

YooperRyan
So you think that is more humane to allow wolves to starve to death, freeze to death and die of disease from overpopulation and hard winters that to manage them with the resource of a helicopter and quick death from a gun? I disagree.

"Just because you don't know about a nearby basin of attraction doesn't mean you're not being drawn into it"

So, I'm not really sure what you're getting at here but the by the definition of a basin of attraction, if are not in a given basin, you are in fact being drawn away from it.

The basin of attraction is a region of the state space wherein all trajectories will [eventually] converge to a certain equilibrium point or limit cycle. This of course assumes that there are no disturbances or perturbations, which there always are.

So, if we are not in the basin of attraction pertaining to equilibrium/limit cycle "A" then we must be in one of the basins of attraction pertaining to equilibria/limit cycles "B" through "Z" and are therefore being pulled towards that equilibrium/limit cycle and away from "A".

The catch of course, is that the uncertainty in the system means that we can never know exactly where the boundary between the two basins is, and we can also never know our position in the state space exactly.

So, we COULD be perilously close to crossing that boundary, so close that a minor disturbance within the system or policy change by us could tip us over that boundary and into the basin associated with a highly undesirable equilibrium or limit cycle.

For example "population = 0" is an equilibrium in every ecological system.

The extreme end of the reactions to all this uncertainty and danger would be to contract and do nothing at all. I certainly don't propose that. We NEED to interact with our environment, and in a lot of cases its darn fun.

However, we should be mindful of the fact that all that danger and uncertainty is out there and avoid taking actions which will dramatically shift our position in the state space or even "change the rules" that determine where the boundaries to those basins of attraction are.

The point I see is that Alaska could have most of Western Europe within its borders and not be crowded. There is not way you can effectively hunt ANY species up there without Air Transportation. I can also add that shooting animals from Helicopters it extremely difficult. I was a combat photographer in Viet Nam. This is only importand to me as personal history, having said that I often flew in helicopter gunships as an assignment do document the use of them not only as transportation but as a "Weapon System".

I saw many times that it is extremely hard to hit a man sized target. (Bigger than a wolf for comparison.) The gunners rarely hit the targets smaller than very large and slow moving animals, (Which clearly excludes wolves.) So your premise that it is easy to kill them from the air is ludicrous.

If one can do it from the Air I will make the point that it is a better method than trapping them, which DOES NOT kill quickly, but forces them to slowly starve to death and suffer needlessly. Given a choice I would prefer that they (Or even I) would be killed quickly.

Comments genltemen?

Moishe, Moishe, Moishe...

This is the problem I often run into when making comments on the internet. On nearly every issue, people have two neat little bins they want to put everyone into; "down-home conservative vs evil big city liberal", "fundamentalist evangelical christian vs atheist", "life begins at conception vs. OK to kill toddlers"

Unfortunately, I almost never fit into one of the nice neat little bins. I make nuanced, rational arguments that often fall in a completely different direction than either bin. But understanding this would take too much mental energy and consideration. So, instead people just read a sentence or two of my post, decide to place me in particular bin, then assign all the qualities of people in that bin to me and go off on a rant about how wrong it is.

Case in point:

I never ever, once, anywhere said anything like:

"it is easy to kill them from the air"

Yet you spent 3 paragraphs ranting about how wrong I am over something I didn't say!

please quote me the sentence from my post where I said that. Go ahead, read all my posts, I'll wait. Its not in there. I know its not in there because I don't think its true.

You saw that I disagreed with some people in the "kill all wolves" bin, then you assumed I must be in the southern California hippie wolf-hugging bin so you attributed their opinions on helicopter culling to me.

When nothing could be further from the truth, I firmly disagree with both of your artificially created bins. I make a rational argument having nothing to do with either of their stances. But I guess reading more than one sentence to understand that would have just been too much work.

what I ACTUALLY SAID:

Currently the state is spending money to pay contractors to go up in the air and do something that scores and scores of people are chomping at the bit to do from the ground.

There appears to be a huge group of people who want noting more than to kill as many wolves as possible, let them! just charge them for tags and licenses and then wolf culling becomes a revenue stream for the state instead of an expenditure.

I never said "ban helicopter culling" I said there's a better way to do it. BIG difference.

By the way, thanks for all the "-1"'s over an opinion that isn't even mine, real classy move.

On to your little link there, which I believe is in relation to the back and forth clay and I were having.

Believe it or not, I did pass 2nd grade geography and I know exactly how big Alaska is.

Clay's argument (and maybe yours, I can't tell) was that the regions in question were too remote to hunt wolves from the ground.

my counter argument was essentially: how is it that people can hunt moose and caribou from the ground, but not wolves ?

now, you said:
"There is not [sic] way you can effectively hunt ANY species up there without Air Transportation"

you seem to be confusing the notion of using air transportation to get to the remote hunting location with the notion of shooting the game from the air.

I firmly agree that the former is 100% necessary, but firmly disagree that the later necessary.

As proof, I cite the thousands of caribou, bear, and moose hunters who fly to their base camp in the Alaskan bush and then take shots at their game with their feet on the ground.

3 days 19 minutes ago-
"Predators eat fawns mostly"
8 min 12 sec ago-
"36% of the animals taken by wolves in any year are fawns"

If we're being honest, doesn't "mostly" mean greater than 50%? All I am saying is that your first statement was incorrect and now it appears as though you have corrected it. I'm glad we came to an agreement.

"I thought that it was obvious that I'm in favor of managed hunting."

does that mean you agree with me on my 3 scenarios? A lot of people would call scenario # 2 "managed hunting", though I wouldn't.

"The idea that wolves, coyotes, big cats, killer whales, etc, primarily take the aged, infirm, sick, injured, etc, is just flat out incorrect."

Funny, you didn't provide any statistics or arguments to support this assertion. You said wolves take: "36% fawns, 33% antlerless adults and juveniles, and 31% bulls" but you never said anything about age, disease or injury within those three groups. How do you know that the majority of the later two groups were not somehow impaired?

"I don't know what you mean by "optimized" either that's just word substitution for "better.""

No its not Mike, I'm being much more intellectually honest than that. admittedly, I did not define my terms, so it is my fault that you misinterpreted them. I will define them now:

predator-optimized : a population which has had long term selective pressure applied to it by predators. Because of this, traits which lead to predation have been minimized and traits which avoid predation have been maximized. This could be restated as a population that has been "optimized to avoid predators".

Hunter-optimized : a population which has had long term selective pressure applied to it by hunters. Because of this, traits which lead to death-by-hunter have been minimized and traits which avoid death-by-hunter have been maximized. This could be restated as a population that has been "optimized to avoid hunters"

"I worry that you're introducing irrelevant jargon here. "Self limiting" in what way? Are you claiming that no species ever went extinct until humans invented gunpowder? It sounds like that is what you're trying to imply."

Again, Come now Mike!, you've got to know I'm more trustworthy than that. I said self limiting not "immortal". But again, I did not define my term, so the fault is mine for the misinterpretation.

In non-linear dynamics, a self limiting system is one where no finite initial condition can lead to an infinite result. In other words, it is impossible to start with a finite number of animals and end up with an infinite number of animals. The ecosystem's limited resources make this impossible.

This is relevant because one common definition of instability is "a trajectory which takes one of the states to infinity". Obviously, this definition is meaningless in an ecological system because none of the trajectories will ever take a population to infinity, at least not if you have a well designed model.

Now that I have done a better job of defining my terms, I urge you to go back and re-read my last post, I think you will agree with much more of it.

What we need to do is shut up and let the folks in Alaska manage the wolves and everything else up there. Most of us in the Lower 48 have no clue as to what we are talking about while yapping about wolves in Alaska.

Ought to open season on politicians like Diane Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi. Matter of fact, the Tuesday after the first Monday in November in even numbered years there is a no bag limit, no possession season on busy-body PC politicians. Vote early, vote often as they say in Chicago....

"Let me say that I am skeptical of the general claim that things not well understood are nonlinear."

We're getting way off track here, but its fun to joust with you, so I'll throw this out there.

I would say that linearity is an artificial construct that we humans thrust upon natural systems in order to describe them easily with mathematics.

Therefore, no natural systems are linear. It just appears that way because linearity is a good approximation for some systems over certain domains of their state space.

I do a lot of empirical systems dynamics and modeling work in order to develop control systems. I have never once seen a real, physical system that behaves truly linearly, though I have seen a couple for whom linearity is a good approximation when a set of restrictions applied.

"I feel compelled to point out that all ecological systems MAY have basins of attraction"

I'd say that they all do, all of these systems exist as perturbations of a limit cycle, we often idealize these limit cycles as equilibria, and any equilibrium point or limit cycle has an associated basin of attraction. Granted, it may be arbitrarily large or arbitrarily small, but its still there.

perhaps a more valid argument is that any ecological system may have an undesirable basin of attraction nearby that we don't know about. In other words, we should be cautious of what we don't understand.

"Fixating on the notion that a nonhuman one is necessarily preferable to a human one seems to me to be quite a stretch."

I think herein lies the crux of our disagreement. I think that the way humans interact with our ecosystem is fundamentally different from the way other animals do. We have the ability to isolate ourselves from the effects of our actions. We also have the ability to alter the system on a far greater scale and far faster than any of the other animals.

To quote spiderman "with great power comes great responsibility". We know nature can handle things just fine, she's been doing it for 4.5 billion years. We should avoid taking control of/ responsibility for such a complex and uncertain system when there is a viable alternative.

first, I will wholeheartedly agree that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is probably the most misused scientific concept of all time.

What it actually says is that the product of the uncertainty in a particle's position and the uncertainty in the particle's momentum is equal to a constant.

It says nothing about complex systems and more importantly does not imply "whatever you measure you also change". By measuring something you fix it in a particular state that was always possible before the measurement, you don't "change" a darn thing. see dual slit experiment for an awesome example.

However!
This is not to say that there is no valid mathematical way to deal with uncertainty. I do a lot of work in the field of robust control theory where uncertainty is an accepted part of life. (Unlike most branches of engineering which assume it doesn't exist and then later run empirical tests to confirm that assumption is valid)

A lot of my collages use stochastic models to come up with "optimal" outcomes even given uncertainty. The problem with this method is that small errors in modeling the probability curves can lead to wildly different (and usually bad) controllers.

I commonly use a method called "D-K" or "mu" synthesis. we create an artificial construct called a "generalized plant" this is essentially a family of all the models that are possible across a given range of parameter uncertainties, modeling inaccuracies, and disturbances. This has the benefit of never assuming that a probability curve even exists, so we don't have to worry about modeling it inaccurately.

We then use gobs and gobs of computing power to design controllers that can guarantee a certain level of frequency-domain performance for every possible state of that generalized plant.

For anyone who is interested, I have a little side project where I am working on applying these techniques to the predator-prey-hunter system.

back to the issue at hand, what do you think about the three scenarios I proposed?