• masquenox@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    They would overpopulate and exhaust all the resources.

    Save your right-wing “overpopulation” bullcrap. Barely anything predates on elephants and rhinos, yet they haven’t managed to strip the continent of Africa and “exhaust all the resources.”

    • frezik@midwest.social
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      8 days ago

      It’s exactly what happens, and we have about as good a natural experiment on this as it gets:

      https://www.gi.alaska.edu/alaska-science-forum/when-reindeer-paradise-turned-purgatory-0

      tl;dr: a Reindeer herd was setup on an uninhabited Alaskan island as a potential food source during WWII with no natural predators. The war ended before anything came of it, so the herd was left on its own. Within a few decades, they had stripped the island bare of all vegetation the deer could possibly reach, and then they all starved to death.

      Also, see predator reintroduction programs, such as how wolves change rivers.

      Elephants and rhinos don’t breed the same way a lot of other animals do. If they did, evolution would very quickly do what happened in Alaska to those deer. Animals like deer and rabbits breed in great numbers with the evolutionary expectation that predators will keep them in check.

      If you think this process is brutal, well, yes, it is. The conservative thing would be to say that this is “natural” and therefore the correct and only way to run human society. This is wrong; we can choose a better path for ourselves while also accepting that nature works this way all the time.

      • masquenox@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        tl;dr: a Reindeer herd

        So your eco-fash hottake can literally be disproven by the fact that elephants exist, yet you are so desperate to cling onto it that you try to peddle forcing deer into becoming an invasive species on an island they have never adapted to as proof?

            • frezik@midwest.social
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              7 days ago

              So because Elephants exist, Reindeer can go on without Predators? Dude, this is the most uncontaversial take in conservation. Predators are a necessary part of the cycle. That had nothing to do with how human society should run.

              • masquenox@lemmy.world
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                7 days ago

                Dude, this is the most uncontaversial take in conservation.

                So, again. Your Malthusian eco-fash hottake can literally be disproven by the simple fact that elephants exist. Animals can and will evolve to live within the means of their environments. Even humans have been thoroughly documented to be capable of such. So your pretensions that a “Reindeer Apocalypse” is imminent is… what, exactly?

    • Zorque@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      Because their evolutionary defense is literally defense, and not just having enough numbers to overcome predation.

      Sure, there are species that exist without predation, but introduce predators (like humans) and oh, would you look at that… extinction!

      Life is complex, and doesn’t have any one single explanation for how it exists.

      • masquenox@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        but introduce predators (like humans) and oh, would you look at that… extinction!

        Mammalian mega-fauna stil exists (and thrives) on the continent where human beings literally evolved.

          • masquenox@lemmy.world
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            7 days ago

            The White Rhino has survived on this continent for thousands of years, until it was exposed to capitalist exploitation. Ie, the parasitic wealth-and-power accumulation of a tiny minority of the human race.

    • AVincentInSpace@pawb.social
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      7 days ago

      absolutely wild that someone would assume someone’s political views based on their understanding of ecosystems-level biology, but on lemmy, somehow, i’m no longer surprised

      • masquenox@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        absolutely wild that someone would assume someone’s political views based on their understanding of ecosystems-level biology,

        Lol!

        What did you think the (so-called) “Tragedy Of The Commons” right-wing myth was all about, eh? It’s literally the same argument as the one being peddled here.