Art Eatman
Staff in Memoriam
lc, I fully understand your concern, but until you are the Big Boss we're gonna be living where we want to and having as many kids as we want to and we'll continue to have a growing population and occupy more of the land.
People's individual attitudes, manners, morals and mores really don't have all that much to do with the problems with interactions with wildlife. On a societal basis, yeah.
Cities grow. The greater Houston area along I-10 is now fifty miles across. forty years ago it was around twenty miles.
For all that, the populations of deer and wild turkey are greater now than at any time in history. habitat that will support those species also supports all those non-game critters.
I say societal: You can't get people to understand that feral housecats kill many tens of millions of songbirds every year. "I love poo-tats!" wins out over buntings and cardinals. The bird kill from antenna towers is much less, although appreciable. You have a cell phone? You're a bird killer. Watch TV? You're a bird killer. Want "renewable energy" in the form of wind generators? You're a bird killer.
Is it allowed for people to raise crops? Raise livestock? Make enough money to lay by for the future, eat food, have clothing, drive a car and pay school taxes? There's no socialistic subsidy for losses to pests and predation...
I've been "messing around" in this Great Outdoors for some 65 years. I spent four years in the 1970s brain-picking on the "bug and bunny boys", the wildlife biologists, as part of my professional work. I like to think I have a fair amount of understanding of eco-systems, animal behavior and people's interactions.
, Art
People's individual attitudes, manners, morals and mores really don't have all that much to do with the problems with interactions with wildlife. On a societal basis, yeah.
Cities grow. The greater Houston area along I-10 is now fifty miles across. forty years ago it was around twenty miles.
For all that, the populations of deer and wild turkey are greater now than at any time in history. habitat that will support those species also supports all those non-game critters.
I say societal: You can't get people to understand that feral housecats kill many tens of millions of songbirds every year. "I love poo-tats!" wins out over buntings and cardinals. The bird kill from antenna towers is much less, although appreciable. You have a cell phone? You're a bird killer. Watch TV? You're a bird killer. Want "renewable energy" in the form of wind generators? You're a bird killer.
Is it allowed for people to raise crops? Raise livestock? Make enough money to lay by for the future, eat food, have clothing, drive a car and pay school taxes? There's no socialistic subsidy for losses to pests and predation...
I've been "messing around" in this Great Outdoors for some 65 years. I spent four years in the 1970s brain-picking on the "bug and bunny boys", the wildlife biologists, as part of my professional work. I like to think I have a fair amount of understanding of eco-systems, animal behavior and people's interactions.
, Art