[duopixel]

When I first moved to Europe I was struck by just how domesticated the land is. I can sleep in the open without being afraid of snakes, scorpions, spiders, wolves or bears. Even when land is "wild", the larger mammals will be rabbits, deer, wild goats and such. Excepting natural parks, hunters are the only predators.

At least in Spain, a tremendous percentage of land is put at the service of mankind. The dehesas give cork, honey, acorns to feed the pigs, and grass for the cattle.

The situation where developing countries need to conserve their land in a natural state in the interest of biodiversity and climate reminds me a game of Civilization where you are no longer allowed to exploit them to your advantage (with good reason!). We need to keep this land intact, but the only way to do it is to make conservation more valuable than exploitation.

[wil421]

The Europeans killed off most large animals like Aurochs and Bison, and a few predators including Tigers, Lions. They also killed off most of the forests.

When I was in southern Germany I did notice how cultivated the land was. There were a few patches of trees but they didn’t look like old growth forests. Even the hills were cultivated into farmland.

Costa Rica is a good example of developing a country who wants to keep their natural resources in tact. 25% of their land are national parks.

Wild boars scare me much more than black bears.

[Cthulhu_]

> They also killed off most of the forests.

Yeah, keep this in mind; big parts of Europe are hundreds of years after a gradual deforestation. Europe, mostly Western, is highly cultivated. Mind you, thanks to that we're also very efficient in agriculture - NL, despite being one of the smallest countries in the world, is also the second biggest agricultural export country in the world.

[gph]

>NL, despite being one of the smallest countries in the world, is also the second biggest agricultural export country in the world.

That stat while true is very misleading. First of all that's based on money not volume. On top of that the majority of NL's agricultural export is due to the fact that Amsterdam is home to the largest flower/live plant market/exchange in the world. Most of those billions of dollars of exports are in the form of highly expensive decorative plants and/or their seeds/bulbs, not staple crops.

I guess that's all to say if the Netherlands sunk below the sea tomorrow the world would not suddenly be starving. Rich people just wouldn't get their flowers.

[gimmeThaBeet]

That combination doesn't make a lot of sense. The CBS shows that ornamental horticulture has a plurality, but even if you strip away all the prepared products, and most of the fruits (first imported), and then cut that number in half, it's more than the flowers/nursery products, assuming they're all domestic.

https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2019/03/agricultural-export-va...

[nostromo]

I love farm tech but found the endless greenhouses I saw in NL and neighboring countries kind of depressing.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/magazine/righ...

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/magazine/righ...

The fact that we're putting acres and acres of farmland indoors leaves no room for wildlife of any kind -- including animals like birds that can happily exist alongside outdoor farms -- or migratory animals like deer, wolves, etc.

[rasz]

Germany today: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/oct/01/german-mini...

They agreed to merely postpone it for a year https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rwe-lignite-hambach/germa...

[kaybe]

Don't underestimate the wild pigs though!

Actually a great part of European biodiversity depends on the cultivation of the land. The natural state would be forests and swamps. Grazing leads to open lands with a multitude of grasses, other small plants, bushes, hedges and solitary huge trees, which support different insects and birds.

In Germany we have a biome type, Heide (seems to correspond to heath [0]), that was created by degrading the land by removing the good topsoil to fertilize fields (as opposed to field rotation which was used in the south), and which is now a valuable habitat for many species.

However, much of this also depends on a non-intensive cultivation, where less-than-ideal areas (rocky, too steep, too wet..) are left alone or only used occasionally (eg to cut the hedges). This kind of use is going down, which is ap problem.

Another thing that changed my mind in the last few years: Even the Amazon region, which in the West has this aura of untouched wilderness, was recently found to have been heavily populated and changed by humans in the past, eg to make the ground more fertile in some areas. The key is to work with the forest, not against it, and there is so much we can do.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heath

[mihaifm]

What I don't understand is why there doesn't seem to be any initiative in Western Europe to reintroduce large fauna like bears and wolves. It is very convenient indeed to hike through the Alps without any fear of bears, but in this context it's almost hypocritical of Europeans to talk about conservation in Africa when their own fauna has been wiped out, without any effort to repopulate it.

[iguy]

There are many such programs, although wolves are controversial.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_reintroduction#Europe

Hypocritical seems a bit strong though. The extinctions in europe happened a long time ago, those people are dead. Conservation may stand in the way of a particular guy's dinner but it's not like shooting all the gorillas is the key to Uganda getting to first-world living standards -- the advice that they are worth more alive than dead is probably sound.

[dmos62]

Alongside what sibling comments said, I'll add that this can't really work large scale because of the road infrastructure. Even in European countries that are relatively forested, the road networks have an immense ecological impact. They segment the land into a fine mesh, which is very difficult or sometimes impossible for animals to traverse, which means that they have to live for generations isolated on a small plot of land, which entails inbreeding and many other subtler effects. You can't have a small ecologically healthy biosystem. It has to be of a certain size to be able to attain a healthy balance and that's virtually impossible in Europe, with some minor exceptions.

[sleepyhead]

> Europeans to talk about conservation in Africa when their own fauna has been wiped out

What has been wiped out? We do have wolves and bears.

[pastor_elm]

Japan has 67% Forest cover. South Korea 63%. Indonesia...46%.

Clearing your land for agriculture only benefits a select few. It is not a good way to grow into a first world economy.

Bringing up what Europeans did 1000-500 years ago is not a good analogy.

[int_19h]

I grew up in forested parts of Eastern Europe, and lived there for over 20 years. The first time I've seen a squirrel in my life, outside of a zoo, was in Canada - and I've camped in forests many times before.

But you shouldn't assume that there are no poisonous snakes. That's not true even in the most cultivated parts - many snakes do pretty well regardless.

[pinecoin]

> We need to keep this land intact, but the only way to do it is to make conservation more valuable than exploitation.

Here's how we're monetizing conservation locally:

https://pinecoin.me