[mngnt]

I so don't know how to feel about beavers. I live in a country where beavers are quite strictly protected, but volves and bears are regularly hunted "to protect the people from them". This causes an imbalance: beavers have zero natural enemies, are not hunted and are capable of changing the countryside. I find myself sympathetic to the people who lose portions of their lands, I am sad for the many trees felled near a lake by my home, I understand why some people are frustrated.

In general, we messed up the ecosystem - the most complex system on this planet and we insist on messing it further by one-sided protection of the "cute" speciess.

Don't get me wrong, I admire beavers: hard workers, creative, imaginative, resilient, with strong families. All in all, a role model for humanity.

I just wish we would look at the big system and strive to fix that as a whole.

[pancakemouse]

The same has happened in the United Kingdom wrt deer and predators including wolves (which are locally extinct) -- a blunt instrument because we can think of no other way of protecting livestock. The result is we "have to" regularly cull thousands of animals instead of letting an ecosystem manage itself.

[ch4s3]

> letting an ecosystem manage itself

What would that entail? The whole of the UK has been a human managed ecosystem for centuries. Deforestation was completed about 400 years ago and the larges stand of contiguous trees is under 300 sq. mi. So many of the species that would have made up the old ecosystem are gone.

[HdS84]

Here in Germany wolves return to many parts of the country. And there is lots of resistance. There are regular sob-stories how wolves hunted poor cuddly niece lambs and how their owners are now scarred for life and will quit their jobs. There is financial compensation and also guidance on how to build secure fences, but the big bad wolv is scary...

[alistairSH]

If the circle of life scars somebody out of farming, that's probably for the better. Farming is hard work and any time you have livestock, you have to make hard decisions about managing them, including how to protect them from predation.

[hulitu]

Wolf is an unfortunate animal. Since one ate vdL's poney, the whole EU is after him. /s

[ivandenysov]

Could you explain the vdL’s poney reference? I’d really love to understand it.

[okr]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/27/a-wolf-k...

[xhkkffbf]

So if a wolf "culls" the deer, it's good. But if a human does it, it's bad?

[iechoz6H]

Amusing you disparage a scientifically mandated effort to incrementally pull back from an environmental precipice as "protection of the 'cute' species".

[tclancy]

Having just finished Fuzz[0], I think it's fair to question how well any effort to prefer one animal over another ever works out.

[0] https://maryroach.net/fuzz.html

[hulitu]

> I just wish we would look at the big system and strive to fix that as a whole.

This takes time and you can't score quick rewards. That's why it doesn't look good on an agenda.

[londons_explore]

> I just wish we would look at the big system and strive to fix that as a whole.

The only long term fix is to move all humans off earth to space/mars/moon/elsewhere, and keep the whole of earth for nature and observation only.

Everything else won't work.

The question is do we all collectively care about the environment enough to all lose our home planet? I suspect no.

[mapt]

It would be a start, though, if we reintroduced keystone species, allowed less problematic predators free reign, and adopted a policy of generally consigning river floodplains to nature as much as possible rather than making rivers into sewers or canals. Trying to live inches from a flowing river is an anachronism from an earlier era when we cared about very different things.

[meristohm]

That solution seems to work best through a colonial, capitalist lens. Rather than TINA (Thatcher's "there is no alternative"), consider TIA (Yoda's "there is... another")?

[guax]

What's the tradeoff tho? People usually are mad because those animals threaten part of their income, not because they cause harm to the environment. It's not about beavers or wolves or beavers or another ugly animal. Is usually about beaver or corn, or soy or whatever they're planting.