Yes, even if the crash is not an environmental cycle, a crash will generally occur because the glut of resources allows a population explosion which eventually consumes the available resource.

This is one of the hardest systems effects to explain to people every time there is a deer cull; the population doesn't stabilize, it grows until the food runs out and then crashes with vast numbers of deer starving to death.

That a fair number of people still believe that it's more "natural", and thus better, for the bulk of the herd to starve to death rather than a percentage of the herd being hunted is one of the more curious animal rights positions.

> one of the more curious animal rights positions.

It makes sense from the point of view of "stop messing with it for fuck's sake".

Probably doesn't make the situation better one way or the other of course, deer population explosions are largely caused by humans having removed most of the top predators, and being significant stressors for the rest (https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/humans-p...). The systems could probably recover if left alone, but that would require isolation (and mayhaps reintroductions) so predators can recover and retake their role, which is unlikely to happen outside of essentially exclusion zones like Pripyat / Chernobyl. Unless they're really unpopular / hard to access, most natural parks might have too much human presence for apex land predators to really be comfortable.

Yeah, I also have that argument all the time ... "the wolves are not coming back to farm country, we need to deal with deer overpopulation since we're the only apex predator left"

Some people are deeply offended by the idea that we are an apex predator.

People struggle with certain Trolley Problem formulations as well, probably for the same reason(s).

The unnatural aspect is that we have replaced their natural predators. Perhaps our careful management is sufficient, but there might be unforeseen functions of those predators which we are not fulfilling.