Re:Evolutionary gene loss may explain why only humans are pr...
by Ensorceled on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @11:20AM
(#20516113)
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.
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.