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Re:New York Harbor Now Teems with Life. Thank the Clean Wate... by TeMPOraL on Tuesday January 03, 2023 @08:16AM (#34230929)
Why not? If there's one tried and true way to ensure an animal or plant species survives and thrives despite the damage humanity does to the entire ecosystems, it's to make that animal or plant a food for humans.

The most successful land animals today are... cows, pigs and chicken.

(Compare with horses, which were successful because they were useful... until they weren't anymore, and their population dropped. And yes, this also implies that lab-grown meat is an extinction-level threat for aforementioned farm animals.)

Re:New York Harbor Now Teems with Life. Thank the Clean Wate... by tetromino_ on Tuesday January 03, 2023 @08:40AM (#34231142)
That's only really true for species that we figured out how to farm.

Species which we eat but don't farm we tend to eat to extinction. Think of the Atlantic cod fish.

Re:New York Harbor Now Teems with Life. Thank the Clean Wate... by JumpCrisscross on Tuesday January 03, 2023 @01:14PM (#34235324)
> only really true for species that we figured out how to farm

Most oysters we eat are farmed. And you need the old shells as a substrate to grow a new oyster bed.

Re:New York Harbor Now Teems with Life. Thank the Clean Wate... by Majestic121 on Tuesday January 03, 2023 @08:42AM (#34231158)
Given the life cows, pigs and chicken have, I'd object to the term successful.

They are being reproduced (not a mistake here, they don't actually fuck/reproduce on their own) a lot that's true, but using the word 'successful' to describe their fate seems a bit too cynical.

Re:New York Harbor Now Teems with Life. Thank the Clean Wate... by _eht on Tuesday January 03, 2023 @11:06AM (#34233225)
FYI my rooster fucks his hens, the bull covers his coos, and well, my horses are gelded so there’s that… you might just be farming wrong.

Pretty much everyone eating well and having a good time.

Re:New York Harbor Now Teems with Life. Thank the Clean Wate... by eesmith on Tuesday January 03, 2023 @09:25AM (#34231684)
Counter-examples: the passenger pigeon, the moa, and Mauritius blue pigeon are extinct, primarily due to hunting as a food source.

Other human food species are extinct due to a combination of being a human food source and a food source for invasive species introduced by humans (eg, the Domed Rodrigues giant tortoise).

Famously the American buffalo went from 60 million in the late 1700s to 541 a century later. It was a cheap meat, provided cheap leather, and in order to deprive Plains Indians from a food source, the US government decided not to protect it earlier.

Then there's the collapse of many marine species due to overfishing, most recently the king and snow crab population collapse which canceled the season in Alaska, and the continuing question of the role humans played in the Quaternary extinction event.

Therefore, I suspect your claim isn't so clear-cut.

Re:New York Harbor Now Teems with Life. Thank the Clean Wate... by moloch-hai on Tuesday January 03, 2023 @09:31AM (#34231741)
> the US government decided not to protect it earlier

The US government actively supported exterminating it. That included having people shoot them dead from passing trains.

Re:New York Harbor Now Teems with Life. Thank the Clean Wate... by eesmith on Tuesday January 03, 2023 @10:46AM (#34232909)
We're both right, though I should have stressed your point for being a better reflection of American intent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bison_hunting#Discussion_of_bi...
Re:New York Harbor Now Teems with Life. Thank the Clean Wate... by briffle on Tuesday January 03, 2023 @09:13PM (#34241084)
The US deer population is now 100 times larger than it was a century ago. Fees from hunting brings in billions for conservation and habitat programs.