- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Posted by: forumrunner
That's right, I have no idea. I am totally isolated from the outside world and can't share information but by talking to people in person.
I still think you're supporting what I said. We're throwing balances "out of whack" with our interference. As you said, pumas are the natural predators there but no human's seen many. They roamed accross much of the territory we now inhabit, but haven't been seen for several generations. You said that there's a huge overpopulation problem where you live. Are you going to tell me that that's the natural state of things, the way things were before humans were there? As I understand it, predators usually move in when prey becomes too common. They can't move in where humans live, though, because a big wild cat gets captured or killed shortly after a human spots it. Meanwhile, prey animals are eating the huge concentrations of food they find in our farms and enjoying the lack of cats you described. Then, humans need to control population by hunting the critters themselves.
Why are you telling me that the crops are beneficial to us? Did I give the impression that I think otherwise?
To my knowledge, I didn't say that there's no room for them. I'm saying that we're displacing them to take some for ourselves to meet our growing needs. The room issue as I see it is that local biome's not used to us being here and it's interacting with everything we do near the edges of our territory. It's having trouble accomodating us because we're doing new things to disrupt balances wherever we are. The ecological balance around us took spans of time we can hardly comprehend, and we got to where we are from a non-obtrusive state in only a few generations!
Don't put words into my mouth, I don't appreciate it. I said you don't live here therefore do not know what goes on here from a day to day basis. First pumas, cougars, or whatever else you may want to call them got the name Mountain Lion for a reason. They prefer to stick to timbered areas in or near mountains. Last time I checked there are no mountains in Iowa. There is not a overpopulation of deer in areas with large populations of cougars, makes sense right? However there is not, nor has there ever been a large population of mountain lions in Iowa, and there never will be. This is not their region. Besides the fact that any animal will go for slow, easy prey before it will any prey that is fast and hard to catch. That is why Mountain Lions cannot live in this region, There are far too many livestock to kill, they will not chase deer when they can just eat whatever cow happens to be sitting around. The deer population in this state is, and always has been controlled by humans, well at least for the last several hundred years. To say that all of a sudden we've moved into their territory is naive. Humans have been here for a very, very long time. Hunting and killing deer. Sure you could make a case that wolves once hunted deer, but they did not leave because humans came in. The left because deer are faster, and a singe deer cannot feed a pack of wolves, they need bigger, slower prey. Now your arguement about humans catching or killing cougars is mute, because as I've said, the DNR is releasing them here, and it is against the law to kill them unless they endanger you. They actually try to leave the area, then the DNR have to chase them down and bring them back. It's not helping the deer population one bit, in fact the deer population continues to surge out of control in my region. The cougars either kill the livestock, or they leave. Once again so that it's clear with you this is not thier region, never has been, never will be. You also have to realize that humans are predators as well, always have been. We are not interfering in the ecosystem, we are part of it. Humans have been hunting deer here long before columbus found this little rock, if we don't continue to do so, then they become too abundant. You make it seem as though humans never had anything to do with this place untill white people settled here. Humans were involved in that ecological balance you speak of, unless of course Native Americans don't count, and humans are no longer animals as well. We are, and have been for hundreds of years the only predator of deer in this area.