The Hill reports, in "Feral pigs and donkeys may be more salvation than scourge for ecosystems, study finds."
“One way to talk about this is: whether a visitor from outer space, who didn’t know the history, could tell what megafauna are native or introduced based solely on their effects,” said Erick Lundgren, a doctoral student in biology at Arizona State University.... In the case of big animals... if our alien visitor couldn’t tell the difference, Lundgren said, “then nativeness isn’t actually a helpful way to understand how ecosystems work.”...
Native pigs in the forests of Eurasia do just what their feral cousins in America and Polynesia do: They root up plants, eat crops, defecate on the landscapes and create big muddy wallows in their attempts to cool themselves — all without the slightest regard for a farmer’s desire to run a neat, profitable agricultural operation from the same space.
But from another perspective, these actions can be seen as environmentally beneficial.... In disturbing existing vegetation, for example, the pigs also create space for new plant growth. Their poop can lead to algal blooms in waterways, but that’s because it’s so nutrient-rich — meaning it’s an important source of natural fertilizer, not least for the seeds that pigs spread the same way....
These days, there's always room for a Nazis analogy, and if you predicted the arrival of Nazis to this discussion, you will not be disappointed:
Opponents of “invasion biology” note the sordid connections between early-20th-century concerns about nonnative species — like the Nazi campaign to replace introduced animals in the Third Reich with properly Teutonic species....
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52 comments:
Feral pigs in TX and other states are a dangerous menace and tear up acres of crops.
I’ve seen videos of them being shot from the air and from jeeps.
Let's Fund Something Else!
$2.1b in agricultural damage per year. Great video below!
https://youtu.be/mAu9Qfhocxo?si=95ZuF34FORSToCS3
I would expect visitors from outer space to very much pro invasive species.
Frankly, I'd take anything a space alien says with a huge grain of salt.
The feral hogs in our community tear up everything- forest, field and sensitive edge ecosystems with rare plant and animal life. It isn't exactly constructive destruction the way wildfire can be viewed as beneficial. We don't really have apex predators to balance out the pigs, either, except the apex predator most reviled by ecologists- man.
I wonder if Gov. Abbott of Texas could use this argument. NYC used to be a city of immigrants, etc.
Horse shit.
Speaking of... Where I live there's people defending this idea re the 'wild' horses. They aren't natural here. In fact, they went extinct here before people showed up. These horses aren't even Mustangs, they're what's left of farmers, Civil War and such (ie: recent). And they are tearing the crap out of the landscape. Horses aren't small.
Thankfully, the boars haven't reached here yet. When they do I'll guarantee the folks around here will simply see free pork and respond accordingly and probably thoroughly. We have some of the best conservation efforts here because back in the early 1900s the white tail deer was almost eradicated and it scared us. Now it's very healthy.
So, colonialist pigs and settler donkeys are a good thing now? Good. The whole "native" or "indigenous" species or populations concept is totally relative to a particular time period. There is no native anything.
"We just want to talk, we won't do anything."
"We'll beam you back down whenever you want."
"It won't hurt."
"It's just for a quick minute. We'll take it right back out."
"No! I wasn't laughing. It just sounds like laughter to earthlings, but it's completely different. I can't explain it in your language."
Don't trust space aliens. Space aliens are assholes.
The country's feral underclass doesn't seem to have helped the rest of us.
Basically don’t shoot the animals. but it is doubtful the authors of the “study” have seen the damage feral hogs do. They are a menace.
Ask life-long residents of Arizona, Colorado, and Virginia about the dangers of feral non-native species from California and the Northeast.
I’m always amazed at the ridiculous causes that the Left will latch on to.
"Ecosystem" - the key is, it is a system - a complex system. You can't introduce a new variable and expect a predictable outcome.
Further:
“In disturbing existing vegetation, for example, the pigs also create space for new plant growth”
So do forest fires.
I agriculture we refer to invasive species.
Back in the 50's the Land Grant universities and the USDA introduced Multi Flora Rose into Pasture/range land, that called it a living fence. It spread like wild fire and took over entire pastures, making them unfit for grazing.
The lesson? Experts are often wrong. Usually because their true agenda is hidden.
"then nativeness isn’t actually a helpful way to understand how ecosystems work.”...
Not sure what point he's trying to make. An ecosystem will always "work". That doesn't mean it's desirable for the things living in it.
Texas feral pigs: another reason an AR-15 is a worthwhile possession. And an AR-10 is even better.
"Feral pigs in TX and other states are a dangerous menace and tear up acres of crops."
Alabama says, "Hi."
And even our gun culture down here is not keeping up.
Feral pigs also kill and eat ground-nesting birds and snakes, along with all the other damage. Which can really screw up the local system, but apparently that's not a problem to these idiots.
I've been to areas in New Zealand where everywhere you walk you kick up (introduced) rabbits. It's constant motion; rabbits, rabbits, rabbits. You don't walk on ground, you walk on an inch of rabbit droppings. Can't say I see the desirability of this.
Today's Mark Trail argues for culling of wild horses. The current author of the strip is firmly on the left.
Goverment is run, at every level, by feral pigs. What say we make 2024 the year of The Big Cull.
“Texas feral pigs: another reason an AR-15 is a worthwhile possession. And an AR-10 is even better.”
Could there be some cause and effect here? One of the justifications for not banning AR-15/10 type firearms is that they are the premier feral pig gun. Ban culling feral pigs, and nobody needs an AR-15. Yes, those feral pigs destroy more and more farmland every year, but it’s their right! It’s hard to get people eating crickets and grasshoppers, when bacon on the hoof is so convenient. But these libtards should realize that whatever arguments they make for protecting feral pigs across agricultural America, can be used to protect feral rats in urban America where the libtards live.
Migration.
“then nativeness isn’t actually a helpful way to understand how ecosystems work.”
Bullshit. Natch. Lundgren is " a doctoral student in biology", and wouldn't know an invasive species if one killed him and ate him. Which, in AZ, may well happen soon.
The way to understand "nativeness" is to recognize that invasive species thrive because there are abundant native species they can prey upon that have no natural defense against them. Eventually that changes, and they are no longer invasive. Thus the "Native Americans" were once invaders. But after they killed off most of the native American megafauna, they became Native Americans. Then we showed up.
Similarly, the useless vermin streaming over our southern border are attracted by the opulent public "assistance" they are able to extract from our economy, and also by the many relatively defenseless and trusting Americans they can prey upon. It is likely they will destroy much of that economy, and many of those Americans. If we ultimately find a way to defend against them, the survivors will return to their original habitats. If not, we will become extinct, and they will convert North America into the sort of shithole they come from.
Of course, what is more likely is some sort of 60/40 outcome, where the viable Americans retreat within a defensible perimeter. After the invaders have eaten the liberals, we can probably get most of it back. When species compete for range, the species best able to exploit the resources of the habitat ultimately prevails. The invaders are parasites, and will die themselves once they have killed the vulnerable host population.
I watched the video Dave Begley noted above. Looks like the most fun you can have with your clothes on!
Questions I had: What do they do with all those pig carcasses strewing the fields after a night of fun? Are they edible? Are there freezer facilities required? Or, are mass graves more the way to go?
Inquiring minds want to know.
The message here is simply let everyone in and don’t worry about what happens, why? Because an alien won’t know when they got there. This guy has it made, he can pass his thesis defense in 5 minutes, the committee will love him.
That's just about the dumbest load of crap I ever heard of, feral hogs being a beneficial feature to anything other than Nature's Armageddon. I'm encouraged to see the 'on-the-contrary' commentary here. Feral hogs decimate the ecology of an area, they decimate the vegetation, ruin the soil, and eradicate native species of birds and small mammals, thus ensuring that the ecology continues to degrade. Farmers here can't keep up with them and offer open access to any hunters that want to come plink at them. Ranchers worry about their cows breaking a leg in the giant divots they leave behind. Both are left with disking and plowing their pastures to restore them, an unnecesary expense with its own downsides to land management. One local company here offers helicopter hunter expeditions (which is also ridiculous).
If you want to eradicate them, you have to set up trapping pens and drop the gates remotely (by phone), once they become accustomed to feeding there inside the pens. Getting the whole sounder, the brood sows, boars, and young'uns, is the only way to win, and even then - there are so many sounders, you won't win, you'll just buy a little time.
I'm looking forward to the next 'article-by-a-genius', the one that proposes man is an invasive species that ought to be eradicated.
@Robert Marshall: "What do they do with all those pig carcasses strewing the fields after a night of fun? Are they edible? "
You drag them off into the brush, usually, so they're not in the way or causing a nuisance. When I used to hunt, I would look for one about 40 lb. De-bristled and dressed and trussed up, this is exactly the size that will fit on one of those big, cheap 'Old Smokey' BBQs. Cook that sucker over mesquite and it's the best, tenderest, most succulent pork roasts you'll ever eat.
When we take hogs, if they're not too big then usually a few phone calls will eventually find someone that knows how to dress and butcher meat, and is interested. In this region, they will likely be Hispanic. When these hogs get big though, they get rank - very very smelly, very mean, and the meat is pretty disgusting, it has a very strong and unpleasant flavor.
What some do, after they trap a sounder, is to feed them corn for a few weeks. This gets rid of quite a bit of the rankness and they can then be culled for processing.
But overall, most people don't have a sense of the scale of the problem. There are so many feral hogs that it can be too much to manage. So: The coyotes, the buzzards, the possums, the insects, they all need to eat, too. Nature's Department of Sanitation takes care of it within a week or so, usually.
I have never like the invasive species tripe. Here purple loose strife was supposed to kill all of the native cattails a decade back. Cattails won that fight. Kudzu was supposed to take over all of the south. It is a pain to control but not Little Shop of Horrors. This scaremongering has been going on for too long.
The academics always seem to believe the exact right temperature, animals and plants are the ones there in some selected past and that time was the perfect edenic environment. Change is normal. Live with it.
"An unscientific bias against 'feral' or 'invasive' animals ..."
That would be as opposed to a "scientific bias", such as Lundgren employs. That way, he can tell himself he isn't making value judgments, like the bad people do. The implication is that aliens, having no skin in the game, would make the "right" judgments. Which would, strangely enough, match Lundgren's. It does not seem to occur to Lundgren that the aliens might well just say, "Set off a Class 6 sterilizer, and then let's get some stone-maggots working on all those hideous structures the monkeys built. Level most of the mountains, reseed with floth and maybe some zibe trees, and give 'em a few thousand gibi-seconds to take hold. Kind of a dump, but I think we might make something out of it."
«Ask life-long residents of Arizona, Colorado, and Virginia about the dangers of feral non-native species from California and the Northeast.»
2 of 3. Only spent a couple years in VA, before moving closer to work in MD.
Maybe the author can explain the multiple blessings of (invasive) fire ants.
I'd invite him to stand on a mound while he pontificates. Should contribute to brevity.
Robert Marshall: as I understand -- I don't live in Texas but have relatives there -- the piglet-stage critters are edible but the adults, particularly the boars, are not. Wood-level tough and rank to the max. A graduate student in biology would be aware, of course, that those carcasses will decay into fertilizer, so win-win.
House Sparrows, a non-native species, will kill Tree Swallows, a native species - if the House Sparrows finds a Tree Swallow in the nest box.
How? Tree Swallows when threatened, lie flat and low in the nest substrate. A House Sparrow, has a small "hook-like" appendage on it's upper bill. And it will peck that Tree Swallow to death. I have removed Tree Swallows that have no feathers on their head, which is just a red, swollen mass after an attack.
We trap and destroy adult House Sparrows in nestboxes during the nesting season per our monitoring protocol. I don't like doing that, but House Sparrows once they take hold in a nestbox trail, will then spread out along the trail, displacing Eastern Bluebirds, Tree Swallows, etc.
It's a value judgement that we make on native vs. non-native. I get that. There are no easy answers. I look at it as - if you put out a nestbox, you are inducing birds to nest there. You then need to decide if any species of bird should nest in the box, select on native or non-native.
Bob Boyd:
Don't trust space aliens. Space aliens are assholes.
Considering the stories, isn't it space aliens like assholes?
iowan2:
The lesson? Experts are often wrong. Usually because their true agenda is hidden.
Ibid kudzu.
Aw, jeeze. Then let's clone some Dire Wolves, Short Faced Bears and Sabre toothed Cats. They were paert of our ecosystem. Wild pigs are hugely destructive of farmland. Wild donkeys? We already have a wild horse problem. Quit pestering the wildlife.
Invasive species can overwhelm an ecosystem that has no predators that can keep them in check. Guam has no native snakes, so when brown snakes made there way there via shipping containers, they quickly wiped out many of the native bird species. When the Polynesians landed in New Zealand, they brought many non-native species with them. That wreaked havoc with many of the unique native species. Australia had to build a fence across their country because someone thought it would be a good idea to introduce rabbits there. Given their history, it’s no wonder why their agricultural inspection of all visitors is so thorough. Ask the people near the Everglades about the damage being done by pythons, which are non-native. There are many more examples.
"It's a value judgement that we make on native vs. non-native."
I disagree. I put up boxes for swallows, and kill any sparrows that try to nest in them. As far as I'm concerned, they are both equally "native". Certainly, they were here before I was. But I like swallows. A lot. They are beautiful, hard-working and graceful. I take a deep pleasure in watching the male frantically swooping about in the early Spring, trying to catch enough insects to feed his mate while she sits on the eggs. Then they hatch, and both parents swoop in and out every few minutes, to feed those hungry little cheepers. Then one day, they're gone. Poof! It took me a while to realize, they aren't really gone yet. They just don't need a nest any more. But you still see and hear them, hunting in the sky.
I don't really hate sparrows, although they are rude and unlovely birds. But, as noted above, they kill swallows, especially the nestlings. So, they've got to go. And, in fact, they have gone. I haven't had any nest in my boxes for several years now. They got the message.
Yeah, the snakes in Guam is nasty. NZ and Australia: I remember myxomatosis being introduced in both places decades ago to cope with the rabbit explosion. Kudzu? Not frequent around here, but the Giant Hogweed is everywhere. (How anyone ever thought that a plant with that name would become an ornamental is mysterious to me.)
Starlings and rock pigeons. Get ye gone, and an especial curse on the idiots who introduced the former to the US. Bleh.
Otherwise . . . I can take 'em or leave 'em. Flowering plants, especially, have been "introduced" here for a couple of centuries.
Feral baboons are a problem on South African farms.
If you are supporting feral pigs in North America, then you are against organized agriculture and thus against civilized human beings.
Which is completely consistent with the antihumanist theme going through all modern environmentalism.
"Feral baboons are a problem on South African farms."
Not just the farms.
A pig is possible the most destructive animal in the world.
A large group of them can be devastating to every other animal in the area.
They are omnivores that will eat anything. They are about as smart as a dog if not smarter. The breed like crazy. 6-15 pigs per litter. Gilts can breed in 8 months. The only thing that will keep them from overrunning you with numbers is they also tend toward cannibalism and eat each others babies.
As a general rule, native forms have reached a population limit for whatever reasons. Could be predators, availability of food, so forth.
Invasive forms have not reached their limit because....not enough predators who want to tangle with them. You want more of whatever loves to kill and eat feral pigs? Cougars? Constrictors?
Same is true of plants. An invasive plant which takes over is displacing plants eaten by other animals. As such, they provide a fat target for other herbivores, presuming they don't have a really bad taste the local herbivores haven't evolved to accept.
The mongoose was planed on various islands of the West indies to fight the snakes. Turns out that birds and rodents were an easier target, so those disappeared.
All the movies I see regarding aliens (the space kind) is them trying to eradicate us for one reason or another.
All the movies I see regarding aliens (the space kind) is them trying to eradicate us for one reason or another.
Maybe they received the radio waves from around the 30s Nazi Germany and decided we are all guilty by association?
With feral donkeys in desert areas, the male donkey will guard a water hole and drive off every animal that comes to drink ( in Australia, kangaroos)
As a general rule, native forms have reached a population limit for whatever reasons. Could be predators, availability of food, so forth.
Invasive forms have not reached their limit because....not enough predators who want to tangle with them. You want more of whatever loves to kill and eat feral pigs? Cougars? Constrictors?
Same is true of plants. An invasive plant which takes over is displacing plants eaten by other animals. As such, they provide a fat target for other herbivores, presuming they don't have a really bad taste the local herbivores haven't evolved to accept.
The mongoose was planed on various islands of the West indies to fight the snakes. Turns out that birds and rodents were an easier target, so those disappeared.
Rabbits have devastated Australian agriculture. You'd think there'd be a million dingos enjoying the protein bonanza, looking for a weightless clinic.
Nope. So the balance has not yet been reached.
As a general rule, native forms have reached a population limit for whatever reasons. Could be predators, availability of food, so forth.
Invasive forms have not reached their limit because....not enough predators who want to tangle with them. You want more of whatever loves to kill and eat feral pigs? Cougars? Constrictors?
Same is true of plants. An invasive plant which takes over is displacing plants eaten by other animals. As such, they provide a fat target for other herbivores, presuming they don't have a really bad taste the local herbivores haven't evolved to accept.
The mongoose was planed on various islands of the West indies to fight the snakes. Turns out that birds and rodents were an easier target, so those disappeared.
Rabbits have devastated Australian agriculture. You'd think there'd be a million dingos enjoying the protein bonanza, looking for a weightless clinic.
Nope. So the balance has not yet been reached.
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