Green Options

Once severely endangered, elephants in South Africa now thrive, causing some to worry that their population could threaten smaller species.

While some are calling to reinstate culling of elephants for the first time since 1994, other conservationists worry that the effects of killing elephants run deeper than we understand.

In 1900, the elephant population sunk to only 200 due to hunting; now, the population is estimated to be 17,000. This soaring number combined with their individual demand for feed can result in over-grazing, which hurts the rhinoceros and gazelle populations first.

It has become conventional wisdom that culling deer is a necessary measure that humans must take in order to protect deer and their habitats from the effects of over-population. But new research has found that, in fact, areas with more deer actually have higher biodiversity.

The study, performed by researchers with the National Park Service and Ohio State University,  seems to support the position of many animal rights activists have held for years—deer should be left alone.

Democratic Oklahoma state senator Earl Garrison has proposed a “Hunters Bill of Rights” that would guarantee the legality of hunting. He fears a ban on hunting could could happen at some point due to pressure from animal rights groups and hopes to preemptively block any attempts with a constitutional amendment.

“Animals have to be harvested,” he said. “It’s important that you have management because if you don’t, you get overpopulation, and the animals get smaller and there’s too much inbreeding.”

A new study in the journal BMC Ecology indicates that coastal wolves in British Columbia switch to eating salmon in the fall as a primary food source, rather than deer. Scientists arrived at this conclusion after analyzing wolf poop they collected over a four year span.

Among the thousands of stools that were collected by the researchers in the spring and summer months, 90-95% of them contained some indications that wolves were eating deer as prey. In the fall, however, this number dropped significantly. About 40-70% of the stools in this time of year indicated that wolves were dining on salmon.

So what’s the big deal?

Aw, c’mon, pull my finger!

You’ve probably had that one pulled (pardon the pun) on you at least once in your life, and the old guy got a good laugh out of your response. It’s ok, old guys do strange things, I know.

Well, this isn’t about old guys, but sheep, cattle, deer and goats, the premier emitters of methane gas in the world. In this case, nature is “pulling the finger.”

As more and more suburban developments spring up around the country, wildlife is being displaced at an ever-increasing rate. As a result of this growth, the natural predators of deer are being killed or removed, leaving them free to eat everything in sight. Where there's very little forest left, there are also very few hunters. Registration of hunting licenses in some places has dropped almost 40% compared to numbers in 2005. Even animal rights

[...]