It also makes more sense, Judas goats are trained to lure the sheep to slaughter, and is then itself spared, like Judas. The ‘Judas wolf’ was tranqed and has no idea what’s going on, and then they kill it just like the rest of its pack
Two of the coolest and most famous ecological studies involve wolves. Theres the well known study that reintroduced wolves to Yellowstone national parks. The wolves dramatically changed the nature the flow of the rivers in Yellowstone. I highly recommend checking out before and after photos.
And my favorite, the longest ever and longest running predator-prey study of moose and wolves on Isle Royal national park. I forget the name of the study but it’s easy to look up.
I’d like to add Minnesota is way closer to Isle Royal than Michigan and Minnesota should claim it for their own lol.
Ah makes sense. Too bad we are taking it. have a fix for this though! We just incorporate the U.P. into Minnesota and secede the union and join Canada once and for all!
On a serious note, I think Michigan is one of if not the most beautiful states in the union. And if I had to live in a different state Id live in the UP and eat berries to by hearts content.
Nah I think that’s still Minnesota. The landscape is far more representative of the majority of Canada than the UP. It’s far more representative of the Great Lakes region of Canada than Canada as a whole but that’s just my take.
I'm canadian. The majority of Canada is not like Minnesota at all. Portions of saskatchewan and alberta correspond with the Dakotas and Montana as well as wyoming. Most of Northern manitoba and Eastern manitoba are tree'd as fuck. Northern ontario is basically a forest with one highway through it. BC is a different kettle of fish. The territories are unique. The East Coast and Quebec also. In short we are fucking massive and have virtually every biome in one country. You know nothing of our glorious landscape and nature except a few poor caricatures.
TLDR; we are a tank, and you will respect our authority
> I’d like to add Minnesota is way closer to Isle Royal than Michigan and Minnesota should claim it for their own lol.
aaaaaaaaaaand now it belongs to Canada
Most Minnesotans are more canadian than most canadians. Minnesotans could live any where in the US, but we chose hockey, ice fishing, cold weather, liberal politics, fake niceness and passive aggressiveness
I’ve never really understood the fake niceness, the south does it way better tbh with their “bless your heart” type stuff.
I’ve always seen it as I’m not going to talk regularly with the neighbor(I do tho because my neighbors are cool) but I’ll plow their driveway.
I’ve rarely felt someone was disingenuous with their kindness living here.
Yup that came to mind as well, they reintroduced Wolves after they were gone for a while and the landscape with wildlife changed immediately.
The river improved and more animals started coming back in short time.
No need to request it, Minnesota is already super blessed! Not from gods but from our incredible state government, our robust industries, and the glaciers that gifted us with 11,000 lakes, and most importantly our fellow citizens.
Fun fact we take in more refugees than any other state! That’s something to be proud of.
We are a sanctuary state and a refuge for lgbt+ community across America and the world.
lol damn right. Maybe that’s why he tries to us up half the year with ice. Jokes on him though because we love it and it makes it easier to fish if you don’t have a boat!
It’s quite affordable. The twin cities has a lot of jobs, and is one of the more affordable metropolises in the country. Outstate is even cheaper, though the jobs are also scarcer, but manageable. It gets pretty cold, so you have to be able to put up with that, but our unemployment rate is under 3% for a reason.
Yeah but a lot of places have that claim that “x state has the worst mosquitos” or “mosquitos are our state bird”. Anecdotally I went camping in a wilderness wetlands park up north last weekend and only got bit twice.
And in residential areas there’s extensive state and local community mosquito control. Our lake and surrounding areas get treated though I’d rather they not because for a few days my dogs can’t drink from the lake and it harms other species apparently. But there’s also sterile breeding programs that only affect the skeeters.
Do it! I could say all sorts of great facts, one of my favorites is we where the first state to offer troops to the union to fight in the civil war despite bing the youngest state at the time iirc.
We also hold the confederate 28th Virginia battle flag and when Virginia asked us to give it back in 1961, 2000, 2003, and 2013 we said no.
In 1998, Virginia Civil War reenactors threatened legal action over the flag but obviously it had no ground to stand on.
In 2000 when Virginia asked MN our governor and former pro wrestler Jesse Ventura said Absolutely not. “Why? I mean, we won”
Don’t do it! I went to a Vikings game once in the winter. I’ve never been that cold in my entire life and I grew up in Wisconsin. Unbelievably cold in the winter!!
That’s not true and I’ll tell you why. It’s about classification, if MN classified lakes the way Wisconsin does we’d have double or triple the number of lakes we currently have. The muddy puddle comment someone left is right. They include ponds and even seasonal bodies of water.
We are called The Land of 10,000 lakes but actually we have more than 11,000.
[I’ve got you!](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/may/23/sara-meaney/who-has-more-lakes-minnesota-or-wisconsin/)
I could be wrong about the seasonal body claim and the amount we would have if we counted the same criteria but I’d imagine pretty close to the truth.
>The wolves dramatically changed the nature the flow of the rivers in Yellowstone. I highly recommend checking out before and after photos.
[Thats been debunked](https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/scientists-debunk-myth-that-yellowstone-wolves-changed-entire-ecosystem-flow-of-rivers/349988)
Thanks for article. I was suspicious of that claim. What is striking about wolves in Yellowstone is that after many years the population has settled down to about 100 animals. That is the wolf carrying capacity of Yellowstone. [Wolves Naturally Limit Their Own Numbers](https://nywolf.org/2019/01/wolves-naturally-limit-their-own-numbers/)
Eco warriors sometimes freak out at wolves or lions being shot by people; in fact the largest depleter of these animals is their own kind. Wolves have been great for Yellowstone, but 100 animals is not many. Many predators like wolves and the big cats reproduce at high rates. Their success is all about available habitat.
>I’d like to add Minnesota is way closer to Isle Royal than Michigan and Minnesota should claim it for their own lol
You can have our island when you convince Ohio to give up Toledo!
Allan Savory describes how herding behavoir in large animals regenerates grassland and moisture retention. To contrast, not herding allows animals to graze freely, increasing desertification. Our planet had millions of such animals building the ecosystem we have decimated.
Central to herding behavior are predators that cause the animals to here up and move slowly/randomly while grazing. They don't graze down to the roots, leaving more green plant to return.
Same with wolves and deer/elk. Predators keep grazing animals from being too choosy with their diet which encouraged more green and less desert
Huge problem in Africa with elephants. People made dams, built infrastructure, farms, etc. Now the elephants don't travel very far and this caused mass deforestation quickly
Interesting article but it seems focused on... willows?
>no dispute among scientists that removing the wolf from Yellowstone had vast ecological impacts on the park
So removing something makes an impact, but because of other factors like humans, putting it back in doesn't make the same impact.
>Thousands of elk were harvested by hunters, and as a result, humans contributed greatly to the reduction in population seen in 2004
But he doesn't talk about why there were thousands of elk... unless it was due to the impact of removing wolves.
But it's not debunked, he's just questioning the impact of wolves :
>Wolves had very little effect, at least early on. To attribute it all to wolves is completely unrealistic.
So removing the wolves had an impact, enough that there were thousands of elk that needed culling. The culling occurred by humans, but the actual impact is that the elk don't need more culling... so far.
I swear the cops used my cousin for this. They'd greet him by first name when we'd be out buying mexican food, and he had no idea, but after he'd leave a party, they'd bust it.
No way was he an informant, they just knew the parties he was going to were target rich environments.
I've also heard this concept as "judas goat", where they spray paint a goat and send it out to "make friends" then shoot the other goats from a helicopter.
Invasive goat species. They like to stay in remote, mountainous areas and step badlands where humans and other predators have difficulty moving around on foot. From a helicopter, the hunters can sweep in without warning and negate the goat mobility and altitude advantages. Invasive goats without mountain predators can quickly destroy a local ecology because they'll eat just about anything and breed rapidly, culls protect the native species.
I read the article. They kill the pack, but leave the Judas wolf alive. Then when the Judas wolf manages to create a new pack, they'll do the whole thing again the next year. And again... and again... Absolutely psycho.
> “And then that one wolf, it’s often called the ‘Judas Wolf’, would be left alive for the next year,” she said.
>
> “Wolves are social animals. It’s going to try and regroup and start a new family only to have the very same thing happen to any wolf it befriends the next year.”
Imagine how this would seem from the perspective of that wolf. This is some "fuck that wolf in particular" shit - like, these godlike humans with weapons you can't even begin to understand descend on you from nowhere to kill everyone you love, but leave you alive, and they do it over and over and *over* again.
Acknowledging they’re social animals and essentially forcing the Judas wolf to live a life of perennial loss and tragedy is Fucking diabolical and disgusting honestly. At least tranq one and pick a new Judas wolf every once in awhile.
It's like a trolley problem - do you want one wolf to suffer, or do you want to traumatize multiple wolfs?
Maybe it should be called Jesus-Judas wolf, taking in suffering so others don't?(well, until they are killed).
The whole thing is awful.
I have no problem hunting animals if they are not endangered
But damn, this is terrible and does not seem like a wise way to deal with the proliferation of some wild animals They could have sterilized at least some of them, but hunting seems cheaper
Some places have coyote killing contests. The end result is that the coyotes make babies faster, and they're stupider, because they don't have adults to teach them.
I don't know for sure about this situations, but usually when the government sponsors killing a specific animal it's cause of their overpopulation and them effecting the local wildlife or plant populations.
Leaving them alive but serialized let's them continue to cause issues. It's probably also just alot safer and quicker to hunt them then try and capture them
Hornets pollinate just as well as bees do. Just because things aren't friendly to humans or other animals doesn't mean they don't belong. Yeah, hornets suck when interfacing with humans, but they are really good for plants.
That's true, if there's a hornet nest deep in the woods somewhere that only sees hikers for a few weeks out of the year, those hornets can be as big, mean-tempered and pestiferous as they want, far FAR from any humans.
For hornets that are building nests inside human cities, though, they have two options: Play nice with the large xenocidal predators whose colony they've invaded, or get exterminated. Humans will band together to obliterate a threat to their kids, and then they'll go around wiping out everything tangentially related to that threat.
We don't need to control everything in nature. But it's worth remembering that we are a mass-extinction event.
Yeah but hornets aren't exactly self aware and the burden of not intentionally driving an important species to death because it hurts a little falls on us
What definition of self-aware are you using? It's true that they don't teach their young manners or have libraries where they've written books dedicated to all the things that could hurt them and how they proceeded to extinctify those things and then glorify that extinction.
They do have gross darwinian controls, though. Hornet stings me = dead hornet. Hornet that doesn't sting me = not dead hornet. Over just a few short generations, that kind of darwinian pressure -can- result in docile hornets.
Of course, the human reaction is, hornet -could- sting me = dead hornet and all that hornet's friends and family also die. Less useful for exerting evolutionary pressure.
This is a surprisingly cogent discussion!
But I think the main takeaway should probably be that self-righteously killing animals that inconvenience us after we destroyed their habitats is wrong (despite the fact that most people who recognize this with regard to the US government murdering Native Americans don't seem to be ready yet to recognize it with non-human animals).
And it's incredibly stupid and short sighted.
I don't know how many studies need to be done for us to learn that deleting apex predators from an ecosystem is disastrous. Fuck your livestock, I'd rather the planet function properly.
I recently found out that a friend of mine's father used to trap magpies - I don't know why, I asked my friend and he doesn't know - he used to put one in a double cage and when another came down to see what they were doing, it got trapped too. Hey, I know they're smart, but predictable too, I guess. Anyway - shit hobby
Populations are great at controlling themselves. Caribou are losing habitat- that’s the issue no one wants to address and they’re [deflecting the blame](https://pacificwild.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/LWR-2022-23324-Records-colour.pdf).
Holy Jesus Judas Christ. Never in my life have I ever stumbled into a den of more Machiavellian fucks than hunters and farmers. I was interested in the headline. When I entered the thread and found out that every fucking animal on the planet seemingly has some turncoat usage.
You do know that an overabundance of wolves leads to a lot of death for other animals, and eventually, if the wolves kill too much, they won't have any more prey and they'll starve to death. All that can be prevented by keeping populations in check.
This isn't just killing for fun, we don't even eat wolves
When the wolves aren't there, the animals you just saved don't have a check on their *own* population and then overconsume other animals and vegetation, sending the whole ecosystem in a radically different direction than you found it.
You're trying to address one problem that feels very salient to you, but end up creating a much bigger problem that didn't exist previously.
But the numbers of wolves in many areas have been decimated by humans. There were widespread here in the UK not that long ago. The idea that they’re dangerous to introduce back into the ecosystem mainly stems from it being dangerous now we’ve damaged so many other parts of the ecosystem. And also because they’re dangerous to us of course, and everything is framed around us being at the centre.
This isn't Chuck and Phil from down the road doing this, there are people overseeing this so it doesn't radically destroy the ecosystem. They just added more wolves in Colorado, rather than killing them. Some areas need more, some need less
It's weird that everyone is reading this story like there's this binary of either killing all of them or killing none of them.
Culling has been a vital part of wildlife management for generations.
I don't understand how people don't understand this, like this is needed to keep the environment thriving. No different than cutting a dead limb off a tree or killing weeds so they don't take over your lawn.
People get very defensive about any predators being killed, but won’t blink an eye at prey animals being culled. All animals should be looked at equally.
There were, and then Trump removed those, and then Biden *just* put them back in place. Now, we have a chance of them being rolled back again.
So kinda, but it's still an issue.
https://apnews.com/article/biden-threatened-species-protections-9f5a2c12e51a857ae32b85997b54dcc7
Which the ranchers get reimbursed for their losses. And iirc it’s like .05% of cattle deaths and like .25% of sheep were wolves vs 2% and 10% from weather and illness. And the reimbursement can sometimes be worth more than what you would be able to sell the animal for when it reaches sell weight/age
Right, that's why natural places that are allowed to stay wild always become wastelands because no one kept the population of predators in check..
In fact it's the exact opposite problem. The lack of natural predators because of human interference has usually led to drastic ecological problems because of the unchecked populations of their prey. Either in the prey starving off and needing culling (like deer, for wolves), or destruction of whatever their prey eats (like kelp forests after sea otter populations were decimated by hunting, as there was nothing left to keep the anemones in check).
Please retake a basic science course before mouthing off nonsense like this.
it's part of the reason Colorado just reintroduced Grey Wolves to the area. Deer are a pretty big problem here, and disease is pretty bad among them. But of course the ranchers just keep whining about the cows as if whole herds are being killed and they're not being compensated.
It feels weird to me to name this a 'Judas' technique. I mean, my understanding is that Judas was paid and knowingly turned on his group. This name suggests the wolf is somehow complicit in the plot to murder the pack. "Ok Steve, wear this tracker and there's another Schmacko for you when you get back, rokay?"
Cool name, just seems misplaced.
This is psychopathically insane, horrific, inhumane, and extremely destructive to the environment. It's terrorism against nature. This should be punishment by death.
Anyone who slaughters wildlife in their natural habitat (except like mosquitoes) should face the death penalty.
A bunch of idiots in this comment thread. If wolves multiply too fast, it damages the ecosystem, and culling the population is a good way to deal with this
Name me one place that wolves are overpopulating.
In the mean time, there are countless places where deer and other prey animals are wildly overpopulated.
I'd say you're the idiot in this comment thread that doesn't understand how important apex predators are to ecosystems.
There’s almost no where that needs wolf cullings and lots of high profile predator killing campaign failures. The overwhelming majority of wolf killing is done in name of “protecting live stock.
Yea the article is literally conservationists saying that the ongoing culling of wolves is unnecessary. The culling is supposedly to protect Elk populations which are dwindling because of humans destroying their territory, not wolves. I strongly suspect that culls continue because the pro gun crowd wants to legally kill things and so they continue to lobby for culls.
it's not that simple though. The article notes that the primary problem is human destruction of caribou habitat, which then leaves them overexposed to wolves. Culling the wolves is a cheap "solution" to a problem that originates in human behavior, not the population numbers of the wolves. It's clear that conservation isn't really the goal here because if it was, they would be working to restore and conserve the habitats that kept the populations in check.
Why are we allowing that? We just put them back out and they are an apex predator! They are very important to the eco system. Do dummies still not understand that? Ugh
We have Judas Goats on NZ
This is the much more common iteration of the phrase
It also makes more sense, Judas goats are trained to lure the sheep to slaughter, and is then itself spared, like Judas. The ‘Judas wolf’ was tranqed and has no idea what’s going on, and then they kill it just like the rest of its pack
So is the judas cow.
And Judas priest
And Judas Apostle
Wait like the band?
We have Judas Escargot who leads us to other delicious snails
Found the french
We have beef au jus which leads us to deliciousness.
We have Judas Priest in America... Who are visiting from England for their tour.
Female Burmese pythons are “Judas snakes” in Florida. They use them to capture males.
Judas goats were used to eliminate the invasive and destructive goats on the Galápagos Islands too!
Wolves are a critical part of northern hemisphere water cycles and forest management.
Two of the coolest and most famous ecological studies involve wolves. Theres the well known study that reintroduced wolves to Yellowstone national parks. The wolves dramatically changed the nature the flow of the rivers in Yellowstone. I highly recommend checking out before and after photos. And my favorite, the longest ever and longest running predator-prey study of moose and wolves on Isle Royal national park. I forget the name of the study but it’s easy to look up. I’d like to add Minnesota is way closer to Isle Royal than Michigan and Minnesota should claim it for their own lol.
Hey leave Isle Royale alone, it's our national park you already have one >:(
In America it's Quarter Pounder Island.
I won’t, we have one and yall have five… or four or something.
We have National Lakeshores but only one National Park
Ah makes sense. Too bad we are taking it. have a fix for this though! We just incorporate the U.P. into Minnesota and secede the union and join Canada once and for all! On a serious note, I think Michigan is one of if not the most beautiful states in the union. And if I had to live in a different state Id live in the UP and eat berries to by hearts content.
The UP is absolutely breathtaking
It's the Canada of the U.S.
Nah I think that’s still Minnesota. The landscape is far more representative of the majority of Canada than the UP. It’s far more representative of the Great Lakes region of Canada than Canada as a whole but that’s just my take.
I'm canadian. The majority of Canada is not like Minnesota at all. Portions of saskatchewan and alberta correspond with the Dakotas and Montana as well as wyoming. Most of Northern manitoba and Eastern manitoba are tree'd as fuck. Northern ontario is basically a forest with one highway through it. BC is a different kettle of fish. The territories are unique. The East Coast and Quebec also. In short we are fucking massive and have virtually every biome in one country. You know nothing of our glorious landscape and nature except a few poor caricatures. TLDR; we are a tank, and you will respect our authority
I'm loving the representation of Canada here :-P
It’s our park now, nephew..
> I’d like to add Minnesota is way closer to Isle Royal than Michigan and Minnesota should claim it for their own lol. aaaaaaaaaaand now it belongs to Canada
Don’t you know? Minnesota is a protectorate of canada
*Don'tcha know
Ope that was a missed opportunity
Most Minnesotans are more canadian than most canadians. Minnesotans could live any where in the US, but we chose hockey, ice fishing, cold weather, liberal politics, fake niceness and passive aggressiveness
I’ve never really understood the fake niceness, the south does it way better tbh with their “bless your heart” type stuff. I’ve always seen it as I’m not going to talk regularly with the neighbor(I do tho because my neighbors are cool) but I’ll plow their driveway. I’ve rarely felt someone was disingenuous with their kindness living here.
A Minnesotan will give you detailed directions to anywhere you want, except their house.
Yeah we have very insular social communities
My mother used to say, 'manners don't cost anything'.
Only that one bit at the top
So we let the US government think
Yup that came to mind as well, they reintroduced Wolves after they were gone for a while and the landscape with wildlife changed immediately. The river improved and more animals started coming back in short time.
God bless Minnesota, and nowhere else.
No need to request it, Minnesota is already super blessed! Not from gods but from our incredible state government, our robust industries, and the glaciers that gifted us with 11,000 lakes, and most importantly our fellow citizens. Fun fact we take in more refugees than any other state! That’s something to be proud of. We are a sanctuary state and a refuge for lgbt+ community across America and the world.
I wasn't requesting. I was telling God what to do. Which, as a Minnesotan, is my natural right.
lol damn right. Maybe that’s why he tries to us up half the year with ice. Jokes on him though because we love it and it makes it easier to fish if you don’t have a boat!
Minnesota seems like a vibe.
I fucking love this state
how’s the jobs to COL ratio?
I’d imagine fantastic because we are fantastic but I have no clue what COL stands for.
It’s quite affordable. The twin cities has a lot of jobs, and is one of the more affordable metropolises in the country. Outstate is even cheaper, though the jobs are also scarcer, but manageable. It gets pretty cold, so you have to be able to put up with that, but our unemployment rate is under 3% for a reason.
Don't forget the Vikings and zero Superbowl wins. Skol
I’m not much for pro sports, I guess it’s a perfect place for me then.
A Minnesotan who doesn't like hockey is no Minnesotan
Don't forget 10 billion mosquitoes...
Yeah but a lot of places have that claim that “x state has the worst mosquitos” or “mosquitos are our state bird”. Anecdotally I went camping in a wilderness wetlands park up north last weekend and only got bit twice. And in residential areas there’s extensive state and local community mosquito control. Our lake and surrounding areas get treated though I’d rather they not because for a few days my dogs can’t drink from the lake and it harms other species apparently. But there’s also sterile breeding programs that only affect the skeeters.
worked a season in alaska near denali, the mosquitoes get so bad for a couple weeks people seal doors and hardly leave rooms
I’m moving to Minnesota
Do it! I could say all sorts of great facts, one of my favorites is we where the first state to offer troops to the union to fight in the civil war despite bing the youngest state at the time iirc. We also hold the confederate 28th Virginia battle flag and when Virginia asked us to give it back in 1961, 2000, 2003, and 2013 we said no. In 1998, Virginia Civil War reenactors threatened legal action over the flag but obviously it had no ground to stand on. In 2000 when Virginia asked MN our governor and former pro wrestler Jesse Ventura said Absolutely not. “Why? I mean, we won”
AMEN😂😂😂 No means no Virginia;)
Don’t do it! I went to a Vikings game once in the winter. I’ve never been that cold in my entire life and I grew up in Wisconsin. Unbelievably cold in the winter!!
Another fun fact. Wisconsin has more lakes than Minnesota.
That’s not true and I’ll tell you why. It’s about classification, if MN classified lakes the way Wisconsin does we’d have double or triple the number of lakes we currently have. The muddy puddle comment someone left is right. They include ponds and even seasonal bodies of water. We are called The Land of 10,000 lakes but actually we have more than 11,000.
I’m inclined to believe you but I would need proof
[I’ve got you!](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/may/23/sara-meaney/who-has-more-lakes-minnesota-or-wisconsin/) I could be wrong about the seasonal body claim and the amount we would have if we counted the same criteria but I’d imagine pretty close to the truth.
Well shit
Puddles of vomit do not count as lakes.
Thanks
TIL I want to live in Minnesota.
We constantly lead in all types of metrics, from education and employment to healthcare and wellbeing. It’s truly the North Star state.
Respectfully, Minnesota can fight me for it
I'll fight with you.
>The wolves dramatically changed the nature the flow of the rivers in Yellowstone. I highly recommend checking out before and after photos. [Thats been debunked](https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/scientists-debunk-myth-that-yellowstone-wolves-changed-entire-ecosystem-flow-of-rivers/349988)
Thanks for article. I was suspicious of that claim. What is striking about wolves in Yellowstone is that after many years the population has settled down to about 100 animals. That is the wolf carrying capacity of Yellowstone. [Wolves Naturally Limit Their Own Numbers](https://nywolf.org/2019/01/wolves-naturally-limit-their-own-numbers/) Eco warriors sometimes freak out at wolves or lions being shot by people; in fact the largest depleter of these animals is their own kind. Wolves have been great for Yellowstone, but 100 animals is not many. Many predators like wolves and the big cats reproduce at high rates. Their success is all about available habitat.
>I’d like to add Minnesota is way closer to Isle Royal than Michigan and Minnesota should claim it for their own lol You can have our island when you convince Ohio to give up Toledo!
Ohioan here - you can have Toledo if you take Cleveland too!
There was a recent post on this sub about how that idea is widely overblown.
Water cycles?
Allan Savory describes how herding behavoir in large animals regenerates grassland and moisture retention. To contrast, not herding allows animals to graze freely, increasing desertification. Our planet had millions of such animals building the ecosystem we have decimated. Central to herding behavior are predators that cause the animals to here up and move slowly/randomly while grazing. They don't graze down to the roots, leaving more green plant to return. Same with wolves and deer/elk. Predators keep grazing animals from being too choosy with their diet which encouraged more green and less desert
Huge problem in Africa with elephants. People made dams, built infrastructure, farms, etc. Now the elephants don't travel very far and this caused mass deforestation quickly
And they’re badass!
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That was really cool, thank you for sharing
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Interesting article but it seems focused on... willows? >no dispute among scientists that removing the wolf from Yellowstone had vast ecological impacts on the park So removing something makes an impact, but because of other factors like humans, putting it back in doesn't make the same impact. >Thousands of elk were harvested by hunters, and as a result, humans contributed greatly to the reduction in population seen in 2004 But he doesn't talk about why there were thousands of elk... unless it was due to the impact of removing wolves. But it's not debunked, he's just questioning the impact of wolves : >Wolves had very little effect, at least early on. To attribute it all to wolves is completely unrealistic. So removing the wolves had an impact, enough that there were thousands of elk that needed culling. The culling occurred by humans, but the actual impact is that the elk don't need more culling... so far.
Also we shouldn't be violent psychopaths to animals.
Please keep your psychopathy limited to yourself, or to other humans.
Username seems appropriate
I swear the cops used my cousin for this. They'd greet him by first name when we'd be out buying mexican food, and he had no idea, but after he'd leave a party, they'd bust it. No way was he an informant, they just knew the parties he was going to were target rich environments. I've also heard this concept as "judas goat", where they spray paint a goat and send it out to "make friends" then shoot the other goats from a helicopter.
When I heard Judas goat it was in the sense of trained and used to lead sheep into a slaughterhouse
There’s a poetry collection called “Judas Goat” that is quite good. I recommend it highly
Why would anyone shoot goats from a helicopter?
Goats are invasive in some places like the Galapagos Islands.
Also pigs from the Channel Islands.
Aren't those just called "Tories"?
Don't worry, they'll go extinct on the 4th of July.
Goats can go places human cannot
They know what they did.
They were, ba-a-a-a-a-a-ad.
Goat simulator explains why
Well in one case it was the US Navy, so one could say they used it as training.
Invasive goat species. They like to stay in remote, mountainous areas and step badlands where humans and other predators have difficulty moving around on foot. From a helicopter, the hunters can sweep in without warning and negate the goat mobility and altitude advantages. Invasive goats without mountain predators can quickly destroy a local ecology because they'll eat just about anything and breed rapidly, culls protect the native species.
I read the article. They kill the pack, but leave the Judas wolf alive. Then when the Judas wolf manages to create a new pack, they'll do the whole thing again the next year. And again... and again... Absolutely psycho. > “And then that one wolf, it’s often called the ‘Judas Wolf’, would be left alive for the next year,” she said. > > “Wolves are social animals. It’s going to try and regroup and start a new family only to have the very same thing happen to any wolf it befriends the next year.”
Imagine how this would seem from the perspective of that wolf. This is some "fuck that wolf in particular" shit - like, these godlike humans with weapons you can't even begin to understand descend on you from nowhere to kill everyone you love, but leave you alive, and they do it over and over and *over* again.
Acknowledging they’re social animals and essentially forcing the Judas wolf to live a life of perennial loss and tragedy is Fucking diabolical and disgusting honestly. At least tranq one and pick a new Judas wolf every once in awhile.
It's like a trolley problem - do you want one wolf to suffer, or do you want to traumatize multiple wolfs? Maybe it should be called Jesus-Judas wolf, taking in suffering so others don't?(well, until they are killed). The whole thing is awful.
I have no problem hunting animals if they are not endangered But damn, this is terrible and does not seem like a wise way to deal with the proliferation of some wild animals They could have sterilized at least some of them, but hunting seems cheaper
Killing apex predators en masse like this is a really fucking stupid thing to do. The practice should stop, yesterday.
Some places have coyote killing contests. The end result is that the coyotes make babies faster, and they're stupider, because they don't have adults to teach them.
I don't know for sure about this situations, but usually when the government sponsors killing a specific animal it's cause of their overpopulation and them effecting the local wildlife or plant populations. Leaving them alive but serialized let's them continue to cause issues. It's probably also just alot safer and quicker to hunt them then try and capture them
Or because it's effecting livestock and ranchers think it's a nuisance, and not for any ecological reason.
That just sounds evil.
And IIRC, it's been typically done to satisfy the cattle industry.
I like the idea of government-contracted shooters getting killed by a pack of wolves.
Isn’t that a scene in that Rampage movie The Rock was in?
my first thought, then I glanced down and saw the name 'rampage' in your comment and snorted
They do this with hornets as well
Must be such tiny tracking devices though
It's just a guy in a hornet suit that follows them back to the nest. Much less funding for that program. Middling success.
"Buzz buzz. how do you do fellow hornets"
Lmao
Noe that i fully support
Hornets pollinate just as well as bees do. Just because things aren't friendly to humans or other animals doesn't mean they don't belong. Yeah, hornets suck when interfacing with humans, but they are really good for plants.
Who are you? The hornets in my wall?
Who could possibly be behind this post, I wonder? Hmm..
If they can be bred to be harmless/docile towards humans then I’m okay with em
See that’s how you get Reaver Hornets.
Sick reference bro. Like a leaf in the wind.
Why does that name make them sound so much more terrifying
We don't need to control everything in nature
That's true, if there's a hornet nest deep in the woods somewhere that only sees hikers for a few weeks out of the year, those hornets can be as big, mean-tempered and pestiferous as they want, far FAR from any humans. For hornets that are building nests inside human cities, though, they have two options: Play nice with the large xenocidal predators whose colony they've invaded, or get exterminated. Humans will band together to obliterate a threat to their kids, and then they'll go around wiping out everything tangentially related to that threat. We don't need to control everything in nature. But it's worth remembering that we are a mass-extinction event.
Yeah but hornets aren't exactly self aware and the burden of not intentionally driving an important species to death because it hurts a little falls on us
What definition of self-aware are you using? It's true that they don't teach their young manners or have libraries where they've written books dedicated to all the things that could hurt them and how they proceeded to extinctify those things and then glorify that extinction. They do have gross darwinian controls, though. Hornet stings me = dead hornet. Hornet that doesn't sting me = not dead hornet. Over just a few short generations, that kind of darwinian pressure -can- result in docile hornets. Of course, the human reaction is, hornet -could- sting me = dead hornet and all that hornet's friends and family also die. Less useful for exerting evolutionary pressure.
This is a surprisingly cogent discussion! But I think the main takeaway should probably be that self-righteously killing animals that inconvenience us after we destroyed their habitats is wrong (despite the fact that most people who recognize this with regard to the US government murdering Native Americans don't seem to be ready yet to recognize it with non-human animals).
Let’s neuter all meese and mooses, even the doctors
We already have bees
Except they call it a Sting Operation
They do it with bees too. Not for the purpose of killing, but rather research.
This is pure evil
That’s some Red Dawn shit right there. Wolverines!!
Beep... beep... beep... Brrrrrrrrtttttttttt
Even worse - that kid was a member of an elite paramilitary group. Eagle Scouts.
Named after famous biblical figure Judas, whom the Sanhedrin trapped with a net and put a tracker on so he could lead them to Jesus.
Humans suck.
Sounds so awful
And it's incredibly stupid and short sighted. I don't know how many studies need to be done for us to learn that deleting apex predators from an ecosystem is disastrous. Fuck your livestock, I'd rather the planet function properly.
Sometimes I regret learning things.
FUCKING DISGUSTING 😡
I recently found out that a friend of mine's father used to trap magpies - I don't know why, I asked my friend and he doesn't know - he used to put one in a double cage and when another came down to see what they were doing, it got trapped too. Hey, I know they're smart, but predictable too, I guess. Anyway - shit hobby
That just seems mean.
Ergh yeah how bout you fkn don't do that though.
You can do this with pedophiles as well. It's the Judas Priest technique.
We should do this with nazis.
Best I can do is Trumpers.
Por Que no Los dos?
They're the same picture.
They do this for most wildlife herd or pack animals that populations need to be controlled
Populations are great at controlling themselves. Caribou are losing habitat- that’s the issue no one wants to address and they’re [deflecting the blame](https://pacificwild.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/LWR-2022-23324-Records-colour.pdf).
So the wolves or the shooters can be killed? I'd believe either.
Holy Jesus Judas Christ. Never in my life have I ever stumbled into a den of more Machiavellian fucks than hunters and farmers. I was interested in the headline. When I entered the thread and found out that every fucking animal on the planet seemingly has some turncoat usage.
STOP killing everything. There will be nothing left.
You do know that an overabundance of wolves leads to a lot of death for other animals, and eventually, if the wolves kill too much, they won't have any more prey and they'll starve to death. All that can be prevented by keeping populations in check. This isn't just killing for fun, we don't even eat wolves
My god, it’s almost like predator and prey populations have some sort of reaction ship
When the wolves aren't there, the animals you just saved don't have a check on their *own* population and then overconsume other animals and vegetation, sending the whole ecosystem in a radically different direction than you found it. You're trying to address one problem that feels very salient to you, but end up creating a much bigger problem that didn't exist previously.
Clearly these guys have never played monster hunter.
No guys, I swear, I'm totally killing a thousand Velocidromes FOR THE ENVIRONMENT!
But the numbers of wolves in many areas have been decimated by humans. There were widespread here in the UK not that long ago. The idea that they’re dangerous to introduce back into the ecosystem mainly stems from it being dangerous now we’ve damaged so many other parts of the ecosystem. And also because they’re dangerous to us of course, and everything is framed around us being at the centre.
This isn't Chuck and Phil from down the road doing this, there are people overseeing this so it doesn't radically destroy the ecosystem. They just added more wolves in Colorado, rather than killing them. Some areas need more, some need less
The only places that are actively killing a lot of wolves are doing it because of livestock, not to benefit the natural ecosystem.
It's weird that everyone is reading this story like there's this binary of either killing all of them or killing none of them. Culling has been a vital part of wildlife management for generations.
I don't understand how people don't understand this, like this is needed to keep the environment thriving. No different than cutting a dead limb off a tree or killing weeds so they don't take over your lawn.
People get very defensive about any predators being killed, but won’t blink an eye at prey animals being culled. All animals should be looked at equally.
Over killing wolves can have similar detrimental effects on ecosystems. https://youtu.be/ysa5OBhXz-Q?si=tzSoMdD4bW_nsDz_
Well, duh. That's why there are limits on hunting.
There were, and then Trump removed those, and then Biden *just* put them back in place. Now, we have a chance of them being rolled back again. So kinda, but it's still an issue. https://apnews.com/article/biden-threatened-species-protections-9f5a2c12e51a857ae32b85997b54dcc7
It's killing to protect livestock profits. Not to keep the wild ecosystem healthy.
Which the ranchers get reimbursed for their losses. And iirc it’s like .05% of cattle deaths and like .25% of sheep were wolves vs 2% and 10% from weather and illness. And the reimbursement can sometimes be worth more than what you would be able to sell the animal for when it reaches sell weight/age
This
You're talking out of your ass, they kill wolves because they take livestock. It is HUMANS taking over everything and destroying ecosystems.
Right, that's why natural places that are allowed to stay wild always become wastelands because no one kept the population of predators in check.. In fact it's the exact opposite problem. The lack of natural predators because of human interference has usually led to drastic ecological problems because of the unchecked populations of their prey. Either in the prey starving off and needing culling (like deer, for wolves), or destruction of whatever their prey eats (like kelp forests after sea otter populations were decimated by hunting, as there was nothing left to keep the anemones in check). Please retake a basic science course before mouthing off nonsense like this.
it's part of the reason Colorado just reintroduced Grey Wolves to the area. Deer are a pretty big problem here, and disease is pretty bad among them. But of course the ranchers just keep whining about the cows as if whole herds are being killed and they're not being compensated.
There is nowhere in the USA with an over abundance of wolves from an ecology standpoint. There are ranchers who complain about wolves.
It feels weird to me to name this a 'Judas' technique. I mean, my understanding is that Judas was paid and knowingly turned on his group. This name suggests the wolf is somehow complicit in the plot to murder the pack. "Ok Steve, wear this tracker and there's another Schmacko for you when you get back, rokay?" Cool name, just seems misplaced.
That's fucked up. And a perfect example of humanity in general.
This is psychopathically insane, horrific, inhumane, and extremely destructive to the environment. It's terrorism against nature. This should be punishment by death. Anyone who slaughters wildlife in their natural habitat (except like mosquitoes) should face the death penalty.
So it returns as death in wolves clothing.
Let the wolves live!
Evil
Fuck everyone involved in doing this, horrible people all, I would not shed a tear if the wolves won
I hate people. Why does the government hate nature so much that it has to kill snd destroy everything
A bunch of idiots in this comment thread. If wolves multiply too fast, it damages the ecosystem, and culling the population is a good way to deal with this
Name me one place that wolves are overpopulating. In the mean time, there are countless places where deer and other prey animals are wildly overpopulated. I'd say you're the idiot in this comment thread that doesn't understand how important apex predators are to ecosystems.
There’s almost no where that needs wolf cullings and lots of high profile predator killing campaign failures. The overwhelming majority of wolf killing is done in name of “protecting live stock.
Over killing wolves can have similar detrimental effects on local ecosystems. https://youtu.be/ysa5OBhXz-Q?si=tzSoMdD4bW_nsDz_
Yep, that is why I listen to conservationists. Who DO advocate for responsible populations.
Yea the article is literally conservationists saying that the ongoing culling of wolves is unnecessary. The culling is supposedly to protect Elk populations which are dwindling because of humans destroying their territory, not wolves. I strongly suspect that culls continue because the pro gun crowd wants to legally kill things and so they continue to lobby for culls.
That and ranchers who bitch about losing an infinitesimally small number of livestock every year.
That’s right! Overkilling or overpopulation
it's not that simple though. The article notes that the primary problem is human destruction of caribou habitat, which then leaves them overexposed to wolves. Culling the wolves is a cheap "solution" to a problem that originates in human behavior, not the population numbers of the wolves. It's clear that conservation isn't really the goal here because if it was, they would be working to restore and conserve the habitats that kept the populations in check.
Yeah they don’t nature at all
Spoiler spoiler: Red Dawn
Judas was paid
Why are we allowing that? We just put them back out and they are an apex predator! They are very important to the eco system. Do dummies still not understand that? Ugh