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Forest of Dean wild boar cull (1 Viewer)

Kenbro said:
There we have that arbitrary benchmark again - what is 'original'? When was this? Everything about British woodlands is very different from the 'original' circa 10000BP. From the species compositon to the very size and structure of thr trees. talk of 'natural' and 'original' is redundant, because we don't know exactly what it looked like, what the species diversity was, how they interacted etc etc etc. There is not even agreement on what original forested landscape looked like in structure - the Amazon or Kruger. So why not concentrate on the here and now?
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Earlier you said without any proof that the forest changed into unsuitable for boars, now that you cannot say what the forest is or should be like.

You just contradict yourself.
 
Kenbro said:
It is somehwat arrogant to assume that your/our philosophy is the 'right' one, and that everyone else should fall in..
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Apply your view to yourself, and don't deny others the little what is left of nature.

So if you don't like boars, don't go into forest. Stay in city parks, there is plenty of them. Or walk in city centre, where you are guaranteed to walk your dog without meeting any animal bigger than pigeon.
 
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Kenbro said:
I imagine that you rang up 90% of Britons from your nerve centre in Amsterdam/Warsaw?
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I can be as arrogant as you - where in England is your nerve centre? Do you own most of the Forest of Dean? What right do you have to tell others walking there that boars they enjoy should be killed?

The status quo is that there are boars in Forest of Dean. So it is up to you to prove that most of British public wants a cull. And wants to pay for a cull instead of more sensible things.
 
turkish van said:
On a habitat by habitat basis is what i meant. Whether it be woodland, heathland, marshland or whatever else, the more diverse they are the healthier they are. The more diverse the ground flora of a woodland the greater the insect diversity. I knew original was the wrong word... its too late, my brain is switching off, i'll reply tomorrow!
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But there are questions of scale. Diversity over what scale? In a fragmented landscape, diversity within a patch is not always best, as then you might not be able to support a population of x species. Take an insect with a specific foodplant. In a patch size of 1 ha it might take a dominance of the foodplant to sustain a viable population of a butterfly. If you increase the diversity, you spread the resources per unit area and limit the foodplant, but the unit area is finite and often acute. So the population of the foodplant may fall below the threshold required by the insect in that fragmented patch.

Even primeval forests are not a uniform pepper-like mix. You got different species dominating in different places, due to even small variations in soil, wetness, elevation etc. So species and diversity is not uniformly spread across a habitat. Woodland isn't just woodland. It's many different types of woodland, even within a wood.

Diversity aint the be all and end all. You can have 2 areas with the same species diversity but the compositon is very different. For example, an area covered with 5 plant species composed of 96% one species and 1% four species has the same species diversity as an area composed of 20% each species.

Diversity across a landscape, regionally or globally is obviously more 'healthy' (if you like) than a *pure* monoculture. But then you could argue that in modified Europe, a boar-free Britain that allows certain species (Bluebells?) to flourish adds to regional compositional diversity. Making England more like Germany is actually taking it towards a more monotonous pan-European woodland habitat by unifying composition.
 
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bitterntwisted said:
If you subscribe to Kenbro's view, and the one you appear to hold, that value is a human construct then the last man's actions are not wrong. But I suspect that most of us on here have a gut feeling that it would be wrong. It would be a bad thing in itself.
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If there is a source of value outside human experience, then we have no means of quantifying it. In the context of this argument it is therefore quite useless.

bitterntwisted said:
Succession is successsion and evolution is evolution and nature should be left to get on with it.
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And nature is getting on with it: ever since homo sapiens came on the scene, for example, the Amazon's clock began to tick down. Your laissez-faire attitude viz. natural progression can be just as gainfully employed to human actions, with conservation/preservation as the opposite of that, which I suspect is not what you intend it to mean.

However, is the human desire to thwart its innate tendencies to subjugate its environment fully 'natural' as well? In this we begin to see how the term 'natural' fails when it is applied in a normative as well as purely descriptive sense.
 
KnockerNorton said:
True, but we're creating (by inaction) a new industry here, and there would be no need to hunt them if they weren't there. We wouldn't need to shoot pregnant muntjac if they had been removed when it was still possible.

There is a moral question about encouraging an animal whose major function will be as a quarry animal for hunters.
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Its major function isn't to be hunted, its simply a necessary by-product of having them back.

Talking of moral questions, what about the moral question of hunting a native animal to extinction for a second time. Has this ever happened before?
 
ColonelBlimp said:
However, is the human desire to thwart its innate tendencies to subjugate its environment fully 'natural' as well? In this we begin to see how the term 'natural' fails when it is applied in a normative as well as purely descriptive sense.
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I don't think the distinction, at root, is normative / descriptive. There may be quite confusing equivocation between two quite different meanings of natural in the assertions that "humans are part of nature", and that "humans are subjugating nature". In the first instance the contrast term to natural is supernatural or, perhaps, unnatural. In the second, the contrast term is cultural or artificial. So we aren't consistent in what we mean by 'nature' (See Rolston here for a lengthier but clearer exposition... http://www.abdn.ac.uk/philosophy/endsandmeans/vol2no2/rolston.shtml)

Of course words are never wholly descriptive, but are freighted with normative concerns, but neither of us should lay claim to purely objective use in any sense.

For me, the underlying question is what sets humans apart from a) the rest of nature in the universal sense or b) nature itself in the latter, non-cultural sense. A reasonable ethical stance should be informed by as objective an understanding as possible of the self-evident uniqueness of humans. Only a coherent account of what is so great or different about us can start to tell us what we should or shouldn't do to everything else.

Of course, what makes us so special is a rather vexed question in itself. But I'm pretty sure the answer isn't that, "We're made in the image of God and so nature is ours to do as we please with," which is the view that we, and nature, live in the shadow of today.

I suspect that just emptied the stragglers from the pub. ;)

Graham
 
ColonelBlimp said:
If there is a source of value outside human experience, then we have no means of quantifying it. In the context of this argument it is therefore quite useless.
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If it's all a subjective matter of taste, then the pitfalls of deciding whose tastes matter are well-documented.

And usefulness seems always such a workaday criterion. Beauty is notoriously useless.

Graham
 
KnockerNorton said:
But there are questions of scale. Diversity over what scale? In a fragmented landscape, diversity within a patch is not always best, as then you might not be able to support a population of x species. Take an insect with a specific foodplant. In a patch size of 1 ha it might take a dominance of the foodplant to sustain a viable population of a butterfly. If you increase the diversity, you spread the resources per unit area and limit the foodplant, but the unit area is finite and often acute. So the population of the foodplant may fall below the threshold required by the insect in that fragmented patch.

In which case the insect becomes locally extinct in that area, diversity is reduced, certain species become more dominant, the 'natural' balance is negatively affected. I don't know if it's intentional but you keep using the words 'you' and 'we', as if you feel we should be managing these habitats (all habitats/areas?) specifically for certain species. In some cases, yes, the bees you mentioned for example. But we don't know in all cases what the most important species are - the keystone species whose abundance is altered and will have the largest effect on its range of related species. Again it comes back to the question of which species do we concentrate on 'conserving', and which we don't, and our reasons for choosing these.


Even primeval forests are not a uniform pepper-like mix. You got different species dominating in different places, due to even small variations in soil, wetness, elevation etc. So species and diversity is not uniformly spread across a habitat. Woodland isn't just woodland. It's many different types of woodland, even within a wood.

Exactly - a diverse range of habitats and environmental variables supporting a diverse range of species.

Diversity aint the be all and end all. You can have 2 areas with the same species diversity but the compositon is very different. For example, an area covered with 5 plant species composed of 96% one species and 1% four species has the same species diversity as an area composed of 20% each species.

Diversity across a landscape, regionally or globally is obviously more 'healthy' (if you like) than a *pure* monoculture. But then you could argue that in modified Europe, a boar-free Britain that allows certain species (Bluebells?) to flourish adds to regional compositional diversity. Making England more like Germany is actually taking it towards a more monotonous pan-European woodland habitat by unifying composition.
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That's true. It would be a shame of course to lose all our bluebell woods but I doubt that would happen anyway!

I wonder if boar would have an impact on our non-native invasive plant species, Japanese knotweed, Himalayan Balsam etc by rooting up the ground and preventing or slowing their spread? That would be an interesting question, anyone any know of any research or have any opinions on that?
 
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bitterntwisted said:
If it's all a subjective matter of taste, then the pitfalls of deciding whose tastes matter are well-documented.

And usefulness seems always such a workaday criterion. Beauty is notoriously useless.

Graham
Click to expand...

But this is just a weak cop-out, it seems, from having to analyse the role of clearly definable human values of 'nature' in a conservation/preservation scenario: instead, relying on conveniently undefinable 'intrinsic values' prevents you from performing normative value assessments where, due to the nature of the issue, they are clearly needed.

In other words, deciding whether or not to introduce wild boar relies on making value judgements that cannot be made if we end up relying on such wishy-washy undefinable measures of 'intrinsic value'. Value judgements have to be made with human valuations, however obfuscated.

PS. Ye Gods! KnockerNorton returns! o:D
 
bitterntwisted said:
Of course, what makes us so special is a rather vexed question in itself. But I'm pretty sure the answer isn't that, "We're made in the image of God and so nature is ours to do as we please with," which is the view that we, and nature, live in the shadow of today.
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But this is where I feel that use of 'naturalness' as a benchmark in this argument falls down. You can make the argument successfully for human actions in this case being 'natural' or 'unnatural', but whether the argument works or not relies solely on how you bend the definition of 'naturalness' to fit it. Therefore, it's a dead end.

Instead of having some nice clean-cut benchmark, you have to rely on human valuations. Which are even more indistinct!!!
 
Knocker keeps bringing up somehow that the British environment is somehow intrinsically different since it has "evolved" without boars. That is fairly ridiculous since boars have only been extinct there for 700 years. Evolution doesn't normally work that fast...most components of the British ecosystem should be able to get along well with boars, although some species may change their distribution or abundance in response. And at any rate, certainly the money spent on a large cull to get rid of them could be much better spent on eradicating obvious invasive species or used for other conservation priorities.
 
Do boars eat Willow Tits? That would explain Knocker's dislike of boars;)

Seriously, welcome back (if you ever went away). Also thanks for the Mink link. I was hoping for nationwide eradication success but I guess it's a start.
 
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