WolfQuest

wolfwhisp wrote: So I must agree with the many whom say that the importance of hunting depends on the situation at hand. For example I know that hunting invasive species is beneficial in many ways, it preserves the ecosystem and the native species there. Yet hunting proves bad too, even in season sometimes. A personal example of mine, we have a lot of deer behind our house (it's "preserved" swampland along with properties around it. Now a few acres to the side we have a huge range for hunting the deer and from the sounds we hear it's fairly popular. To our other side we have hunter neighbors (despite their land also being preserved) who hunt primarily in season. So we typically have the small groups of mothers (there are usually 2-5 fawns in the group) but after a while we weren't seeing any deer (it was just about to be deer hunting season). As the investigators we are me and my father went out back and looked around, we found lots of deer dead but didn't find this too surprising as there was a mushroom spread disease (at least I think it was the shrooms can't be sure though) and when we went over into our neighbor's lands (pfft forget trespassing I don't know what you're talking about) we found dead deer with bullets in their necks and stomachs and sides etc. We only recently have begun to see fairly big groups again.

SolitaryHowl wrote:I agree with Skybreaker. I am friends with a few hunters, and they are some of the most environmentally conscious people I know. They will not take the shot unless they know it is a clean one. They probably care more for the animals than some random person on the street.

Not all hunters are nut-jobs. The ones that are appear in the news, because it is rare. Its kind of like plane crashes...they appear in the news because they are rare. But car accidents happen every day, and you rarely hear about them.

LupaValdo2001-2014 wrote:I'm not to familiar with hunting as its illegal in most of the UK I believe, it is at least where I live. But I do know that keeping sown numbers is difficult in areas like Australia so humans have to step in. Though I do have a question, what would happen if we did let nature take its course?

Predation of native wildlife by the cat, Felis catus.
Predation of native wildlife by the introduced Red Fox Vulpes vulpes.
...
Reduction in biomass and biodiversity of native vegetation through grazing by the Rabbit Oryctolagus cuniculus.

Australia’s biodiversity is currently in decline; in Australia, more than 1,700 species and ecological communities are known to be threatened and at risk of extinction.

The key threats to species are loss, degradation and fragmentation of habitat, invasive species and altered fire regimes

Australia is home to between 600,000 and 700,000 species, many of which are found nowhere else in the world. About 84 per cent of plants, 83 per cent of mammals, and 45 per cent of birds are only found in Australia.

Sambhur wrote:

LupaValdo2001-2014 wrote:I'm not to familiar with hunting as its illegal in most of the UK I believe, it is at least where I live. But I do know that keeping sown numbers is difficult in areas like Australia so humans have to step in. Though I do have a question, what would happen if we did let nature take its course?

I hope you're asking about Australia since that's the only place I can give a good answer on! Here, if we just stopped hunting and let nature take its course, the invasive species would continue to become overpopulated as they have no main predators here. Unlike the US, we don't have animals that can take down a deer, or would regularly kill a fox. Dingos are our biggest terrestrial predator, but they already have a list of prey they choose to hunt. Deer, pigs, foxes, rabbits, feral cats & dogs, they're all not supposed to be here, so the impact that they're having on the environment is purely negative as they disturb Australia's unique ecosystems. This document from the Victorian government lists some threats to native wildlife: http://web.archive.org/web/200609110738 ... l+2006.pdf and in it they mention things like

Predation of native wildlife by the cat, Felis catus.
Predation of native wildlife by the introduced Red Fox Vulpes vulpes.
...
Reduction in biomass and biodiversity of native vegetation through grazing by the Rabbit Oryctolagus cuniculus.

And that's just the beginning of it. Deer do way more damage to vegetation than rabbits do, since they not only eat things, but the adult male Sambar deer for example (where I got my username from <; ) like to destroy plants by ripping branches off shrubs and ringbarking (killing) young trees. The deer don't know what damage they're causing, they don't understand the difference between an endangered shrub and one in the least concern category. When they eat a lot of plants and fruit in a certain area, they also leave less food for our native animals. We also have the predators like cats, dogs, and foxes, who prey on whatever small native animal they can when they're hungry, or even when they're not hungry, since we all know plenty of cats just like to kill things for fun. From our government, http://www.environment.gov.au/biodivers ... ed/species

Australia’s biodiversity is currently in decline; in Australia, more than 1,700 species and ecological communities are known to be threatened and at risk of extinction.

The key threats to species are loss, degradation and fragmentation of habitat, invasive species and altered fire regimes

I don't think I even have to mention what damage pigs can do, because oh gosh, it's just so bad.

So yeah, the presence of invasive species has disturbed our ecosystems, and these animals (many plants too, but this is about hunting) continue to pose a threat to biodiversity as they continue to exist here. They have no predators in the Aussie wild (dingos hunt rabbits sometimes I think, but there aren't many dingos these days, and they can't/don't hunt deer) keeping their populations down, so without human intervention it's very likely that the populations will continue to grow, when these populations shouldn't exist at all. Invasive species are pests here (except some species are considered game species in some areas which is annoying), and depending on the state's laws, they're often able to be hunted with no bag limit (no limit to how many you're allowed to kill) because they just need to go. They can't stay here without threatening the Australian natural environment.
Here's another link I just found about feral animals in Aus, http://www.environment.gov.au/biodivers ... -australia I'd actually forgotten all about the goats, buffalo, and camels. Wow.
It's also important to note that biodiversity is extremely important to Australia, since if we lose species, we can't always just bring them back in from another place:

Australia is home to between 600,000 and 700,000 species, many of which are found nowhere else in the world. About 84 per cent of plants, 83 per cent of mammals, and 45 per cent of birds are only found in Australia.

http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/threatened

TL;DR: If you let nature take its course, bad things happen. Species eventually go extinct, and they can't be brought back.
Sorry if I rambled or repeated myself a bit! I woke up not very long ago.

SolitaryHowl wrote:Very solid answer. I'm majoring in Ecology, and you took what I was going to say right out of my mouth!

Another example is Isle Royale. The wolves there are in a lot of trouble - but we need the wolves there to keep the moose population in check. If we just let nature 'take its course', the moose will practically destroy the island's green resources, decimating the ecosystem (which will starve out every other animal that lives on the island, including the moose themselves.)