Haunting photos of the bison extermination in 19th century America(rarehistoricalphotos.com) |
Haunting photos of the bison extermination in 19th century America(rarehistoricalphotos.com) |
A world without wilderness and wild animal will be an impoverished one indeed.
"The total weight of Earth’s wild land mammals – from elephants to bisons and from deer to tigers – is now less than 10% of the combined tonnage of men, women and children living on the planet." https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/18/a-wake-u...
However the bison numbers have recovered somewhat. Great whale populations are increasing. Maybe there is some hope for us yet.
By the measure that we apply to nearly every other species on earth, humans win.
I don't understand - what measure?
Equating “civilization” with “humanity” or “human nature” is a false equivalence.
The rats in New York would like to have a word with you. /s
We are working very hard on this issue. /s
I thought that must've been a typo upon first reading. Even 325,000 would be shocking. Amazing that the conservation efforts seem to have worked well.
Private cattle ranches could never have competed with 30 million bison owned by nature, free for anyone to take.
It’s like the anti-Netflix. Nova, Secrets of the Dead, Ken Burns… vs Love Island and Is It Cake?
Oof. I didn't know that was Sherman's take on it.
>>The federal government promoted bison hunting for various reasons, primarily to pressure the native people onto the Indian reservations during times of conflict by removing their main food source.
>>Without the bison, native people of the plains were often forced to leave the land or starve to death. One of the biggest advocates of this strategy was General William Tecumseh Sherman.
>>On June 26, 1869, the Army Navy Journal reported: “General Sherman remarked, in conversation the other day, that the quickest way to compel the Indians to settle down to civilized life was to send ten regiments of soldiers to the plains, with orders to shoot buffaloes until they became too scarce to support the redskins.”
Pristine and natural North America had mammoth, horses, and many other megafauna which were rapidly hunted to extinction. But somehow the American Indian evolved culturally, adapting to their environmental niches and cultivating the land to maintain a lifestyle dominated by hunting, with some farming. This involved more-or-less extensive changes to the landscape.
America before the White man came wasn't pristine or natural. It was bountiful.
Erm, no? Seems kind of racist to say otherwise? The plains indians entire culture revolved around preserving and respecting nature. And I'm pretty sure it's only theorized that the paleo-indians wiped out the mammoths, and I'm not sure how that's the problem of the white man or even the native americans of the mid 19th century.
Extending your argument to its logical absurdity, no environment can be considered "pristine" unless it's the literal primordial sludge the first life emerged from. Very odd nitpickery.
Wouldn't this be more in line with other megafauna extinctions? The only reason Indians didn't also wipe out this megafauna was a technology change, the addition of horses.
We humans have decimated every species on the planet. The planet used to be teaming with wildlife, now its mostly empty and quiet except for the humans.
It was the one about the ghouls - hated and despised, until it was figured out they made beautiful music, and were warmly applauded in a crowded concert, triumphantly closing the book.
Whee, close call. If they didn't have any entertainment value and just propagated diseases, that would be another story.
...
> Attracted by previously unimagined hunting possibilities, Native Americans poured into the Plains from all directions, creating one of most renowned hunting cultures in history.
Does the author mean to imply that the plains were unihabited until the spanish introduction of horses?
https://www.history.com/news/horses-plains-indians-native-am...
Buffalo, by grazing and fertilizing, helped the grass.
There are many records of large pre-Columbian settlements exhausting resources (like game and trees) and abandoning entire areas.
There is nothing racist about it. They were humans. They consumed resources and grew their population as aggressively as their technology permitted.
Just because the population was wild then wouldn't have precluded ranching bison, or even cows.
Buffalo will run off a cliff in the hundreds because those in the back can’t see what’s in the front.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_jump
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha-ha
There are second hand accounts from indigenous people, excavated bone sites with tools and spear tips, but reportedly no first hand recorded observations from Europeans of buffalo running off cliffs.
Also, not voluntarily pushing the beasts to your fences is going to help a bit, since buffaloes don't run to cliff on their own…