Re: It was only a matter of time

[frank bliss <frank@blissnet.com>]

If anyone wants to see my response off list to this as it is off topic, email 
me and I will forward the off list response.  There is a small amount of 
dinosaur discussion onboard with some relevant to the list points regarding 
understanding ecology both past and present.  The past is the key to the 
present and the future I believe is how it went.
Frank Bliss
Weston, Wyoming


On Mar 18, 2011, at 11:41 AM, Augusto Haro wrote:

> 2011/3/17 frank bliss <frank@blissnet.com>:
>> 
>> Living on top of Hell Creek Formation on the Montana/Wyoming border 65 miles 
>> from the nearest town, surrounded by excessive coyotes and copious prairie 
>> dogs.  I'm always having trouble deciding whether to hunt for fossils or 
>> hunt for the varmints.  Life is full of decisions but in this case, hunting 
>> both are pleasurable.  One often leads to the other opportunistically if 
>> your collecting gear includes an accurate rifle (which mine does). If you've 
>> ever had a prized horse break it's leg in a prairie dog hole or have had a 
>> calf have his face eaten off by a pack of coyotes while it was being born, 
>> you'd understand.
>> 
> Sorry by getting off-topic with this rant.
> Frank, if you like wildlife you should not kill praire dogs. They are
> not out of peril, and they have been exterminated in many places.
> Large amount of carnivorous vertebrates sustain thanks to this
> species. In addition, it has been indicated that many herbivorous
> animals prefer to graze where praire dogs are common. They seem to be
> a keystone species, at least for the vertebrate assemblage.
> You say the Earth does not give anything to us. Wrong, the forests
> give us oxygen and capture water, for you, me, and your cattle, and
> does it for free. We tend to see us unrelated with the rest of the
> ecosystem, when we actually need of its functioning a lot. We tend to
> reductionistic and believing the only things important are those we
> know as useful, thus not caring in killing the rest. Many consider
> that with a few domestic species we can survive and forget the others.
> More holistically, out of prevention given our current small
> understanding on the functioning of the complexities of the relations
> of ecosystems we should be care not to remove species from ecosystems
> because of fear to unexpectable consequences.
> And, how fair is it for European-culture man to invade the terrain
> where American predators previously thrived, replace their common prey
> with cattle, and then get furious when they go after the only prey
> they can find?

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