What we think of wild nature is nothing compared to what used to exist.
Schools of fish so dense they would bring boats to a halt in the middle of the Atlantic. North America had more large wildlife than Africa. Whales as far as the eye could see all day long. Walruses in the Thames in London.
I did a couple video essays on what I learned from a wonderful book The Once and Future World:
Reminds me of a quote from Charles Eisenstein. He cites The Once and Future World and then channels Steve Nicholls in Paradise Found:
"Atlantic salmon runs so abundant no one is able to sleep for their noise. Islands “as full of birds as a meadow is full of grass.” Whales so numerous they were a hazard to shipping, their spouts filling the entire sea with foam. Oysters more than a foot wide. An island covered by so many egrets that the bushes appeared pure white. Swans so plentiful the shores appear to be dressed in white drapery. Colonies of Eskimo curlews so thick it looked like the land was smoking. White pines two hundred feet high. Spruce trees twenty feet in circumference. Black oaks thirty feet in girth. Hollowed-out sycamores able to shelter thirty men in a storm. Cod weighing two hundred pounds (today they weigh perhaps ten). Cod fisheries where “the number of the cod seems equal that of the grains of sand.” A man who reported “more than six hundred fish could be taken with a single cast of the net, and one fish was so big that twelve colonists could dine on it and still have some left.”
I used the word “incredible” advisedly when I introduced these images. Incredible means something like “impossible to believe”; indeed, incredulity is a common response when we are confronted with evidence that things were once vastly different than they are now."
I'm not sure exactly what those quotes are referring to, but many reports of European settlers to the New World, while technically true, were greatly misleading.
Prior to arrival of the Europeans, the continent was full of Native Americans who lived in an ecological balance with wildlife.
When the Europeans arrived, the diseases they brought wiped out 90+% of the indigenous population, according to some estimates. By the time they explored the continent, the population was mainly gone, far in advance.
So there's a strong theory that the incredible over-abundance of wildlife the Europeans saw was actually a huge ecological imbalance, as many animals had lost their natural (human) predators.
And that phenomena such as millions of passenger pigeons blocking out the sun overhead weren't "natural" at all, but actually severe ecological imbalance.
(This isn't to say, of course, that now we haven't swung way too far in the other direction. But just that the tales of abundance aren't necessarily a naturally balanced state either.)
Also, the amount of fish a ship caught decreased tremendously once steam powered ships were introduced https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms1013 (scroll down to figure 2)
What amazed me was after reading Unbroken (WWII novel set in the pacific) was the incredible amount of sharks in hawaii and the surrounding islands. A family member who was in the pacific theatre backed this up. Shark schools so dense that sailors would be attacked after they fell in. This was barely 70 years ago so alot has changed in terms of animal population.
It is truly amazing how nearly completely we wiped the continent of wildlife. Many of our teams are named after the animals we wiped out. Florida Panthers, Jacksonville Jaguars, California Golden Bears, Michigan Wolverines, etc.
> Whales as far as the eye could see all day long.
The near extermination of whales along our shores changed geopolitics. One of the reasons why commodore perry "visited" japan was to open japanese ports to our whalers.
If you put a 20 mile perimeter around every point of North America that had continued human activity, what percentage of North America would be covered? Is it more than we'd expect? At a first glance, it seems like there are still vast reached of North America that remain completely untouched by humans.
Nevertheless, is so sad that humans have effectively pushed animals outside of their habitats. Animals are smart enough to avoid humans, just as a deer is smart enough to avoid a wolf, but at some point the world is only so big.
One foggy morning I walked out to the rock at Morro Bay and as I got out on this spit of land, I realized that what I thought was a big sand dune was actually all birds, a huge see of birds. They started taking off and obscured the sky.
As an early morning runner in SF, I see coyotes in SF every week or two, including at Twin peaks as mentioned in the article. One morning in Golden Gate Park I warned a few people walkings dogs since there were about 4 coyotes around the corner.
From my first hand experience, I'd assume any wooded area with cover in SF has a coyote living there.
Not only that, many SF parks have signs warning about this, even years before the pandemic.
That they would wander out of the wooded areas is no shock. A couple years ago I saw one strolling along the sidewalk in the Presidio not far from Main Post, acting more or less the same way a tourist would.
I took the opportunity to visit Glen Canyon Park last time I was in San Francisco, after a local recommended to me, and it was a wonderful interlude in my visit; they had signs up noting that there would be coyotes about at twilight; alas I was there mid-day and didn't get to see them.
I did, however, get to see hummingbirds for the first (and so far only) time in my life.
That’s a great place for hikes. It’s got a seasonal creek and small wetlands. They’ve got signs posted about the local wildlife you can expect see. It’s a shame dogs aren’t limited to a given area as they drive away some wildlife.
Nextdoor is essentially a nationwide service for people to share coyote sightings in their neighborhood. No matter where they are, people won't shut up about them.
Coyotes are pretty adapted to city living. I know in my city (Vancouver) they are not uncommon to see, even in some pretty densely populated areas of town. I once had one walk right in front of me in a residential area one night, it wandered by so casually that I was sure it was a dog until I was about 5 feet from it.
Reading the comments just above I was just thinking of commenting the same thing for Vancouver, which is why I don't see the big issue with a sighting. In Vancouver when I lived there, they were almost a daily thing even in very urban areas far from a larger forest, and frequently ate pets too. Skunks too. Skunks everywhere and quite brazen for all their fat, waddly slowness.
What advice do you have for dealing with coyotes when jogging? I've learned the hard way that running away tends to trigger their fight-or-flight reflex, which isn't good.
They've never bothered me, I treat them like any other wild animal, give them a wide berth, let them be, don't trap them, and don't turn my back on them. Normally they're going somewhere, and just let them go there.
I worry about people with dogs since dogs can easily chase a coyote, corner it then get bitten or eaten if it's small enough.
Here in Santiago, Chile, where many neighborhoods are in complete lockdown, a wild Puma was seen roaming the streets[1]. This was their natural habitat before the city was established, and many of them still live in the mountains, which are not far from the busiest streets of Santiago.
I used to live in Olympia before living in Seattle and wash pretty shocked to see a coyote casualty walking down the street one morning when I was drinking coffee. Turns out it is pretty normal.
I live south of San Jose up against the mountains and our neighbors will post pictures once in a while of mountain lions drinking out of the swimming pools in their back yards. It’s more common in bad drought years.
Walking around my neighborhood and the silence is absolutely sublime. Airplanes, cars, highway noise, all diminished. The birds and chirps and friendly "Hellos" are amplified. It's bee n marvelous.
That reminds me about stories of people trying to record nature untouched by man-made sounds.
It has become increasingly difficult to find locations which are purely nature. I wonder how much easier it has become since the number of people generating "work noise" has fallen so much?
Keep in mind stricter climate controls wouldn’t even hurt the economy this bad. A harsh carbon tax on all fossil fuels in exchange for COVID-19 to disappear to be gone would be a welcome relief to the economy.
That's true, but I think the point is: people will witness first-hand how reducing pollution and emissions leads to much better environment in the span of weeks.
I also hope that there will be some dip in relevant global climate measurements, so there will be something to point to and say: "here's direct empirical evidence that climate change is man-made and that reducing emissions helps mitigate it".
With ya on this one, but what kinds of problems would this cause for people who don't have another option to get to work? Un-doing this ridiculous culture of driving 40 minutes to work will take a lot time.
Still, I wholeheartedly agree on the concept. I'm curious as to how to fix the followup problems that will occur from fixing the primary problem.
This is really cool! (but not unexpected) On the east coast, there is a species called ‘Coywolves’. They are a hybrid of pure coyotes and timber or grey wolves.
They are known to be incredibly smart and stealthy. They are adept at adapting to, and living in urban environments.
Like domestic dogs, they understand line of sight, as in, they are keenly aware of what direction a person is looking. This helps them remain unseen, while surviving in very close proximity to humans.
We know coyotes are living in virtually every corner of the US at this point. I wonder if these are pure bloods, coywolves that have migrated to the west coast, or maybe a new hybrid or sub species?
PBS Nature has an amazing documentary describing the Coywolf. Check it out if you have PBS Passport!
The same thing is happening in Barcelona but with boars coming from the forests outside the city, seems to have no correlation with the lock-down/quarantine that is happening (streets of Barcelona are basically empty right now, except for ambulances, police and delivery services) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/04/wild-boar-sigh...
I once did a night "hike" up to Tibidabo. This wasn't organized or anything, just a few friends and I took a commuter train out of the city to the base of the mountain, semi-stranding ourselves. Then we walked up to the top, slept outside on the hilltop and enjoyed the sunrise the next morning.
Tibidabo has an amusement park and a cathedral, so there was a night security guard who was very confused by the 4-5 tourists hanging out outside his gate at night, although he didn't complain much.
The relevant bit here though is that on the walk up the mountain, we saw more than one wild boar out on the roadside, including a whole family. It was unexpected and frightening.
Berlin is full of them. They roam the parks and streets at night, but are generally harmless (back away if they have piglets with them) and most annoyingly will dig over gardens if the fence is insufficient.
Let's not romanticize this too much. Coyotes are literally all over North America, so it's not like they've suddenly reappeared or something. We also accidentally let them overpopulate by exterminating so much of the wolf population.
Readit News
Schools of fish so dense they would bring boats to a halt in the middle of the Atlantic. North America had more large wildlife than Africa. Whales as far as the eye could see all day long. Walruses in the Thames in London.
I did a couple video essays on what I learned from a wonderful book The Once and Future World:
My video essays: https://youtu.be/ZLAvBiols2Y and https://youtu.be/U4NZdciDozI
The book: https://www.amazon.com/Once-Future-World-Nature-Could/dp/030...
"Atlantic salmon runs so abundant no one is able to sleep for their noise. Islands “as full of birds as a meadow is full of grass.” Whales so numerous they were a hazard to shipping, their spouts filling the entire sea with foam. Oysters more than a foot wide. An island covered by so many egrets that the bushes appeared pure white. Swans so plentiful the shores appear to be dressed in white drapery. Colonies of Eskimo curlews so thick it looked like the land was smoking. White pines two hundred feet high. Spruce trees twenty feet in circumference. Black oaks thirty feet in girth. Hollowed-out sycamores able to shelter thirty men in a storm. Cod weighing two hundred pounds (today they weigh perhaps ten). Cod fisheries where “the number of the cod seems equal that of the grains of sand.” A man who reported “more than six hundred fish could be taken with a single cast of the net, and one fish was so big that twelve colonists could dine on it and still have some left.”
I used the word “incredible” advisedly when I introduced these images. Incredible means something like “impossible to believe”; indeed, incredulity is a common response when we are confronted with evidence that things were once vastly different than they are now."
(I posted the MacKinnon section here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22064787)
Prior to arrival of the Europeans, the continent was full of Native Americans who lived in an ecological balance with wildlife.
When the Europeans arrived, the diseases they brought wiped out 90+% of the indigenous population, according to some estimates. By the time they explored the continent, the population was mainly gone, far in advance.
So there's a strong theory that the incredible over-abundance of wildlife the Europeans saw was actually a huge ecological imbalance, as many animals had lost their natural (human) predators.
And that phenomena such as millions of passenger pigeons blocking out the sun overhead weren't "natural" at all, but actually severe ecological imbalance.
(This isn't to say, of course, that now we haven't swung way too far in the other direction. But just that the tales of abundance aren't necessarily a naturally balanced state either.)
https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/02/05/257046530/b...
https://dchhaddendum.libsyn.com/ep5-nightmares-of-indianapol...
Here is an interesting map of the historic and current grizzly bear ranges.
https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/historical-and-current-gri...
It is truly amazing how nearly completely we wiped the continent of wildlife. Many of our teams are named after the animals we wiped out. Florida Panthers, Jacksonville Jaguars, California Golden Bears, Michigan Wolverines, etc.
> Whales as far as the eye could see all day long.
The near extermination of whales along our shores changed geopolitics. One of the reasons why commodore perry "visited" japan was to open japanese ports to our whalers.
Nevertheless, is so sad that humans have effectively pushed animals outside of their habitats. Animals are smart enough to avoid humans, just as a deer is smart enough to avoid a wolf, but at some point the world is only so big.
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/53/10/994/254987
There are places still.
Dead Comment
From my first hand experience, I'd assume any wooded area with cover in SF has a coyote living there.
That they would wander out of the wooded areas is no shock. A couple years ago I saw one strolling along the sidewalk in the Presidio not far from Main Post, acting more or less the same way a tourist would.
I did, however, get to see hummingbirds for the first (and so far only) time in my life.
They were pretty small though. I wouldn't want my Yorkie near them, but they were more like an oversized Fox.
https://web.archive.org/web/20100501095227/http://www.chron....
I worry about people with dogs since dogs can easily chase a coyote, corner it then get bitten or eaten if it's small enough.
https://www.france24.com/en/20200324-wild-puma-captured-in-d...
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/discovery-parks-co...
Never in my life have I seen such blue skies over LA. And my parents don't ever remember it being clearer either.
At least this shows what some stricter climate controls can do to both the climate and the economy and the tradeoffs involved.
It has become increasingly difficult to find locations which are purely nature. I wonder how much easier it has become since the number of people generating "work noise" has fallen so much?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/sep/24/machine-...
I also hope that there will be some dip in relevant global climate measurements, so there will be something to point to and say: "here's direct empirical evidence that climate change is man-made and that reducing emissions helps mitigate it".
Still, I wholeheartedly agree on the concept. I'm curious as to how to fix the followup problems that will occur from fixing the primary problem.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coywolf
They are known to be incredibly smart and stealthy. They are adept at adapting to, and living in urban environments.
Like domestic dogs, they understand line of sight, as in, they are keenly aware of what direction a person is looking. This helps them remain unseen, while surviving in very close proximity to humans.
We know coyotes are living in virtually every corner of the US at this point. I wonder if these are pure bloods, coywolves that have migrated to the west coast, or maybe a new hybrid or sub species?
PBS Nature has an amazing documentary describing the Coywolf. Check it out if you have PBS Passport!
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/coywolf-meet-the-coywolf/860...
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/meet-the-coywolf-infographic...
I once did a night "hike" up to Tibidabo. This wasn't organized or anything, just a few friends and I took a commuter train out of the city to the base of the mountain, semi-stranding ourselves. Then we walked up to the top, slept outside on the hilltop and enjoyed the sunrise the next morning.
Tibidabo has an amusement park and a cathedral, so there was a night security guard who was very confused by the 4-5 tourists hanging out outside his gate at night, although he didn't complain much.
The relevant bit here though is that on the walk up the mountain, we saw more than one wild boar out on the roadside, including a whole family. It was unexpected and frightening.
And a funicular!
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/nov/30/berlin-h...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JMaFfAxq0o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJFFls6mBb8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9MTMCo8JbQ
There will come soft rains
--------------------------
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows calling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.