Unless people were putting food in the forest, wouldn’t nature keep overpopulation from happening? The natural way, instead of people hunting?
I just never understood the argument that people “have” to hunt to keep animals from overpopulating.
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How Would Overpopulation Happen If No One Hunted?
Posted on February 20, 2013.
Great question, that argument is a hard one, it applies to very few species and could be said very, very few animals need hunted or harvested to maintain a healthy population, by far most species of animals are in decline mostly by loss of habitat, but where ever a niche in nature does open up some animals can adapt and will take advantage of it, I hear this argument mostly among white tail deer hunters and in their case its a valid argument. At one time in our past natural selection limited animal populations by many reasons such as predator to prey ratio, diseases, food availability etc. As human populations grow and man changes his environment to his benefit he also at the same time changes the balance of nature. Today white tailed deer now have less predators than ever and more food availability than in the past so today’s deer populations are higher than in the past. Today most hunters are people who hunt for “sport” their not there just to reduce populations. Reducing overpopulation of animals for their own benefit is called a cull, culling is done when game wardens and wildlife specialists have determined how many animals a given area may support, this is when they can use the hunters who are given permits to take only a certain number of animals. You see this done every few years with wild elephants in some africa game reserves. When populations are to high in some areas they can begin to damage the environment so by reducing or culling the overpopulation it benefits the environment as a whole. People dont have to hunt just to keep animals from overpopulating but in some cases a cull is a necessity.
Hope this is helpful
Yes over population would happen. Since predators are not in urban areas the deer would continue to reproduce till the food supply would be gone, yards, shrubs, fruit trees crops, and any understory in the wooded areas. Not only would it cause great harm to deer populations it would effect others. Having starving deer dropping dead in your back yard is not fun. Since we decided to kill off most of the deers predators long ago, we have created an abnormal situation. Long ago in the Kibab National Forest in Az. it was determined the deer where too cute to allow the predators to hunt them so a big push was made to harvest bear, cougars, coyotes etc. It didn’t take too long before the deer populations exploded. Deer by the thousands starved to death. Killed all of the understory and ruined the forest.Then it was decided the military was to go and kill off as many deer as they could in order to save the habitat and the remaining few deer that where healthy. TaDa
If humans didn’t hunt, overpopulation would still occur. Animals hunt other animals the ay humans do to decrease populations. However, if NOTHING hunted, then earth would run out of resources or food for everyone to survive.