Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!decwrl!polyslo!unmvax!nmtsun!john
From: john@nmtsun.nmt.edu (John Shipman)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Re: bird begging
Message-ID: <3070@nmtsun.nmt.edu>
Date: 10 Aug 89 01:04:53 GMT
References: <4529@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> <5280001@hpavla.HP.COM>
Organization: Zoological Data Processing
Lines: 36

Tom Przybylski (przybyls@hpavla.HP.COM) writes:
+---
| ... at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado...animals
| (birds, chipmunks, squirrels) beg to some extent all year
| long.... The real problem comes just after all the
| crowds leave at the end of summer. 
+---

I think encouraging begging is not altogether bad, since it
gives so many people a chance to get close looks at real
wild animals, and appreciate their beautiful coats and
feathers, their sharp eyes and good reflexes.

On the other hand, this situation is also an excellent
illustration of one of the Big Painful Truths about zoology:
the concept of carrying capacity.  This area can only
support so many animals; winter forage is the limiting
factor for many populations.  The lives of animals that
depend on the tourist season are apt to be nasty, brutish
and short.

An excellent article in CoEvolution Quarterly a few issues
back made the analogy with famines in human populations.  If
you just send food to starving people, you are not
increasing the carrying capacity of the land where they
live, and the long-term situation is not improved.

Sending tools, or information about maintainable crop
yields, or trees to reverse desertification, actually
increases the carrying capacity of the land, and is
much kinder in the long run.
-- 
John Shipman/Zoological Data Processing/Socorro, New Mexico
USENET: ucbvax!unmvax!nmtsun!john  CSNET: john@nmtsun.nmt.edu ``A lesson from
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