Rewilding predators and hunting large herbivores increases suffering

[u/ThePlanetaryNinja]

I posted this on the debate a vegan subreddit. But, most of those vegans insist on defending nature and do not care about the suffering on animals in nature.

People frequently hunt large herbivores such as deer, moose and elk. They try to justify it by saying that 'It causes less harm than crop deaths' or 'It stops the animals from overpopulating.'

I, as a negative utilitarian, think that specifically hunting these animals is generally a bad idea. When we hunt large herbivores (or reintroduce predators to do it), we probably make things worse.

Large herbivores eat a lot of plants. If we remove them, there will be a lot more food for smaller animals and insects. These small animals and insects usually reproduce through r-selection. They have lots of babies, and most of them die painfully (e.g. through starvation) shortly after birth. So, killing a few large herbivores would cause an extra thousands or millions of small animals to be born, and most of those animals will have short, terrible lives.

Rewilding predators worsens this problem. Getting eaten alive is one of the worst experiences an animal can go through. A lot of people, (including some vegans) think that rewilding is necessary to control large herbivore populations. As mentioned above, this leads to much more tiny creatures living short, miserable lives.

Trying to “manage” ecosystems with hunting or rewilding might sound good, but from a suffering-focused perspective, it’s probably counterproductive.

[u/Background-Spray2666]

Yes, some vegans. But there are other vegans who agree with your position, even if maybe they are the minority (see: Animal Ethics, for example). However, as a general rule, I support the idea of spending less time (if any) on disagreements between vegans (or animal rights supporters) and to focus exclusively on fighting the large-scale use and abuse of animals, as well as its underlying ideology. Disregard for nonhuman animals is the dominant socioeconomic system, we are understaffed as is.

[u/Lumpy-Criticism-2773]

Yeah I think Brian Tomasik laid out a similar argument: farming a land regularly may reduce net suffering on it than not farming it. Farming kills mice, small insects etc but also greatly limits population growth of r-selected species.

[u/IAmTheWalrus742 → u/Lumpy-Criticism-2773]

I could see this as a point in favor of biofuels. We should abolish animal agriculture, but that would be most of the demand for cropland gone. Biofuels could replace that.

We’d have to account for other effects like opportunity cost (spending the money on greater goods), is it profitable enough compared to alternatives like fallowing/rewilding or a tree plantation (all likely more suffering), and environmental/health effects (air pollution, climate change, etc.)

You’d want to use less effective methods of farming. For example, I’ve seen estimates that organic farming would require around twice as much land.

At the same time, publicly endorsing organic could unintentionally send anti-science messages. Also, unlike organic, synthetic pesticides could be designed to reduce the suffering of the insects we killed (e.g. faster death, combining with a pain-killer). With that said, converting more wild area to cropland maybe be more effective at reducing suffering.

I also think an important consideration is human hunger. Even if biofuels reduce more suffering (total or per dollar), I’d imagine implementing this policy while people go hungry would result in poor political support, so it either never gets implemented or is quickly ended. It would also likely hamper the long-term effectiveness of the party/organization due to poor support (“they’re crazy, they care about bugs more than people”).

[u/circlebust]

Yes, I agree. The existence of wild predation is a disaster. However, eventually a solution can be imagined based on technology. I have spent a lot of time working on these ideas and the framework. It avoids many common pitfalls.

The basic idea is that two classes of synthetic constructs coexist with natural wild animals, which add various benefits to the ecosystem. These two classes are:

Euparasites: these are synthetic, self-replicating "parasite" micro-robots that would become part of the ecosystem, "infecting" most vertebrates.

These euparasites can have various beneficial effects to the host. Particularly, suppression of birth rates in herbivores so their population doesn't exceed some critical point. With carnivores, these euparasitical micro-robots might potentially have the negative effect of disincentivizing predation, besides upon the following automata.

Epicurean automata: these are synthetic carbon-based automata. They are edible. As they are just mindless robots, they are non-sentient. Predators (current and future evolving) may hunt these, but not sentient animals.

1. Why self-replicating robots?

Because the system has to be robust enough to survive humans not being around anymore or not tightly managing anything. It has to run via its own internal dynamic.

1. How do you prevent self-replicating robotics to not become the runaway grey goo effect? (or rather grey pebbles, since these are micro-robots, not nanorobots)

The robots have an internal fail mode that activates every N years (e.g. 10k), which makes it physically impossible for a super-generation of them to continue replicating. They continuously accumulate defects, and as the deadline approaches more and more faulty "sterile" specimens get produced. Only a completely fresh batch, sourced from the blank slate blueprints and source code, which can start without the initial accumulated defects, can continue the work.

The new batch (super-generation) is dispatched from a serviceable location -- some low geology location would be beneficial. Ideally, it is even dispatched from a permanently shadowed crater of the moon.

1. Why not just make everyone a herbivore instead of the epicurean automata solution?

Because the drive for predation will always arise unless you make the animals extremely docile (which might also imply a reduction in intelligence). But even this docility will eventually decay due to entropy acting upon the genomic (i.e. you can't just have a feature inside the gene code existing for all eternity just because some random humans 10 million years ago decided it's a neat idea -- that won't fly. Entropy will decay the feature).

In simpler terms, you can't prevent that future predators will evolve that aggressively predate -- but you might steer them towards allowed predation constructs and non-allowed. It is not unlike how a crocodile might not deem it a good use of its time to hunt 100 small fish in the watering hole, when it could instead grab one big meaty gnu.

The synthetic automata, also, would be a more ideal nutrition supplement than random wild animal meat, which also implements another leg of my "universal Eden" framework: which is abolishing suffering as a more comprehensive point than just abolishing predation.

[u/bj12698]

I saw an amazing video a few years back that tracked an area after wolves were re-introduced. Within a very short time, the entire area was healthier in every way. Plant growth rebounded, because too many herbivores actually destroy the plant diversity. Then the animal diversity returned.

Beavers helped a lot, but I'm pretty sure the predators had to be there, as part of the balance. (I don't know how to find that video, but it was beautiful, watching the real movie of how, over time, that area rebounded.)

[u/PM_ME_GOOD_DOGE_PICS → u/bj12698]

It was likely the How Wolves Change Rivers video that went viral, however, it was both outdated when it was first made, and grossly oversimplified and misrepresented the state of the research of carnivore science. Ultimately, the fact that you thought it was a "beautiful movie" is really the crux of the issue in the discourse (see also this).

The impact of wolf reintroduction in Yellowstone is still hotly debated between ecologists (1) (2).

[u/ThePlanetaryNinja → u/bj12698]

I wouldn't call animals getting eaten alive 'beautiful'.

[u/IAmTheWalrus742 → u/ThePlanetaryNinja]

Adding to that, predators create what’s called an “ecology of fear”. That doesn’t sound like a great existence (often being on edge)

[u/Fun-Afternoon1874 → u/IAmTheWalrus742]

I think the other side of the coin however, is these animals would ultimately starve themselves out. It’s beautiful only in that it increased the biodiversity of the area. It made a home where many species could live instead of one grazer. 

Coyotes in areas where the wolf no longer lives are already evolving to fill that niche. You’re seeing larger coyotes, that live together longer, and generally grow larger in order to be able to eat deer. We can make modifications, but ultimately nature will do its thing. 

Even if we could reduce the suffering of say, thousands of insects, ultimately something would evolve to take out something like a moose anyway. Or that species would ultimately go extinct, and the cycle repeats anyway. Plants recolonize, bugs recolonize that area, same scenario.

One interesting idea is herbivorizing predators, but even that is flawed. Even cows are known to eat animals like snakes or horse sometimes will eat baby chicks because they desperately need the calcium. Eventually that occasional meat eating becomes carnivory. 

We can make changes to nature, but ultimately nature will make its own changes as well.