Cliff Gray interview of Tim Sundles

[dschade9]

Interesting.

 

[Bannedinshortorder!]

Wonder if his Idaho Fish and Game past meets the standards here?

 

[sneaky]

No one loves Tim Sundles like Tim Sundles. I turned that podcast off and deleted it after about 15min. Flock shooting elk is idiotic.

Sent from my SM-S918U using Tapatalk

 

[7RemMag]

But… he’s not wrong about that… there is a lot of overlap in the sorts of people who want wolves, don’t like hunting, and don’t think “civilians” should own firearms… and there are definitely people for whom it is all part of a plan towards their ideal world where there are fewer people, people aren’t part of the natural world except as enlightened spectators, and those same enlightened spectators make all the decisions.

Spend some time around the academics and the people they educate and you might see this. These people plan a long game and play a long game.

I used to think that this line of thinking was pretty far “out there”. It certainly is a roundabout approach to eliminate firearms from the hands of working class, “average joe” civilians…. However, one need not pay attention to the anti-hunting and pro-predator propaganda long to see that there is a definite correlation between the types of individuals pushing gun legislation and those pushing for extended protections on predators. It’s the same people.

 

[BowBaboon]

100% agree. They're pretty masterful at it. Especially indirect action to get a specific outcome.

This is no different than the U.S. government's ploy to exterminate the Native American from the Great Plains. By killing bison in the millions they were able to cut off the necessities for their people to live. No traditional meat, no clothing, no shelters... Many tribes livelihoods were entirely dependent upon the survival of the bison. Once those were gone, the military was able to extirpate those people from their traditional lands and claim it in the name of "western expansion." At least in this case, the end goal was pretty cut and dry.

What's the end game for these folks that are trying to criminalize guns and remove all hunting rights?

I won’t speculate as to why anyone would think it necessary to bring in giant wolves from Canada to keep elk populations under control when hunters would have been extremely happy to pay for the privilege of doing so.

My understanding of bringing giant wolves (and they're effing huge) down to the lower 48 was to restore ecological balance to these ecosystems that maybe don't have the option for increased hunting and population reduction through those means. The Canadian Greys were introduced to Yellowstone in 1995 when elk populations were off the charts and beyond carrying capacity for the park and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. This reintroduction allowed the National Park Service to reduce elk numbers without bringing hunters -- or paid professionals -- into the park to kill elk and try to keep the general population happy that they're not allowing anybody into a park with permission to kill. After all, the Organic Act of 1916 is focused on preserving national parks for the public. This is a much different guiding principle than that of the Forest Service or other land agencies.

Why Canadian Grey wolves? Because their much smaller cousins, the Southern Rocky Mountain wolves were exterminated in the 1930s and we didn't have an exact match to replace them. My understanding is they were smaller, slower, and needed to kill less elk to sustain themselves. Ecosystems have a way of balancing themselves out without human interference. Take a look at the observations of moose and wolves on Isle Royale; you can see the data where populations have balanced themselves repeatedly over the course of almost 70 years. Is it perfect in our mind? No, but in a controlled environment where hunting isn't allowed, it's a way for land and wildlife managers to keep moose population in check while keeping the majority of that population healthy because it's closer to the actual carrying capacity of the landscape.

I would venture to guess that another reason wildlife managers chose to introduce the species to that ecosystem -- and I don't know about the situation in Colorado, wildlife management through ballot initiative is a whole other mess -- was based on hunter numbers already being on the decline. Hunting has gone from being a way to feed one's family to being a largely recreational activity with the added benefit of some game meat being in the house on those years that someone's lucky enough to shoot their BOAL, GOAL, DOAL, or whatever else. I think we're in this shift where people's parents were under immense social pressures to afford the classic suburban house, drive an hour to work each day, take their kids to sports practice, cook dinner, get the kids to bed, maybe have 30 minutes to watch some TV, then go to bed themselves, that traditional outdoor activities like hunting and fishing have taken a back seat other than the one week a year they get to go "try it out" and then they don't like it because all the grouchy old men complain about Texans being at their favorite lake or trailhead.

Now I know nobody ask for my opinion, but I'm going to share it anyways: we need to introduce more people to hunting. We need to be more welcoming of people to the outdoors in any way we can. By inviting that 16 year old kid down the street to go sit in a whitetail blind to shoot a doe or call in a turkey we're making hunting easier to enjoy and reducing those barriers to entry. Lets all become someone's mentor, don't be so judgmental when people ask questions, and keep these traditions alive so we can all continue to enjoy them for generations to come.

 

[Q_Sertorius]

Ecosystems have a way of balancing themselves out without human interference. Take a look at the observations of moose and wolves on Isle Royale; you can see the data where populations have balanced themselves repeatedly over the course of almost 70 years. Is it perfect in our mind? No, but in a controlled environment where hunting isn't allowed, it's a way for land and wildlife managers to keep moose population in check while keeping the majority of that population healthy because it's closer to the actual carrying capacity of the landscape.

Ecosystems don’t “balance themselves out.” They teeter-totter back and forth wildly based on a myriad of factors. It’s the same as the “boom-and-bust cycle” in free market systems. Growth, decline, etc. is a part of the natural cycle. People are a part of that cycle, albeit a very powerful one. Efforts to achieve a desired outcome or balance point in these systems usually fail for entirely predictable and unpredictable reasons. The people who can’t predict the weather next year would have you believe they can plan what will happen ten years from now.

At one point, it might have been possible to “trust the experts”, be they tribal elders or academics, but they were still limited by their extent of knowledge of controllable factors. The tribal elder might tell people not to kill baby animals, but he might also tell people to do a rain dance or buffalo dance to change outcomes.

At least their intentions were driven by what is best for humans. With the ideological capture of the academic world in the late 1960s and 1970s, and the overwhelming tide of progressivism that drowned American higher education by 2000, it is very hard to find an American or European academic - or anyone trained by them - who doesn’t believe in centralized control of every aspect of our lives. These people don’t like people. Especially people who aren’t part of their tribe. And controlling other humans is a helluva drug.

You can go back and read “radical” law review articles or PhD papers from the early 1970s and see the roots of the madness infesting our country today.

Or, if that bores you too much… watch the Life of Brian. It’s satire of the way of thinking that is pervasive today. Then reflect that what was fringe and crazy then is dogma today. Then watch PCU. Consider that the old white guys in charge of that fictional Ivy League university are dead now. The middle-aged university president is now 90% of people who graduated between 1990 and 2000. And the people educated since then are even worse as anyone who thinks differently has died and replaced with another progressive zealot. Unless students are inoculated against it before they go off to school, they get brainwashed. And for the last forty years, the same sorts of people have taken over lower education too.

Our current ruling class are the “grown-up versions” of the students in PCU.

 

[Quandary]

This is no different than the U.S. government's ploy to exterminate the Native American from the Great Plains. By killing bison in the millions they were able to cut off the necessities for their people to live. No traditional meat, no clothing, no shelters... Many tribes livelihoods were entirely dependent upon the survival of the bison. Once those were gone, the military was able to extirpate those people from their traditional lands and claim it in the name of "western expansion." At least in this case, the end goal was pretty cut and dry.

What's the end game for these folks that are trying to criminalize guns and remove all hunting rights?

My understanding of bringing giant wolves (and they're effing huge) down to the lower 48 was to restore ecological balance to these ecosystems that maybe don't have the option for increased hunting and population reduction through those means. The Canadian Greys were introduced to Yellowstone in 1995 when elk populations were off the charts and beyond carrying capacity for the park and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. This reintroduction allowed the National Park Service to reduce elk numbers without bringing hunters -- or paid professionals -- into the park to kill elk and try to keep the general population happy that they're not allowing anybody into a park with permission to kill. After all, the Organic Act of 1916 is focused on preserving national parks for the public. This is a much different guiding principle than that of the Forest Service or other land agencies.

Why Canadian Grey wolves? Because their much smaller cousins, the Southern Rocky Mountain wolves were exterminated in the 1930s and we didn't have an exact match to replace them. My understanding is they were smaller, slower, and needed to kill less elk to sustain themselves. Ecosystems have a way of balancing themselves out without human interference. Take a look at the observations of moose and wolves on Isle Royale; you can see the data where populations have balanced themselves repeatedly over the course of almost 70 years. Is it perfect in our mind? No, but in a controlled environment where hunting isn't allowed, it's a way for land and wildlife managers to keep moose population in check while keeping the majority of that population healthy because it's closer to the actual carrying capacity of the landscape.

I would venture to guess that another reason wildlife managers chose to introduce the species to that ecosystem -- and I don't know about the situation in Colorado, wildlife management through ballot initiative is a whole other mess -- was based on hunter numbers already being on the decline. Hunting has gone from being a way to feed one's family to being a largely recreational activity with the added benefit of some game meat being in the house on those years that someone's lucky enough to shoot their BOAL, GOAL, DOAL, or whatever else. I think we're in this shift where people's parents were under immense social pressures to afford the classic suburban house, drive an hour to work each day, take their kids to sports practice, cook dinner, get the kids to bed, maybe have 30 minutes to watch some TV, then go to bed themselves, that traditional outdoor activities like hunting and fishing have taken a back seat other than the one week a year they get to go "try it out" and then they don't like it because all the grouchy old men complain about Texans being at their favorite lake or trailhead.

Now I know nobody ask for my opinion, but I'm going to share it anyways: we need to introduce more people to hunting. We need to be more welcoming of people to the outdoors in any way we can. By inviting that 16 year old kid down the street to go sit in a whitetail blind to shoot a doe or call in a turkey we're making hunting easier to enjoy and reducing those barriers to entry. Lets all become someone's mentor, don't be so judgmental when people ask questions, and keep these traditions alive so we can all continue to enjoy them for generations to come.

Seriously? I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you, it’s a really good deal trust me.

 

[RockAndSage]

What's the end game for these folks that are trying to criminalize guns and remove all hunting rights?

Think of a pyramid.

Individual issues like "guns", "hunting", "wolf reintroduction"...these are all at the bottom of the pyramid. There are hundreds of these issues that also have nothing to do with this space, like bike lanes, sidewalks, and public transportation, but all lead toward the top of the pyramid. Very few people will 100% agree on each of the issues - but many will support you on some. This is where you get non-hunting gun owners who actually support wolf-reintroduction, or people who hunt and have hunting guns, but don't support "assault weapons" and can be peeled off to vote in favor of anti-gun initiatives.

The key thing to know here is a concept called "floating coalitions". Not everybody from each camp agrees on each thing, but issue-by-issue you cobble together enough support to move the ball downfield, one play at a time

It's absolutely critical to understand that these bottom-of-the-pyramid coalitions do not, at all, need to be aligned with the goals of who's orchestrating the ballgame from the top of the pyramid. You just need them to support the one issue that's part of a play for that stage of the ballgame and the overall strategy.

And in this case, those people at the top of the pyramid are the same people getting bike lanes built everywhere, convincing towns and cities to limit horizontal development, and even doing weird stuff with sidewalk corners. At all points, and always, these micro-slices of the strategy - every play in the ballgame - are presented as "making the world a better place for you and me", in one way or another.

That never seem integrated. But they most definitely are.

To understand why they're doing this, you need to understand the mindset and values system of those orchestrating it, and supporting it with a lot of money. At its core, there are two parallel beliefs: the importance of government in doing what's best for people who don't know better, and the belief that the only good earth is one untouched by human hands.

They would absolutely force people into vertical, densely-packed cities as much as they could, because they believe it's better for the planet by leveraging the efficiencies of public transportation and the network effects in cities. They can't force it, so they "nudge" it.

If you want to dig into all of this, start with Agenda 2030, and add in search terms with it related to "nudge", "bike lanes", "rewilding", and "wolves", just as a start. That will lead you to an utterly vast network of NGOs, many specific right down to localities in America or issue-specific ones, funded and orchestrated by people tied to people who associate with each other through things like the WEF privately and corporately, and the UN and EU politically.

You can't force people with guns and hunting traditions off land and into the cities. But you can nudge them over generations, just by making their choices increasingly a hassle and not worth it, salami-slicing them into behaving "appropriately."

 

[BowBaboon]

Seriously? I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you, it’s a really good deal trust me.

How's about an actual conversation about what you disagree with and maybe we can understand where our ideas separate instead of pitching a proverbial bridge to imply how stupid I am?

 

[BowBaboon]

Ecosystems don’t “balance themselves out.” They teeter-totter back and forth wildly based on a myriad of factors. It’s the same as the “boom-and-bust cycle” in free market systems.

This is certainly a better visualization of ecosystems. However, something has to keep animals at or below carrying capacity otherwise we end up with large herds with high levels of illness and low body condition. My point is solely in regard to areas where hunting is not an ideal management practice based on the initial creation of the parks (Yellowstone in this instance, with Isle Royale being used as an example with more data points -- I've seen your posts, Q, I know you like the data) based on the wording of the Organic Act of 1916. I do not believe wolves are a great management practice for other areas like national forest where hunters are more helpful to manage herd densities and health. I genuinely believe it better for hunters to be used to manage those landscapes and reap the benefits that come from being outdoors and harvesting their own food.

You can go back and read “radical” law review articles or PhD papers from the early 1970s and see the roots of the madness infesting our country today.

Can you elaborate on this? PM is cool, I don't want to derail this thread too bad. I'm certainly more interested in this type of information than I am watching a satirical movie.

You can't force people with guns and hunting traditions off land and into the cities. But you can nudge them over generations, just by making their choices increasingly a hassle and not worth it, salami-slicing them into behaving "appropriately."

I see what you're saying now. Death by a thousand cuts to assimilate those of us who'd rather spend their time outdoors and more connected to nature. I think I've seen something similar to this in history books...