One problem that can arise (due to us killing the predators) is overpopulation which can cause issues with an ecosystem
Which unfortunately puts us humans now in the position of needing to be their predators to make sure that their population doesn’t boom so hard it wrecks the ecosystem
So pretty much to keep the animal from from eating so much of their environment that other animals (including them) starve in large numbers or destroy entire areas we have to cull them
Ideally through hunting licenses (or something similar) so that way they don’t go to waste and also so that there’s less of a reliance on large scale animal farming
To create a stable population human intervention is absolutely required and I don’t disagree with anything you said. However, I’d clarify that large die offs don’t cause extinction (in a vacuum) and are a rather natural response to environmental instability. Animal populations naturally fluctuate over time as food sources become abundant and then the abundance of animals leads to an abundance of natural predators which then over hunts the animals leading to die-offs. These effects naturally ripple through food chains - often being triggered by particularly abundant plant growth (due to a light winter or heavy rains etc…) or due to a deficiency (a drought or storm).
Humans are fucking crazy so when we overhunt there’s no natural correction, so we’ll sometimes aggressively cull predators (as in this case) and then need to step into that role ourselves until natural predators can restablize. In the past two centuries it’s been our habit to actively extinct predators (I.e. dingos, Catamounts, wolves) to protect domestic livestock and that’s a fucking hard problem to undo… sometimes we can track down a breeding pair and aggressively repopulate, other times we need to import a similar predator.
Nature can correct a lot of damage… but humans can do a shit ton of damage.
I have no idea what the antelope situation is in Kazakhstan, but sometimes culling is necessary. Populations can rebound, and if there aren’t enough predators or suitable habitats left, they can even reach a point where they’re damaging the environment.
I live in Pennsylvania, a bit over a century ago, white tailed deer were in bad shape here from overhunting and deforestation. There was even one man who believed that he may have shot the last deer in Pennsylvania.
The state implemented a lot of regulations to help the deer population recover, and now we have tons of deer, and in some cases it’s more than the environment can support.
Local to me is Valley Forge National Historic Park. If you spend any time in the park without seeing deer you must have your eyes closed.
And that was a problem. With no predators and no hunting allowed in the park, there was nothing to keep the deer population in check. They over-grazed and destroyed a lot of vegetation, which negatively impacted lots of other animals in the park, and even the deer themselves since there wasn’t enough food to support the population. I vividly remember seeing lots of sickly-looking deer in the park when I was a young child.
About a decade or two ago they started a deer culling program which has done wonders for the park environment, more and more varied vegetation, new trees have a chance to grow as well as other plants, which in turn improved things for other animals in the park, and the deer are healthier as well.
Now in an ideal world, we’d have predators and an environment to sustain them and let nature manage itself, but that’s not always feasible unless we start actively relocating people, bulldozing developed areas and replanting forests (which I’m not exactly opposed to, but it would be a tough sell for anyone being relocated by such measures)
A deer will spend pretty much it’s whole life within about a one square mile area. A few little wooded patches and fields and you can sustain pretty solid deer populations in the middle of suburbia. Wolves on the other hand have home ranges of over 50 square miles, and often over a hundred, or occasionally even over 1000 miles. That kind of space is a lot harder to find.
Sometimes when humans drive natural predators out of an area, the local prey species will increase in population to the point they risk starvation from overpopulation.
The proper way to deal with that is to restore the predator to the area and therefore the population balance, but a culling may be necessary in the interim to prevent suffering from overpopulation. It sucks, but sometimes it’s the right thing to do
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