| Final-Fan said: I agree that there are more variables in play than merely people and land area. I would agree that the data you provided is not sufficient to conclusively support one position over the other. "Hand wavey area comparison" is not good enough considering the nitty gritty of how many miles/acres of fishable lakes and streams there are (more east than west, I think), their availability to the average person in 1790 and today, etc. |
KLAMarine said, in reference to off-the-gridders: "With no regard to how their activities might impact the environment? Not that it mattered then as much as it does now: the US today hosts hundreds of millions of people, many more than what I figure there was before the 1770s."
I responded with "Proportionally the number of people with intentions to hunt and fish are smaller than they were then, and the available land is much greater. "
To which he responded "With that in mind, you state "Proportionally the number of people with intentions to hunt and fish are smaller than they were then" and I must ask for raw numbers. 100% of 1790's US population is a little under four million, obviously. 1% of today's population is very close to 1790's 100% and 2% of today's exceeds 1790's total population."
To which I responded "15.7 million Americans hunted in 2013, in a country that is 4.7 times larger (by area) than in 1790. Furthermore, the number who hunted more than once per year is likely much smaller than the number who would've in 1790, because hunting was for many -- required to survive back then.
To remain on topic, though, consider that the number of people who would love to live in the woods away from the greater society is very infinitessimal, and so would be their environmental impact. "
Rather than go on the little side-tracked rant about fishing which was irrelevant to the greater discussion (the more relevant text being bolded above), I just ended it with that.
I never made the following claim " "environmental impact" is only applicable to hunting".
" I think there's a pretty good inferential argument to be made, as follows: Current fishing and hunting is regularly subjected to quotas on account of the populations of game animals being depleted to dangerous levels when these quotas do not exist, which has happened in the past. These quotas were largely not in place in the 1790s and the game animals did not go extinct or become depleted to the same extent as far as I know. Thus the inference can be made that modern hunting has more environmental impact. If I am wrong in regard to the underlying facts, please let me know; if I am somehow right there but wrong in the conclusion, please tell me how that could be so. "
For this argument to work you must assume a few things at the very least: 1. That these laws are the reason why extinction has been mitigated and not some other reasons. 2. That there is no other cause for the low population numbers of certain species besides hunting/fishing, such as the destruction of their shelters or food sources after industrialization, or the introduction of invasive species from other continents. 3. That game animals are in great danger of extinction. In many places today the problem has been overpopulation rather than underpopulation as hunting and fishing have been reduced due to urbanization. For example, in my county which contains the City of Pittsburgh (so pretty urban) we have a deer problem in the suburbs and many municipalities want to legalize the hunting of deer (via archery) because they pose a traffic problem.
Nevertheless, hunting and fishing quotas can be enforced without the federal government (or state governments) owning the lands.
