I wonder what the mfk community thinks about biotypes evolving and changing on their own without human intervention.
Let's say there are 3 bodies of water all connected by small streams, a fish that has only been found in the first body has wandered down two streams into the third body of water and is now established and vastly out competing the species that were there before it.
This is similar to when someone introduces a non native fish that then settles in too well and out competes the other however this the fish species I described was not introduced as it was already there and merely wandered a bit further than its normal ranges. So, when I personally think about it I find myself asking a single question. "Are we against the fish taking over or are we against the fact that the fish was not there in the beginning?" That's what I would like purists to ponder on their own.
I'll respond to this only because you deserve to start having the same type of headache that this thread is giving me.
There are plenty of instances of animals extending their own ranges, sometimes due entirely to natural conditions, more often due to artificial changes brought about by human activity. When I was a youngster, coyotes were uncommon enough in Ontario that seeing or shooting one was notable news. Today, you can't throw a snowball without hitting a yote. They have spread eastward right to the coast, and their numbers are burgeoning. The prevalent thinking seems to be that they are occupying areas that were always available to them, but from which they were in the past excluded by timber wolves and other large predators. Today, as the world continues to be coated with an ever-thickening layer of people, those big predators have been eliminated from vast parts of their ancestral range, allowing the smaller, more adaptable coyotes to move eastward. Is that good or bad? Ask a city dweller and a sheep farmer and you can expect two very different answers.
The cottage lake we frequented in Ontario was a man-made body of water, created by the construction of a dam many years earlier. The lake had always been devoid of Northern Pike; that's right, a mid-northern Ontario lake without pike...almost unheard-of. What the lake did house was a healthy population of Muskellunge. Muskies are essentially pike on steroids...bigger and meaner, but often unable to compete with pike due to the fact that pike fry hatch a wee bit earlier in the spring than muskies and tend to feed on the muskies when they appear.
One spring, an especially high amount of snow-melt and spring rain raised water levels to the point where numerous beaver dams, small streams and other flowing water bodies became temporarily connected. It was an unusual season; I caught my personal-best Speckled Trout with my bare hands, right in the middle of my lawn! And...it allowed a number of pike to find their way into the cottage lake. Within a year or two, we were catching pike...some quite large...alongside muskies. Was that good or bad?
We were afraid of losing "our" muskies, which would be bad. We were, however, now catching big pike, which tend to be easier to catch and provide more entertainment for more anglers, so...that was good. Add to that the fact that, in some...not all...bodies of water housing both species, a naturally-occurring hybrid of the two called a Tiger Muskie was known to occur. Would this happen in our lake? Would that be good or bad?
A man-made lake...being invaded by a native species not previously found in that particular lake...which provided excellent fishing opportunities...but threatened to eliminate another native species...but which might also live harmoniously side-by-side with that species...and might also produce that most controversial of animals, i.e. a
hybrid.
Wow. Good? Bad? Natural? Artificial? Let it happen? Try to prevent it? Wait and see what happens?
Somebody's screwing up my biotope!!!
duanes
