National park fallacy in the Enriched World, part II

In a post which I took a long time over but finished yesterday, I showed very clearly why complete conservation for non-human uses, whilst necessary for large parts of the Unenriched World merely so their species can gain enough food,are counterproductive in the Enriched World because of the low biodiversity and high secondary productivity resulting from the very young soils and the fact that most of the Enriched World was not habitable for up to ninety percent of the last two billion years.

According to some of the comments on this post by Rod Dreher, notably one from a person called “Greg”, the large-scale abandonment of unprofitable farms in Ohio has led to an explosion in the population of white-tailed deer – from seventeen thousand in the 1970s to seven hundred thousand today. This is aided by economic declines in the industrial sectors where the Enriched World has less comparative disadvantage than in agriculture, and excessive regulation of land use in a region whose flora and fauna is much too young for endemic species to evolve. In fact, as shown in the article ‘The Latitudinal Gradient in Recent Speciation and Extinction Rates of Birds and Mammals’, most species endemic to the Tropical World (though not the Unenriched World) actually evolved in the Enriched World during the brief interglacials as they had to adapt to the extreme abundance of food, then re-colonised the Tropical World as small-range endemics, often in those parts of the Tropical World that share the Enriched World’s fertility. “Will” from Mississippi says the same thing about foxes in London, where they are rapidly entering suburbs.

When one considers how productive for animal biomass and how heavily regulated Enriched World cities are – not only in land use but also minimum wages et cetera – it is no wonder that the most competitive species are, given the opportunities they are by a welfare and working class viewing quality of life above all else including human relationships to the point of “selfism”, able to grow rapidly in numbers.

No doubt the Enriched World populace does fear the presence of large carnivores – most of whom went extinct when humans peopled the region and were able to develop much greater hunting skills than in the low-productivity Unenriched and Tropical Worlds – would spell danger for its comfort. However, as Siarlys Jenkins says in the comments, and I pointed out in the post mentioned at the beginning of this one, regulated hunting of animals in the Enriched World would allow humans to use its large secondary productivity as a major protein source rather than sucking the fragile waterways of arid regions – where vegetarianism has been the historical norm – dry. It might even ameliorate or counter the negative consequences of increased marginal land farming from removing Enriched World farm subsidies, which have long been a sticking point for me once I have recognised the naturally poorest lands for farming as economically having the largest comparative advantage.