As if that makes any serious difference, or is a serious argument.
But it is thrown about all the time.
Lots of Grizzlies in North Central Montana this year.
When human populations expanded to the Siberian steppes expansion stopped. Bands of adults could hunt on the steppes, but we couldn’t settle.
The problem was the hyenas. We couldn’t keep to be hyenas from skulking around the edges of the camps, dragging off the children.
Then we domesticated dogs, or they domesticated us, or some such. A population of wolves learned that there was good food going to waste around human camp sites, and they evolved to fill the niche. Not domesticated, really, or even tamed at first, but semi-tamed and no threat to the children.
But they filled the niche. And so when humans did finally move out onto the steppes, and later into the Americas, they were accompanied by a protective cloud of semi-tamed dogs ensuring that the environs were safe for our children.
Every and any little bit of woods that a wolf or a bear or a deer or a goose might think about nesting down within a days walk of a human settlement would have dogs sniffing around - often accompanied by ten-year-old boys.
And so it remained for 40,000 years. The only change was that the boys would be carrying .22s and .410s instead of bows and spears.
And then we invented leash laws. We leashed our dogs and we leashed our boys...
As to the article; Ooh, “migrants”, ooh, can’t criticize that!
BS. If mommy bear has more cubs that needed to replace existing population in the area, the extras will move on — just like any other species that is not linked to a breeding ground (e.g., salmon HAVE to return). That is not migration, it is expansion. So, quit trying to link this to some crappola about the US being a nation of migrants. That is precisely what is being tried by this ingenuous article.
The bit about “they were here first” is also crappola. Populations ebb and flow, they move about — except for animals like salmon. I live in the Bay area of Frisco. Been here for 30+ years. A burb surrounded by houses for miles. No open land for at least 2 miles. During that entire time never encountered a fox. Then, all of a sudden foxes start going after me and my pets in my own back yard. Mind, like wolverines these are aggressive “opportunity” killers — they routinely kill way more than needed for food — which is why no farmer wants one in their chicken coop. They go into a frenzy and kill ALL the chickens.
Anyhoo, I complain to authorities about the neighbor who is protecting foxes living under an abandoned barn on her property. Same foxes invade houses <quarter mile away — yes, go into the house! The response: “they were here first”. Uhh, yeah, so were bison. So, what?
I hate it when people say that I’m invading the territory of wild animals. Well, I have the deed.
Being “somewhere first” is meaningless to Nature, red in tooth and claw.
When the Rockies and the intermountain West were settled, it was kill or be killed.
It still is.
Illegals should be treated equally.
The illegal bears from the north ahould be locked up with the illegal wetbacks pouring in from the south.