Vandals On The Ozark National Scenic Rivers.

[stlfisher]

The way I see it humans are the problem not the otters or any other animal for that matter. Most of the problems caused by animals are almost always directly or indirectly traced back to humans either deystroying the original population/habitat or intoducing species that shouldn't be hear to begin with. Asain Carp, Snakeheads, Killer Bee's just to name a few. The Otter are a problem now because of what we did in the past. The blame is almost always on us.

You can't say the otters couldn't hack it when the reason they couldn't was because of human influence and not evolutionary factors.

[Trevor K]

The way I see it humans are the problem not the otters or any other animal for that matter. Most of the problems caused by animals are almost always directly or indirectly traced back to humans either deystroying the original population/habitat or intoducing species that shouldn't be hear to begin with. Asain Carp, Snakeheads, Killer Bee's just to name a few. The Otter are a problem now because of what we did in the past. The blame is almost always on us.

You can't say the otters couldn't hack it when the reason they couldn't was because of human influence and not evolutionary factors.

Exactly. I couldn't agree more.

[Smalliebigs]

I guess we should go back to the stone ages and act like cro magnons, live in caves, build adobe huts go on a quest for fire??? Homosapiens have bigger brains than most mammals or amphibians. Did you think that man would not effect the enviroment with our intelligence and technology that we evolved???? Animals effect the world they live thru their adaptabilty and their need to live by the laws of nature. Man has a whole diiferent set of circumstance to deal with because we are smarter and have developed technolgy that allows us to live a more comfortable life style. Animals are just trying to survive, adapt and reproduce in the enviroment they live in, and they effect that enviroment thru those course of actions. Some species will flourish and some wil go by the way side. Man is just trying to use his big brain to make life easier to deal with because our intelligence allows us to and this effect other species.Sometimes this adversely effects other species and sometimes it helps them flourish. It's apples and oranges....we are much more intelligent than animals the laws of nature don't apply to us quite like they do to animals.

Some of you guy on here are friggin nuts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! go live in a cave just don't drive your truck to the river and use gasoline...make sure you hike there and widdle your fly rod out of Hickory branch, make sure you use rib bone from a chipmunk for a hook, if you have the heart to kill it and tie your fly from the cotton wood seeds and feathers from a Pileated Woodpecker.

[Trevor K]

Some of you guy on here are friggin nuts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! go live in a cave just don't drive your truck to the river and use gasoline...make sure you hike there and widdle your fly rod out of Hickory branch, make sure you use rib bone from a chipmunk for a hook, if you have the heart to kill it and tie your fly from the cotton wood seeds and feathers from a Pileated Woodpecker.

I don't know if anybody needs to go to this extreme, but we can't get mad at otters for doing what they were put on this earth to do. People can't get mad about otters altering their environment (eating bass) when humans have altered the world far more than any other species possibly could. If humans didn't limit themselves then we would be able to wipe out every other species on the planet.

[stlfisher]

I don't think anyone said we should go live in a cave,build tools out of stones, and go on quest for fire. I guess it depends on your views, but technology is not always the answer. Pretty sure that nuclear weopons and the Atomic bomb are things we wish we could un-invent.

As far as human's being intelligent that is debatable. I have met alot of humans that weren't smarter than the aformentioned Otter.

[Smalliebigs]

I don't think anyone said we should go live in a cave,build tools out of stones, and go on quest for fire. I guess it depends on your views, but technology is not always the answer. Pretty sure that nuclear weopons and the Atomic bomb are things we wish we could un-invent.

As far as human's being intelligent that is debatable. I have met alot of humans that weren't smarter than the aformentioned Otter.

I will totally agree with you there fisher...amen

[jdmidwest]

The way I see it humans are the problem not the otters or any other animal for that matter. Most of the problems caused by animals are almost always directly or indirectly traced back to humans either deystroying the original population/habitat or intoducing species that shouldn't be hear to begin with. Asain Carp, Snakeheads, Killer Bee's just to name a few. The Otter are a problem now because of what we did in the past. The blame is almost always on us.

You can't say the otters couldn't hack it when the reason they couldn't was because of human influence and not evolutionary factors.

You are right, we brought them back into the wild from LA. and now we have to control them.

[Trevor K]

So if smallmouth would've been wiped out by uncontrolled pressure from humans it would've been their fault because they couldn't adapt? Or what the stream is altered or polluted some how and they all die out? Would that mean that we have no responsibility to do our best to restore them? I don't understand how that would be any different then how we wiped out otters and then reintroduced them.