Into the Woods
Economics and declining birthrates are pushing large swaths of Europe back to their primeval state, with wolves taking the place of people. Germans are getting used to a new kind of immigrant. In 1998, a pack of wolves crossed the shallow Neisse River on the Polish-German border. In the empty landscape of Eastern Saxony, the wolves found plenty of deer and rarely encountered humans. They multiplied so quickly that a second pack has since split off. Soon, says local wildlife biologist Gesa Kluth, a third pack will likely form, possibly heading northward in the direction of Berlin. Wolves returning to the heart of Europe? A hundred years ago, a burgeoning, land-hungry population killed off the last of Germany's wolves. Today, it's the local humans whose numbers are under threat. "Big parts of Europe will renaturalize," says Reiner Klingholz, head of the Berlin Institute for Population Development. Once the baby boomers start dying out around 2020, population will start to decline so sharply in many European countries that there simply won't be enough people for every town to reinvent itself as an exurbanite enclave or tourist resort. It's similarly unclear how long current government policies can stave off the inevitable.
posted by Unknown @ 3:55 PM
7 Comments:
The most striking thing I note when I read this is is the truism that empty spaces tend to be filled up by someone, at any rate.
Have you read this? A Swede with stones I like the guy and I have never met him. Has anything about this appeared in your press?
Maybe they'd like a few of home-fed grizzly bears.
Hey jude, thanks for the link! No such news in Sweden, I put it on the front page of FOMI.
Regarding the shrinking number of europeans, it's puzzling that we seem to have the highest standard of living, the best general quality of life in the history of mankind, and it makes us choose to fade away.
There is something clearly wrong with a society that makes people choose not to have children.
Personally i believe it's the eurosocialist model of welfare states that are to blame.
People want to have kids, but what to do when the levels of taxation are so high that almost no one can afford to live on one income, and when simple household services as cleaning, cooking and private child care are taxed out of existance?
There are lots of women as well as men who want to have children, but our "benevolent" welfare states steals most of their income and gives it to "the poor".
A society in conflict with biological needs is not sustainable.
i think that the EU needs to stimulate/ease Latin American immigration to the EU. They could replace the Africans and Arabs and other Muslims who have flooded their shores.
Latin Americans speak a Latin language (Spanish and Portuguese)and are Christian, so it would mean this influx would create a smaller cultural shift than if the UE makes up the shortfall as they have with Muslims.
And Latin Americans work hard.
These are generalizations, sure - but with much truth in them.
Runnymede 1215 - you put it in a nutshell. I know many women who limited the number of children they wanted because they simply couldn't afford them. They had to go out to work anyway to help with the household finances and no use saying modern families don't need what they have, the children are the first to complain if they donn't. A woman has enough to do with housework and demands of four children without being expected to hold down a job which often only provides the cash difference for taxes paid by both partners.
Also, re the wolves. I remember a group of crazy greenies running out of projects decided wolves had a place in the ecology of western Europe. They let breeding groups loose, also in France, with the blessing of the French Government, where the farmers were soon complaining about losses of lambs. This would be about five/six years ago (a long time in dog breeding years). Western Europe was deliberately seeded with one of the greatest animal scourges of all time by people who - given a psychiatric test - would be found to be not in full control of their mental faculties.
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