How much disturbance is "okay"?

But what makes the decision “non-natural”? Isn’t curiosity a very natural thing, shared by many different animal species? If they acted based on curiosity would you call that an unnatural decision also? If anything, aren’t our ethics and conscience that prevent us from acting out of curiosity is more “unnatural”?

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You should remember that bouncing back works in little disturbed nature. Most of the nature that surrounds us is strongly disturbed by humans and largely it has not enough resources/seeds/grazers/pathogens to bounce back.

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I’ve written at length about this in the other discussion “What does the word Nature include”, so to avoid duplication, maybe it’s best to continue there. I would though like to avoid a largely linguistic discussion, when I feel that at the end of the day we’re just talking about different words to define the same feeling.

That depends on how you’d define disturbance. Conditions just need to be consistent, whether that’s consistently undisturbed or consistently disturbed (in the same way). For example: Intertidal zones are probably among the most disturbed habitats, yet they are often also among the most diverse and adaptable and bounce back relative quickly. I agree though, that the disturbance cannot be too large.

I agree with this. That is exactly what I meant with invasives aren’t a problem by themselves. They are a problem in the context of everything else going on simultaneously and due to the sheer amount of them.

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Yes. In my original post, I was referring to disturbance of the individual organism, which is different from habitat disturbance.

Energy use is a critical factor in the life of a wild being and it is something I often consider. As I walk the paved trail in our neighborhood I disturb birds along the way. These birds, instead of flying behind me, fly onto the path in front of me. This happens over and over again as I walk down the path and I often wonder why they do this without an answer.

However, this morning I was watching a flock of Lesser Goldfinch feed on seed heads of grass and flowers in this field. They were far enough away that my presence didn’t disturb them. All of a sudden many flew off and then I heard a jogger approaching, his footsteps becoming louder and louder. As he got closer the rest took to the air. It had to be the drumming of his footsteps that frightened them to flee. Energy expended.

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