Given the right set of circumstances, turkeys could survive living in the eastern 1/2 of northern Minnesota. But, that doesn’t mean that region is good turkey habitat.
They are there. So what? Nature will eventually let us know if they were capable of survival in that region. Unless human interference keeps nature at bay for just a bit.
Best,
Ted
Well, I guess we'll all have to agree then that humans are doing a jolly great job of keeping the weather more comfortable for turkeys up there.
Given that they are expanding into the range, however, it does seem that they're doing rather well up there. It's hard to be a consistently expanding population in bad habitat.Would you not say? Not impossible.Mind you, but it takes very, very special circumstances for it to be otherwise. And you know about those circumstances, right?
I don’t know that the weather is considered climate, or, that it is more or less comfortable for turkeys. I do know that folks armed with a hundred years or so of climate data believe they can predict what will happen in ten years, and they tend to end up eating a bunch of crow, that have comfortably lived even where turkeys haven’t, for a long period of time. Are you using expansion the same way a paleontologist might describe expansion of tyrannosaurs, with a clear understanding of just how finite expansion can be? 99% of species that ever lived are extinct, although, I hear Dire wolves are making a comeback, of sorts.
Care to predict, in Albert Gore Jr. like fashion, how long in duration the turkey influx will last in northern Minnesota? You can feel free to use his models of an ice free Arctic vis’a vis the turkey population, in the coming decade or two.
You using his logic to predict turkey population would make more sense than what he used it for, but, the results would be the same, no doubt.
Best,
Ted
