OH MY!
There once was a most kindly and well-intentioned man who whenever the opportunity presented itself shot turkey buzzards, laboring under the misapprehension that because they feed on carrion, they spread disease. The reality is, of course, that they occupy a vital niche in the food chain, serving in a sense as nature’s garbage collectors. Many farmers and others to this day regard raptors as “chicken hawks,” existing only to prey upon poultry, unaware of the money saved them by the huge numbers of rats and mice that hawks and owls consume in a year’s time.
Historically, and still too much to this day, many species suffer persecution from uninformed humans. None suffer more tragically than apex predators, those at the top of nature’s food chain. And yet, we need them all, the large predators, from Siberian tigers to Tibetan snow leopards, from North American gray wolves to African lions. Each and every one occupies a vital niche in the food chain, and we cannot have a healthy world without their continuing presence.
At the present, there appears to be a growing realization, particularly among the young, that each and every creature performs a vital role in the web of life, that apex predators are as necessary to global wellbeing as those often regarded as less threatening.
The North American grizzly bear provide an example. There are an estimated 60,000 grizzlies existent today, 30,000 of them in Alaska. The grizzly is a fearsome creature, with the males weighing up to 750 pounds and the females up to 400 pounds. The grizzly can run 35 miles per hour and possesses a bite of 160 pounds per inch in strength. And yet, they usually avoid humans. The majority of bear attacks reported each year are the consequence of human stupidity and presumptuousness. Left to their own devices in their own home country, the grizzly would pose little threat to humans. Grizzlies have made a comeback in places like Yellowstone National Park, now with an estimated population of 1,100. Despite the determination of some to hunt them into extinction, they now constitute a small population in US states like Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Washington and Oregon.
During the early days of the National Park Service, populations of predators like wolves were decimated in order to provide more “pretty deer” for clueless park visitors to look at. Our folly did not become apparent for decades. In recent years, the park service has successfully reintroduced wolves to their former habitats in states like Colorado. Rapacious vandals and greedy game hogs now persecute wolves through the use of trapping, jacklighting and strangulation snares. Wolves are pursued on snowmobiles to the point of exhaustion and then shot. Some poachers place baits in near proximity to park boundaries in order to lure them to their deaths. Today, the gray wolf only occupies 10% of his former North American range. The Carolina red wolf has been reduced to a population of perhaps only 18, and the Mexican gray wolf to a probable 257 individuals.
When wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone in recent decades, vegetation began to flourish as the population of deer, elk and other herbivores was reduced to healthy levels, and songbirds began a happy resurgence. Prey animals need their enemies as much as they do their friends. By paring out the old, weak and infirm, predators contribute to an ever-healthier herd. In his classic book, Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold reflects upon a time earlier in his life in Arizona when he fired upon a family of wolves, killing the matriarch, an act that he regretted for the remainder of his days. At that time, cattlemen eliminated nearly all southwestern wolves, causing the deer population to burgeon, destroying the vegetation, eroding the land and rendering it incapable of supporting cattle. Leopold reflects that a herd of deer lives in mortal fear of its wolves, while a mountain lives in mortal fear of its deer. He urges men to think more like a mountain. Leopold reflects, “I have watched the face of every newly wolfless mountain and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails.”
The fate of the cougar at the hands of mankind has been equally dire. Once occupying a range from Alaska to the Andes, there are now only an estimated 30,000 living in the US, mostly in western states. One subspecies, the Florida panther, is down to an estimated 120-230 individuals, largely due to vehicle collisions, poaching and the construction of ever more highways fragmenting their ever-shrinking habitat.
The Canada lynx is now limited to six small populations in remote areas along our northern border. The lynx thrives on snowshoe hares. Climate change and the predations of the logging industry have severely limited the habitat of the great cat. The jaguar, once common throughout the Southwest, is now only rarely spotted in parts of southern Arizona. There are an estimated 100 ocelots remaining in southern Texas.
Two of our top predators seem to be doing very well, despite humans’ attempts to eliminate one of them. Coyotes thrive in response to human persecution. The bobcat, who regulates the population of rats, mice, rabbits and even feral cats, is flourishing in many places.
In the world of Middle Earth, the creation of British author J.R.R. Tolkien, evil is manifested through the horrific qualities of greed and cruelty, the craving for the accumulation of wealth beyond what one reasonably has use for and the urge for dominion over others. Tolkien personifies those qualities in the characters of the great dragon Smaug and the wretched orcs and goblins who serve the Dark Lord on his Dark Throne in the land of Mordor.
In the world of nature, mankind has filled the roles of dragons, goblins and orcs. Even on those rare occasions when man’s interference in nature has been well intended, it seems to often go awry. Jane Goodall proposes, “The voice of the natural world would be, ‘Could you please give us space and leave us alone to get along with our own lives and our own ways, because we actually know much better how to do it than when you start interfering.’”
Where mankind’s disassociation with the creatures who share our tiny planet originates is a matter of debate. Does it begin in childhood? Jean Piaget suggests that small children regard animals as fellow persons and attribute human goals and values to them. Environmentalist and coyote activist Sara Gorsline tells of being read the Kipling story “The White Seal” as a small child and first becoming aware that humans harm other animals and put their bodies to use for themselves. Given that the story includes a horrific scene in which the White Seal observes his fellows being brutally slaughtered and skinned, the realization had to have been traumatic.
It is often proposed that the Judeo-Christian underpinnings of western civilization have fostered the disconnect between man and his fellow creatures. For instance, the methods of slaughter to provide kosher beef are promoted as unnecessarily inhumane. And yet, when compared to the horrors of the modern factory farm and slaughterhouse, they seem nearly benign.
In his collection of essays labeled To Know Living Things, Thomas Merton argues, “It is not Christianity, indeed, but post-Cartesian technologism that separates man from the world and makes him a kind of little God in his own right, with his clear ideas; all by himself,” an assumption that the world and its creatures are solely ours to do with as we please.
With so many creatures now extinct and more teetering on the edge of extinction, certainly the disconnect between man and the living world should be a matter for serious examination.
My enthusiasms include fly fishing, natural history and wilderness backpacking. In 1996, I published privately a memoir, Trails of Laughter/ Trails of Tears, featuring my wilderness adventures and misadventures.I serve when needed as a Licensed Eucharistic Minister in the Episcopal Church.
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