The Absence Of Predators
Copyright 2010 by Photography By Design
In making wildlife management decisions, often the people responsible for making the decisions are the ones with the least knowledge and experience with wildlife.
We have long since either eradicated or reduced the ability of predators to do their part to control our eco system.
Man as a predator is far from being effective and will eventually if left to his current applications, destroy all wildlife.
Man predates from the top down. This allows the lower side of the gene pool to breed without competition. The stronger animals are killed the weaker ones find no resistance to their place in the ranks.
This leads to a reduction in disease resistance, Animal size is reduced, mortality rates become volatile and the entire eco-system is effected by any individual species in the same way. Population explosions occur, over feeding on the eco-system deprives other animals of needed food and thus it goes .
The absence of all predators has the very same effect as the scenario above. With no natural predators and no hunting at all, everything still dies. Ultimately both have the same devastating effect on the eco-system.
If man is not going to allow predators to keep the weak animals out of the gene pool and stimulate competition for breeding ranks among herding animals, then he can expect to see the eventual demise of all of our wildlife. It is only a matter of time.
With man as the primary predator, he must learn to predate from the bottom up. Trophy hunting is not the answer to the issues at hand, nor are there viable arguments to validate management ideas that do not conform to nature.