This blogger writes on the author who writes on the pivotal roles of top predators in nature – and the ecological meltdown that’s taking place on land and in the sea in their absence.
And queries:
Have you heard of a fur-bearing critter called a fisher, the meso-carnivore possibly behind disappearing domestic cats in some rural areas? [Our cat actually treed the fisher, but I have previously posted on this!]
Or talk about the coyotes in GTA!
I know, moving into cottage country, that we have had to adapt to the animals.
We are having to coin new vocabulary in order to understand what is going on in the world.
- Trophic cascading- whereby top predators no longer regulate the prey on the lower part of the food chain/web.
- Opportunistic species (white-tailed deer, coyotes in suburban Toronto, and Barred Owls) emigrated into an ecosystem.
- White-tailed deer population irruptions throughout the United States
- Rabbits in Aussie-land.
- The importance of wolves to Yellowstone National Park's biological community
- Overbrowsed ecosystems
- Depleted biological communities
William Stolzenburg, formerly a writer for The Nature Conservancy and Science News, masterfully describes the fate of North America’s former top predators in his fantastic book, "Where The Wild Things Were: Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators" (published by Bloomsbury).
“And I can only believe, from somewhere deeper than any logic center of the brain, that a life of incomprehensible loneliness awaits a world where the wild things were, but are never again.”
4 comments:
I have to believe that nature has always been evolving...BUT NOT at the pace it is now. I have acquaintances who refuse to believe in global warming so how do you convince such people that humans are causing changes in other areas as well?
This whole concept depresses me greatly. Have you read: The Sands County Almanac by Aldo Leopold? He writes, quite eloquently, of the same concerns, back in the 1940's. ~karen
It's true, @EG.
I wrote about the US mindset today regarding the health care bill.
I'll look it up, @KaHolly! And our first Prime Minister expressed many concerns over the white pine in this area.
Since I am a naturalist, I find your post on "Where the Animals Were " to be right up my alley. Since we've altered the landscape so completely, there's very little natural habitat left and what is left is very fragmented. Some of the critters have learned to adapt and take advantage of how we've changed the suroundings while others have almost become extinct. Where I was brought up on the bald prairie we now have moose! The wolves and grizzlies have disappeared so white tailed deer have invaded.
I think it is good that you write about these things and keep it in front of us so that we don't forget what it was like before we altered the habitiat.
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