The problems with being a super predator.

[G-Man]

Interesting article, would also be used in a reason against shooting large antlered deer.

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-human-superpredator-unique-predator-carnivore-fishing-hunting-unsustainable-20150820-story.html

[Curmudgeon]

G-man -

 

Thanks for posting that. On a personal level, I try hard to keep my hunting goals congruent with my environmental goals. For those who don't want to read the whole thing, here's a clip. The first sentence here does not apply to coyotes. They have evolved to withstand wolf predation. It does apply to wolves which is why it was so easy to eliminate them from the lower 48 - along with grizzlies.

 

“Typically, human hunters remove one in 5 large carnivores from the planet each year, and that’s kind of spooky because most large carnivores do not have the reproductive ability to withstand that sort of mortality,” Darimont said. “They simply did not evolve as prey.”

 

In short, these land-based meat eaters can’t make babies that grow into adults fast enough to sustain their population levels. And that’s why humans’ focus on killing adults is so dangerous, Darimont said.

 

Think of it from a business perspective, the researchers said. An adult female, for example, is like your capital; the young that she produces are the interest generated by that capital. If you kill an adult animal today, it will take years for another to grow up and take her place. But if you kill a young animal, it will (theoretically) take only until the next breeding season to produce another. In other words, it’s better to use the up interest rather than to draw down the capital, because the capital is much more difficult to build back. Once it’s gone, it’s gone -- and so is the interest.

 

But highly successful hunters, such as fishing birds, naturally draw on the interest, rather than the capital -- they actually tend to pick off the young and small of a species, rather than the adults. That’s in part because the young are often easier to catch and eat -- and many animals, such as birds, are limited in what they can gulp down by the size of their mouths (known as gape limitation)."

[Doc]

What all of this research fails to consider is that another difference between man as a predator vs. all the other predators is our ability to recognize endangered species and take remedial actions. They also fail to recognize that we as a species have developed laws, bag limits, and legal handicaps. We have also developed the ability to introduce species when that plan appears to be environmentally responsible. I saw none of this mentioned in the article.