I am not by nature a person who marches or demonstrates, but even my introverted personality can be inspired occasionally to take action. So I found myself twice taking part in demonstrations supporting the Mexican wolf and its expanded reintroduction to the arid Southwest. At the public comment session organized by the Fish and Wildlife Service in New Mexico I found myself among the first to speak. Most of the speakers supported the Mexican wolf and I, like them, testified to the importance of expanding the program so that the wolves would have more territory. Then I listened as several people got up and stated flatly that even the few wolves that now exist in the Upper Gila are a danger to both livestock and human children. One man implied that the very idea of wolves had terrified the younger set along the Gila so much that they were afraid to wait for a school bus and that one town had erected cages so that the children could wait inside and be safe until the bus came. They had heard of Red Riding Hood and did not want to be eaten. This despite there being no records that anyone could point to of a non-rabid Mexican wolf ever attacking a human! On the stock predation they were on more solid ground, but then one rancher spoke in favor of the expanded introduction, saying that she could manage her stock to minimize losses. As demonstrated by some of these rancher's comments, in at least a few circles predators are intensely disliked. The very term is a perjurative used to describe every despicable human activity from predatory banking to sexual predators. However, whatever we may think about predators in the natural world, they have an important role to play in the economy of nature and should never be lightly dismissed. It was Aldo Leopold who articulated this best in his writings and the principles of wildlife management he laid down are still valid. If we eliminated all predators our environments would be truly depauperate and the wild would be altered in ways that we certainly would not like, as when deer breed uncontrollably in suburban settings and either starve or eat our planted vegetation. I have, myself, seen white-tailed deer completely strip a soybean field near Tallahassee, Florida, so I can bear witness to their potential for destruction.
In a recent book I read last month, a herpetologist talks about this issue of predation. Harry W. Greene in his "Tracks and Shadows: Field Biology as Art" notes the problem of attitudes toward predators, including himself when he goes on deer and later feral hog hunts. He notes that the ornithologist Alexander Skutch hated raptors and snakes, an odd situation indeed! From my own reading I can say that this was also partly true of John Burroughs, who would kill black snakes who might raid the birds nests he was watching. Another writer I skimmed suggested that tigers could be genetically engineered to eat grass. At the end of the book I wanted to yell "But then they would not be tigers!" While predation can be a bit unnerving to some of us, we should not complain about wolves and hawks when we sit down to a large turkey dinner at Thanksgiving. Even vegetarians and vegans are not so innocent as many insects and birds are disposed of to protect field crops. And certainly we entomologists cannot claim innocence as we routinely kill insects to make into specimens and so act as their predators.
Many predators are on endangered species lists, including the various subspecies of the tiger and other big, middle-sized and small wild felids, as well as several large and small canids. Some hawks, eagles and owls fall into this category as well. So-called "chicken hawks" (Sharp-shinned, Coopers and Goshawks) were shot even after other hawks were protected on the basis of their killing of domestic fowl. The photo I took above shows a juvenile sharp-shinned hawk eating a mockingbird it had just killed. The efficiency of these birds as they seem to glide effortlessly and silently through the trees to pick off perched birds is remarkable. I once saw a female Cooper's defeathering a white-winged dove in the tree just east of our fence line. Unfortunately I had no camera at the time!
Owls, those mysterious creatures of the night, are also fierce predators. In the area where I took the above photo a pair of great-horned owls raise several broods of owlets (sometimes called hoolets). I once found a row of owlets on a stone wall near the nest tree. Such baby predators may look fuzzy and cute, but will attack fiercely if cornered, as I found out when I tried to move a baby western screech owl out of the road near where this photo was taken!
Wild canids, such as foxes, coyotes and wolves are also not liked much in certain quarters. In my neighborhood we have occasional sightings of gray foxes, the most recent of which allowed me to get some closeup photos of both the mother and her kits. I have always liked the old folksong "The Fox," which starts out "The Fox went out on the chilly night. Prayed for the moon to give him light...." It seems to embody the spirit of the wild.
My earlier photo of a coral snake near Gainesville, Florida, is of a specialized predator. Coral snakes eat primarily other snakes. Above is a photo of a mammal and occasional bird predator, the western diamondback rattlesnake, as well as one of a hunter of lesser game, the pigmy rattlesnake. The pits below the eyes and toward the nostrils are heat sensors which allow the snake, often lying in wait, to sense the body heat of a rabbit or rat and strike at it. Many people hate snakes, especially venomous ones, but I always count it a red letter day when I encounter one of these magnificent animals. Rattlesnakes and many species of harmless snakes keep the rodent and rabbit populations down, as many a good farmer can tell you. There are many other predators, including many of the birds who prey on insects, or in the case of roadrunners, other bird's eggs, snakes and lizards. All have a role in the dynamics of ecosystems. We meddle with this at our own peril, as we did with the predators of deer in the Kaibab in Arizona or wolves in Yellowstone. Here are a few more predator portraits over the fold, all taken by me.
When push comes to shove the world would truly be a dismal place without predators. They are, in addition to serving as part of the economy of nature (including ridding our gardens of pest insects,) true symbols of the wild. I always thrilled when I heard coyotes calling in the night (in the Davis Mountains of Texas near McDonald Observatory), or in the early morning (as several times on the Jornada del Muerto, north of Las Cruces,) or heard the hoots of great-horned or barred owls in New Mexico and Florida. The call of poorwills or a whiskered screech owl down a Mexican or Arizona canyon in the night, the wonderful beauty of a pod of orcas passing through the San Juan Islands off Washington state, or the sight of big brown bats, catching insects around the canopies of trees, provoked an intense elation within me. I have nothing against the prey of these animals, but they are kept healthy by predators, who pick off the sick and injured for the most part, and (as has been shown at Yellowstone in the case of wolves and elk) prevent the destruction of native flora by keeping the herbivores on the move. There are many references on predatory animals and most are worth reading. I especially recommend Greene's "Tracks and Shadows: Field Biology as Art" and books on the gray wolf, the jaguar, owls, orcas, spiders, and hawks. Correction: For some reason I originally labeled the photo of the juvenile “sharp-shinned hawk” as a "Cooper's hawk." I corrected that “error” only to find out my original label was correct. Be very careful about changing first impressions!