Top Predators Create Healthy Ecosystems
Posted February 3, 2010 in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
In an excellent article published yesterday, Jeremy Hance examines three recent studies that underscore how critically important top predators are to healthy ecosystems.
The first study considers the negative effects that occur when "mesopredators” (e.g., coyotes, raccoons, skunks, baboons, etc.) fill the void left by the disappearance of top or “apex” predators (e.g., wolves, cougars, lions, sharks, etc.). The second study discusses how the presence of top predators can improve the health of plant communities (e.g., the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone led to increased willow and aspen growth). The third study, the most surprising of the three, looks at how hunting by top predators can “create nutrient hotspots that keep ecosystems rich and varied” (e.g., researchers used a 50-year record of moose kills by wolves on Isle Royale National Park to find that moose corpses create hotspots of forest fertility by enriching the soil with biochemicals).
Hance’s analysis of the three studies leads him to correctly conclude that “it appears that top predators are indispensable to a working ecosystem.”
The ecological importance of predators is an important component of our wildlife work at NRDC, and it’s an issue we’ve previously blogged about it. (See other posts by Andrew Wetzler, Dr. Sylvia Fallon, and me.)
Hance’s article and the studies about which he writes are both timely and alarming, as top predators are fast disappearing from the earth.
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Comments
Tena Scruggs — Feb 4 2010 03:16 AM
Thank you, Matt, for being in the thick of things up there in Montana and for speaking out. I like how well you wrote about Idaho's predator derby. I'm writing letters to "conservation" and corporate partners of Cabela's which sponsored the derbies. The dark ages can't end soon enough.
Matt Skoglund — Feb 4 2010 02:49 PM
Thanks for your nice comment, Tena. And thanks for writing the letters.
Matt
Pete — Feb 12 2010 12:48 PM
Excellent basic information "Top Predators Create Healthy Ecosystems". But this is Bio 101 stuff any first year wildlife biologist knows. And anyone awake in HS science class remembers. My concern is increase in educated idiots out there, with an "all or none" ideaology. Ecosystems are always 'dynamic' and sometimes cyclic. Nature hates stagnation, and will not tolerate it for long. "Picture postcard" ecosystems don't really exist, except in someones mind. Ecosystems are messy and sometimes very nasty places with beautiful sunrises and bloody dog eat dog afternoons. What do you do when a wolf grabs and drags an eight year old into the forest? Happened just north of my place. What do you do when you have a cougar on your driveway and the kids needs to walk to the school bus stop?
Answer in support of your ecosystem view is to remember "humans are the top predator". BUT, our status as top predator is to control and manage our influence in the ecosystem, not to ignore or have zero influence on the ecosystem. Balance must include human 'dog eat dog' impacts too or the ecosystem will loose in the end. Manage human ecosystem interaction, don't ban it.