Predators and prey
Joe Scott International conservation
director, joe@conservationnw.org
What's up
Like CSI detectives investigating
a crime scene, lynx and hare researchers
in north central Washington recently
responded to a "mortality" signal from
a snowshoe hare that they had fitted
with a satellite tracking collar to monitor hare movements. When they arrived
at the scene the biologists were able to
reconstruct the events around the hare's
demise.
Why don't predators eat
all their prey?
Canada lynx. © Jannik Schou
gray
western United States where
The return ofnearly wolves to theand how to manage them. Efthey were
exterminated by persecution has sparked
much controversy over predators
forts to repeal the hound hunting ban for cougars in Washington
have added fuel. The gray wolf has become a political football as
states, the federal government, and stakeholders argue over protection under the Endangered Species Act and how wolf recovery
is defined. The debate, at times rancorous, has spilled into federal
courts and the US Congress.
Hunters, livestock producers, politicians, and conservationists
have some fairly strong opinions about how big of a role nonhuman predators should be allowed to play. It's unclear how, if
ever, such debates will be resolved. But one thing is clear. There's
a great deal of misunderstanding about carnivores, their impacts,
and their ecological role.
Conservation Northwest has been in the thick of these debates
as we and others search for solutions that allow top predators
to assume their critical place on the landscape while trying to
lessen yet another source of polarization in our communities. It
is in this spirit that we explore this issue in this and subsequent
newsletters in a humble attempt to shed some light on the place
of predators in our natural systems. We hope that you will join in
the discussion.
4
A great horned owl had killed the
hare, but predator became prey as a lynx
killed the owl and pirated the hare for
itself.
Everything eats snowshoe hares. In
boreal forests hares are the cheeseburgers for the fries, the fish for the chips,
the meatballs for the spaghetti, and the
corned beef for the cabbage.
Lynx are the most famous hare junkies, but the fleet-footed rabbits are also
favored by wolves, coyotes, foxes, martens, eagles, goshawks, owls, and other
raptors. In the ultimate insult, even red
and ground squirrels eat them. People
eat them.
Speed, stealth, aerial ambush and traps
are all used on hares. Cute has no currency in the wilds, except as lunch. Scott
Fisher, biologist with the Washington
Department of Natural Resources, describes it this way: "When you're a hare,
everybody else on the block is a bully."
But despite being every animal's
comfort food, snowshoe hares not only
persist but do so in often ridiculous
numbers. How does an animal in such
demand avoid being eaten out of existence?
It's tempting to think that hares' prodigious breeding ability is the evolutionary response to hyper predation.
But we have to dig a little deeper. All
Spring/Summer 2011www.conservationnw.org
