Future Prey: Some Consequences of the Loss and Restoration of Large Carnivores

• Main Author: Berger, Joel
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford University PressNew York, NY 1998
• Subjects: Alces alces; Canis lupus; Moose; Tundra; Ursus arctos
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195104899.003.0004; https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/52509864/isbn-9780195104899-book-part-4.pdf

Abstract Both Charles Darwin (1859) and Alfred Russell Wallace (1876) suspected that predation shaped individual behavior and ecological communities, ideas that have subsequently been examined in vertebrates and invertebrates (Edmunds, 1974; Reznick et al., 1990; Sih et al., 1992; Estes and Duggin, 1995). While in the past organisms of all sizes must regularly have had to deal with predation as a selective force, the loss of large terrestrial carnivores is particularly conspicuous in today’s increasingly human-dominated world. Such change characterizes areas from arctic tundra and circumpolar boreal zones to tropical savannas, forests, and deserts. Natural systems have been altered to such an extent that Lineaeus apparently never saw moose Alces alces in Scandinavia, yet more than 300,000 now live in Sweden alone (Clutton-Brock and Albon, 1992). The role that the loss of predators and other factors have played in these rebounding populations is not clear. But it is evident that in the contiguous United States and Mexico, carnivores such as grizzly bears Ursus arctos and wolves Canis lupus are currently absent from more than 99% of their original range, losses which have freed many large herbivores from natural predation. These losses have also led, perhaps through interference competition, to range expansions in mesocarnivores including coyotes Canis latrans (Peterson, 1995; Johnson, et al., 1996) and changes in abundance of red and kit foxes Vulpes vulpes and V. macrotis (Sargeant and Allen, 1989; Ralls and White, 1995) and subsequently to locally high ungulate densities, which damage vegetation (Wagner and Kay, 1993). In tropical and subtropical systems, losses have also been substantial. Wild dogs Lycaon pictus once occurred in 34 African countries, but populations now exceed 100 or more individuals in only 6 (Creel and Creel, 1996); a similar pattern of constricted range characterizes some felids (cheetahs Acinonyx jubatus; jaguars Panthera onca; tigers P. tigris), a canid (the dhole Duon alpinus), and other ...