THE ULTIMATE PREDATOR

A lot of noise has been made lately by Animal Rights groups supporting leaving wild areas of the U.S. to natural predation, meaning that they want wolves and mountain lions as the top predators. The theory that the Animal Rights Activists have is this: If we bring back the high end predators, there will be no more need for the barbaric (in their eyes), practice of hunting. I guess on the surface that would seem to make sense. But by looking a little more into it, we begin to realize what we would be giving away. Hunting by humans is a far more specialized method of controlling populations, and I will argue here in this piece why I think you should support your local hunter as the primary force of controlling animal habitat and populations.

Hunting is as old as the earliest forms of man, in fact even before. All animals hunt in some way, either for vegetables, grasses, or meat. No matter what, something dies. We like to play God sometimes and value some life over another based mostly on how big it's eyes are, but to the thing that dies, there is no difference. All life should be treated with reverence, and we are naturally more protective of the lives we know, but I've come to accept that our place in nature is as a carnivore. I've often wondered what would happen if the future showed us that plants have a worse suffering being pan-fried than any animal does being shot.... wouldn't that freak a few vegans into starvation. I've always viewed Vegetarianism as the first step to anorexia anyway. First meat's gross, then crunchy things, then slimy things, and then soon.....you're not eating anything. If that's your path, then more power to you, but for me, I'm not chancing it.

Hunting isn't what it was 100 years ago, or 50 years ago, or for that matter, even 20 years ago. Hunting has evolved into a money machine for government, a specialized tool for game management and a retail business.

Huge stores have opened around hunting, supplying tons of jobs. In fact, in the town of Dundee here in Michigan, they have a Cabala's Hunting Supplies that is now the number 1 tourist attraction in our state. In addition to that public revenue, hunting licenses supply a big part of the cost of running a Department of Natural Resources which maintains our parks, and state forests not to mention buying up tracks of land and supplying access to lakes and rivers. I think it's safe to say, without a functioning DNR, any state would be a far less attractive state both to people and to animals.

So what about the efforts to return areas to "Natural Predation"? Over all, they have been a complete flop. Most often the efforts end up costing lots of money with bad results. A good example of this would be the Isle Royal State park here in Michigan. Isle Royale is a beautiful island and a great research station for Predator/Prey relationships, particularly between moose and wolves. Unfortunately the top predator, man, is missing from all this research. Lately an interesting thing has been happening on Isle Royale. Ticks have been exploding in population, possibly due to global warming. The ticks are impacting the moose health to a point where not only are they dying, but so are the wolves that feed on them. The irony here is: even in their effort to isolate the situation on an island, man has found a way to impact them.

I like to think of hunting as more of an effort to live with our brothers; the mountain lion and the wolf, than an effort to replace them. We assume our role as the Alpha Hunter, and in that role we control the populations of not just the rabbit or deer, but also the wolf and the mountain lion. If you think about it, that's the way it has been since we first stood upright and discovered our thumbs. Frankly, I view the idea of removing us from the predatory hierarchy as upsetting the system and throwing everything out of balance. Why is it we view ourselves as somehow "outside" the order of things when we are so obviously the driving force? We affect things around us in ways that impact everything. From our homes, to our cars, to our roads, we decide how the landscape shall be arranged. Instead of being a pushing force or a caretaker of captive animals shouldn't we be learning to live with nature and not separate from it? There are ways for us to be more responsible, to pollute less, to have less children and to impact the environment less. But what may be our most important role in maintaining a healthy environment is assuming our role as the driving force behind sensible animal control, as the Ultimate Predator. H.C.