The Ecology of Fear: The Role of Big Predators in Environmental Harmony
Monday, November 9, 2009 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Top predators such as wolves and cougars have been removed from ecosystems in various places around the world over the past several hundred years. Scientists in recent
years have begun to notice that with the leading predators’ removal, balance is often lost in those ecosystems, sometimes with devastating consequences. The loss of wolves in Yellowstone National
Park, for instance, allowed elk to badly overgraze lands and ravish entire terrestrial ecosystems; the loss of wolves in Scotland gave rise to growth of red deer populations so massive that they
are close to the food-limiting carrying capacity of the land and have serious consequences on native Scots pine and birch regeneration. The “landscapes of fear” created by big predators, scientists
now say, helps not only to control the populations of grazing animals but also their behavior. The threat of predation and attack can fundamentally change the movement and activities of grazing
animals 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, in ways that such approaches as human hunting fail to do.
Professor William Ripple, from the OSU College of Forestry, has pioneered this area of research, with groundbreaking studies in Yellowstone, Olympic, Yosemite, Wind Cave, and Zion national parks. He and other researchers recently
proposed a reintroduction of the wolf in the Scottish Highlands in an experiment designed to determine whether the animal can check red deer populations and return the ecosystem to what it was 250
years ago. If successful, the project could prove that the same ecosystem recovery is possible in Scotland that has taken place in some parts of the United States where wolves have been
reintroduced after a lengthy and destructive absence.
