Human Super Predation

Still shot from session 1 of the Netflix original series, Hemlock Grove.

The other day, when i watched  this video that is in the series i posted about here , was the first time i ran across the term; "super predator". This term is applied to the industrial harvesting of animals in the "wild" and recreational killing*.

 As a recent paper (PDF copy here ) pointed out about us, "...what solidifies our No. 1 position is the fact that our hunting methods are so devastating to other species that they alter the course of their evolution — if they’re not driven to extinction."

The paper focuses on our predation of predators. The history of recreational killing in my country is an very interesting subject.

Recommended:

But the tired old trope about recreational killers helping the "balance of nature" is absurd, scientifically. As i wrote elsewhere (in a piece about CWD):

That problem is inefficient predation.
Human's are the main predator of the White Tail, but their method is biologically inefficient. What i mean by efficient in this context is hunting that selects for the injured, sick, old, slow etc. 

Efficient hunting makes for healthier, fitter prey.

Certainly on our ancestral landscape we where efficient hunters during a lot of our history, and the Kalahari Bushmen still do it the old fashioned way (Google around on Kalahari Bushmen persistence hunting ).
The traditional top predator of the White Tail Deer was of course, the Wolf. Wolf and their prey co-evolved. Wolves can read by scent and sight the slightest signs of which deer in a group has an injury or sickness, therefore, is easier to take down. In a sense they are the ultimate meat inspector for deer. The predator prey relationship is all about energetics. From a wolf's instinctual "point of view", what food can i get with the least expenditure of energy?
We use projectile weapons of various types. This, and all the bait piles, cameras etc. creates a "hunt" wherein being able to pick out the biologically "easy" deer irrelevant. So, why should we be surprised, or concerned about the rise of CWD? We have created a White Tail population which is the perfect home for disease growth. There are lots of them, mostly not as "fit" as their ancestors, and they tend to clump together more during rest periods due to our control of the landscape. Duh? ...

 As befits a super predator, our "hunting" laws:

1. Promote the destruction of the adults, the reproductive gene pool
2. Exempt the juveniles, the main food source for lesser predators
3. Allow technology that allows us to ignore selection for age. injury, or other malady, thereby actually degrading the prey's gene pool
4. Empowers our archaic, obsolete, instinctive antipathy to other predators, by encouraging their being killed actively or by trapping

Those of us concerned about our human future often concentrate on the systemic/ecological remedies. Perhaps learning more about super predation, both industrial and recreational is warranted. 


*Recreational Killing: Pursuing any non-domesticated living organism, other than another human, with the intention of killing it for any reason other than eating it, the food choice being necessitated by poverty. (Recreational killer: one who recreationally kills).