The Apex Predator is not your enemy

Greg Harlin via Chesapeake Bay Program.

In natural sciences, the apex predator is a predator that stands on top of its food chain and has no natural predators. Because an ecosystem is much more complex than a single food chain, the concept of the apex preadtor is usually used in terms of trophic webs, the natural intercontectivity of food chains in an ecosystem. Trophic webs or networks are usually divided by levels. If you remember elementary school lessons, you might recognize the following terms: the first level is composed by primary producer like plants, the second level includes herbivore consumers, the third has carnivores, and levels four of five are where apex predators are found. An apex predator's status is extremely important because they define the population dynamic in their ecosystems. However, the idea of an apex predator creates a sense of warning; a carivorous animal with no natural enemies must definitely be a dangerous threat to the human species. For centuries we have tried to subjugate the apex predatores, setting ourselves atop any food chain with to regard for the consequences that may bring to the animal kingdom. What happens when we fear the apex predator?

The power of fear

Via Daily Mail. 

The Great White Shark is the ultimate representation of the apex predator. Its characteristics are enough source material to sustain an entire subgenre of horror and suspense film, led by the classic horror movie, Jaws. This predator's image as the terror of the seas has been perpetuated throughout time and sustained by widespread news of shark attacks. However, the shark's bad reputation hurts the animal more than it does the human. You're more likely to get truck by lighting than attacked by a shark, but irrational fear towards this animal has served as implicit justification to ignore or even aprove of massive and indiscriminated shark hunting for either comercial or recreational purposes. Hunting is the main cause of death for sharks and the responsible for their exponential decline. Another common cause of death is for sharks to get caught in fishing nets; many fishermen avoid setting them free out of fear for themselves or their catch, and they leave the sharks to die. 

Via Two Oceans AQUARIUM.

Nowadays, whose status as an apex predatormakes it indispensable to its ecosystem, is listed as a species vulnerable to extintion. Current efforts to save this species include research and broadcast of well founded information that bust myths about this creature, such as the famous Shark Week, Discovery Channel's week-long programming block dedicated to sharks. To keep the marine ecosystem in balance, we must switch our perspective about the white shark from fear to respect. 

An ecosystem without its apex predator

In a food chain, mesopredators are animals that have a predator and a prey. For example, a raccon is prey for a coyote, but a predator of rats. A hypothesis called the "mesopredator release" states that retrieving the apex predator from a trophic chain creates a superavit of mesopredator population, unbalancing the entire web.

In 1986, the Simon Bolivar Hydroelectric Center in Venezuela, a dam that would help power most of the country, began operations. When the final gates closed, the dam created a water overflow that was redirected to a tropical rainforest. The flood became a new formation and the highest peaks of the forest became an archipielago that was mapped out by a new river, the Guri reservoir. The new land distribution became too small for big predators. That is how an entire ecosystem was left without apex predators. 

Via El Carabobeño.

Free of apex predators, every island hosted its own community of castaway mesopredators;

• Tipically, the howler monkey is a social animal that lives in packs of 3 to 7 monkeys led by a male. Imprisoned in this new island, the density of these mesopredators mutliplied by 50. Without predator but with hunger, these monkeys became isolated creatures, with incoherent groups, whitout socializing and fighting for food. The trees, affected by the monkey's high rate of consumption, evolved to sproud leaves with a certain level of toxines. Howler monkeys stop howling.
• Atta ants are dedicated to cut leaves and create compost to sustain their fungi farms. In many tropical forests, these farms are not big or attention-worthy, and their harvests are minimal. However, the Guri reservoir is not sustainable for armadillos, the ants' mesopredators. Free of any risk, the ants' leaf harvest rose at an alarming rate. The harvested trees became vines with thornes and their roots became hollow fungi farms. The tropical forest became a thorny scrubland reigned by ants. 

Via Gfycat.

By lack of food, howler monkeys began feeding from bird eggs. By lack of predators, ants wrecked havoc on trees. With no plants to protect themselves and no reproduction, several bird species are close to extintion. Every time ecologist John Terborgh returns to these islands to continue with his research, he observes drastic changes in the ecosystem, a hostil and deteriorating evolution. 

Chain reaction

The wolf is an apex predator that has been feared since way before the colonization of America. More than feared though, it has been hated because he is the main threat to livestock. Ever since humans started keeping livestock, the wolf has been actively hunted. At the Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, USA, the presence of the gray wolf has been such an inconvenience to farmers, that a Predator Control Act was enacted in 1926 that completely eradicated the wolf. The gray wolf is not just an apex predator, though, but a keystone species. This means that an entire ecosystem depends upon this one species, and its extinction would not only affect the ecosystem, it would destroy it entirely.

Via Tumblr.

A few years after the wolf eradication, the park's ecosystem began to change. Without its predator, the elk population increased and with it, their dietary needs. Elk tore down the aspen trees and began feeding on willow trees on the river banks. Willows have a simbiotic relation with beavers, who feed off their branches but build dams that help the trees set their roots. Without willows, the beaver population decreased as well, and without their dams, the entire wetland ecosystem disappeared. Finally, in 1995, the United States government reintroduced the wolf to its habitat and, to this day, the park is still regaining its natural balance. Many biologists doubt that the presence or absence of one species in the sole determining factor in the park's radical change, but this case has served as basis for many studies regarding keystone species and their relation to other species not only in a food chain, but their ecosystem as well. 

Via North Cascades Institute. 

All for one and one for all

The protection of apex predators has been founded on the negative consequences of constantly attacking these species. However, this perspective has not improved the predators' reputation, since the main motivator to protect them has been to avoid a natural catastrophe. What would happen if we find a positive approach towards apex predator conservation?

Via Culture N Lifestyle.

The siberian tiger is known as the host of the taiga. Its habitat extends throughout temperate forests in Eastern Russia, the Chinese frontier, and even possibly North Korea. This tiger species is danger of extinction. While the animal itself is hunted for sport and to obtain elements of traditional Chinese medicine, its habitat is threatened by tree logging and environmental destruction. Yet, the great extension of this animal's habitat has earned it the title of umbrella species, a species that is selected as the center of conservation decision-making because the protection of this animal indirectly influences the conservation efforts of other species in its ecosystem. This way, efforts to protect the siberian tiger extends to its entire habitat, in turn supporting the protection of species like elk and boars, and promoting imitations and regulations to forest logging in the taiga.

Via The Little Owl Site. 

Who controls apex predators?
It is now clear that the apex predator is essential for the balance of all their ecosystems. They regulate their prey population, but... who controls the apex predator population? Ruled by our warning instinct, humans cannot avoid thinking the apex predator is dangerous and we believe we must reign the highest level of the trophic web and keep apex predators at bay. We find it hard to understand that the earth needs to human intervention to find its natural balance. Apex predators are generally big animals (relative to their ecosystem) with long breeding periods, This means that they take longer to reproduce than the rest of its food chain. A brown bear eats hundreds and hundreds of young salmon that will never reproduce. However, while a salmon spawns thousands of eggs in one bearing, the bear will breed no more than 15 cubs in its lifetime. Due to a slow life cycle, the population of an apex predator species will always be in proportion to their prey.

Even more relevant is the fact that humans compete with apex predators for food. Believing that apex predators are killing machines with no other instinct but murder, humans have tried to preserve our food sources from an offensive stance, we attack with no provocation and we seek to take the spot of the agresor in the trophic chain without considering that we are not in a superior level, but a parallel one. We are an unsustainable species of apex predator. Other apex predators hunt out of survival instinct, hunting when necessary. Us humans hunt for sport and interest.

What if, rather than attacking the wolf, we protect the herd?

Via Perez Hilton.