Sitting here at my computer, I'm relatively safe from nature's fury. There's little I have to worry about other than seasonal depression brought on my New Jersey winters, and I certainly don't need to fear a leopard crashing through the wall, grabbing me by the throat, and dragging my corpse off to dine on. Some people do. Recently I've been reading Monster of God by David Quammen, which deals with the few "monsters" left in the wild, from saltwater crocs in Australia to brown bears in the Carpathian Mts. The only megafauna I have to deal with on a regular basis are deer, which offer more danger to my car than anything else. This past summer I did observe a 800 lbs. + black bear run through the woods, and I have been in the water with sharks (on purpose) on several occassions, but making hay doesn't involve me risking my life on an African plain or Australian billabong.
While Quammen's book is prone to historical rambling and some quick switches, he does bring up some good points. The most striking is not a new nor cryptic one, but he refers to it as the Muskrat Problem. He arrives at this seemingly out-of-context name by explaining that some muskrats get pushed out of good habitat, or choose to leave good habitat to extend breeding ranges, and become "poor". They are not as healthy, nor do they have sufficient cover to hide, and the majority of muskrats killed and eaten by predators are the "poor" ones, and so it is with bears, tigers, lions, crocs, etc. today. Now the occassional boy-scout is menaced by a bear or cougar, shark attacks happen rarely, but the Western world is mostly cleared of its great predators. Either because of natural extinction or extermination, America has little room for big predators and death by wild predators are rare. In other parts of the world, they remain rare relative to other causes of death, but they occur with many times more frequency than the suburbs of the US.
Mumbai (formerly Bombay) caught my interest, despite its fleeting mention in the book. Leopards, in my opinion the most ferocious of the big cats, have been slinking about the slums of the city, picking off dogs and (as I later found after doing some digging) occassionally people. Most of the attacks seem to happen in June or the summer months, and the leopards are coming from a wildlife sanctuary about 25 miles away. [Note: I am unaware if this distance is from the center of the city or the outskirts, I will confirm the exact distance when I can get a map] Most times they attack people while sleeping, especially children, but generally anything that is below their eye level. Attacks occur in broad daylight as well, often resulting in maulings, but the most disturbing part of the attacks on children and sleeping victims is that they are often consumed. Leopards are not life sharks, where human flesh tastes bad or is of little value, but they are one of the few animals that prey on people and from what I've been able to find out there are about 14 reported maulings and 11 reported fatalities every year from the area. I heard that in 2004 a wall was being constructed, but I feel this will not erase the problem that arises each summer. Why then? I'm not sure. It could be connected to lack of food because of drought, it could be the need for extra food to feed cubs, but I think today there is another reason. Regardless of how these behaviors arose, the leopards have found an easy source of prey, and cats teach their young-ones how to hunt. It could be that it is not longer ecological pressure in the jungle forcing the leopards out, but that they WANT to hunt people. While most other big cats are in danger, leopards seem to be doing well, mostly because they easily adapt to urban habitat and close association with people. I do not wish to perpetuate the myth of mindless, man-eating big cats, but it is unsettling to live in the vicinity of an animal that considers you food just as it does an antelope. The attacks are trajedies, but they are not committed by monsters, but rather animals trying to meet their needs. Unfortunately, just as with the muskrats, it is the poor that usually pay the price.
It seems that all over the world, the places that you find big predators are the places you find the poor. These people either want little to do with modern society (and I don't blame them the way things go sometimes) or can't make a living anywhere else, and those places are those that are still inhabited by animals that eat man. Lions, tigers, leopards, crocodiles, and bears are the animals that leap to my mind which not only kill people, but eat them as well, making them even more terrifying. There are big predators elsewhere, like alligators in Florida suburbs, but they are seem as more of a nuisance and are either relocated or shot. Many people who are pushed out onto wilder habitat do not have the luxury of killing the predators, being that these are the same animals we protect, and many of them have learned to live with the animals. This should not create the illusion of a truce, however, as the animals still do take human victims, but what choice is there for those already living on the edge? The Great White Hunters of the 1800's and early 1900's cleared out many species conservation scientists try so hard to save, but those that remain are often under so much pressure and in such proximity to people that it becomes easy for their to be gory interactions between man and beast.
I wonder what will become of animals like the tiger. Sought after by traditional chinese medicine and other asian cultures, tiger populations are being decimated for their bones, skins, and organs just because they are believed to be powerful or make people who can afford the macabe medicine more verile. There is little doubt in my mind tigers will still exist in zoos, but even so, when the last wild tiger dies, we have lost the species. A tiger in a zoo is a showpiece, something to be gawked at and occassionally admired. Even so, despite the fact I have never seen a wild tiger, there is something missing from the cats that pace back and forth across their enclosures in zoos. Yes, the conservation and breeding programs at such facilities help, but it always seems to me those animals lack purpose, or rather they have had their purpose seized from them so they may be put on display. Not to mention, ecology does not stop for a species. Things are constantly, even if minutely, changing, and just because you can replace animals in the wild does not mean it will always be a success. In fact in many of the great wildlife preserves, the animals are slowly vanishing by the hands of poachers. The outside world does creep into villages, and many people take the chance to kill a tiger in order to make enough money to feed their family. It's hard to care about ecology when there's not enough for you to eat.
What's the answer? Both wildlife and people need protection, and despite the deaths caused by animals, wildlife is paying the far heavier price. I do not wish to minimize the death of anyone, for surely they were loved, but extinction is a hard punishment for humans realizing we are in fact part of the food web. "Westernization" attempts in poor areas seem to fail, instead creating a bigger division of have's and have not's, even leading to violence and those with power making the poor suffer even longer. There are many people who need help, and they don't need money thrown at them, but they need a committment from countries like the US, the UK, and others. There needs to be a plan to see things through, not just for a year or two, but the long term and help people get the basic things they need if we wish to see a change. Even so, I am conflicted. It has been projected that right now we need 1.2 earth's to meet the demands of the planet, and the number will only keep increasing. Education is a wonderful birth-control, but it's difficult to tell anyone not to have so many children, especially in America. I can't see, nor would I wish for, government controlled births, but I do hope that we can somehow solve this population problem before the earth becomes nothing more than a hollowed-out husk of what it once was.
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
