From the Smithsonian

What Happens When Predators Disappear

It’s Predator Week here at the blog. What’s your favorite predator, either existing or extinct?

Eliminating predators from an area may be seen as a good thing; you’ve gotten rid of the animal that has been killing off your livestock or even your neighbors. Others often see the loss of these species with a somewhat sad, romantic eye; how awful to never again see such a creature. But the reality of the loss of predators is far worse, say ecologists reporting in Science, and “may be humankind’s most pervasive influence on nature,” they write.

Part of that is because the worst extent of such a disappearance—extinction—is irreversible, unlike other environmental impacts, such as climate change. But it’s more because the loss, or even reduction in numbers, of predators in an ecosystem can set off something caused a “trophic cascade” in which the change in predator population has effects across the food web and ecosystem. For example, when wolves were eliminated from the American West, there were changes in the elk population and the vegetation the elk ate.

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-happens-when-predators-disappear-32079553/#6B6ZPMoTc8JeWgSD.99
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