Tuesday - 03/02/2021 — A trophic cascade is an ecological process that starts at the top of the food chain and tumbles to the bottom. It happened in Yellowstone when wolves were re-introduced there. The process took some years, but eventually all the damage that had been done to lowlands by over-abundant deer and elk herds began to be reversed as the wolves not only thinned the herds but made the animals more wary of venturing out into the open land around rivers where they were more vulnerable. This video shows the benefits the wolves brought to the national park. It showed how the wolves saved the rivers.
Thinking about this led me to wonder about the advisability of thinning out the over-abundance of people. We’ve certainly messed up lakes and rivers and oceans, forests and mountains in much the same way the deer and elk ruined their environment through overpopulation and unintentional (but unmitigated) misuse of the land around them.
The only trouble is that people are the top of the food chain.
Maybe this is one of the reasons so many plagues have begun to hit humanity – SARS, AIDS, Ebola, COVID. Maybe we’re not the top of the food chain. Maybe these microbes are. Do you think these viruses are the “wolves” trying to make Homo so-called sapiens wake up and stop hurting Mother Earth?
