Raccoon Creek, and Some Musings About Predators

May 08, 2018

Raccoon Creek, and Some Musings About Predators

We went for a ramble at the Raccoon Creek State Park Wildflower Reserve, to check out the legendary bloom. We were not disappointed! In addition to many lovely blooms, we also saw three of the park's namesake critters. That was pretty sweet! The long loop we took did not involve any serious elevation gain or distance, so I call upon every able bodied soul who needs a big dose of spring loveliness to head over there now!

Virginia bluebells.

Some changes we've had to get used to, in moving to Pittsburgh, include seeing a lot of small animals, even in our urban neighborhoods, that we wouldn't expect to have the chutzpah to come out during the day. My first reaction is to suspect they are rabid and warn my son to keep far away, which is what I did when we saw these raccoons. But we are seeing small animals in plenty, and we are not seeing the coyotes and eagles we are looking for instead. When we go hiking, we never see cougar tracks or hear coyote packs howling. We do not see big, grand bald eagle and osprey nests along the rivers, let alone observe the necessity of building nesting platforms to protect cell towers. There is no regular news of wolves returning, along with the joyful enthusiasm of nature lovers and the outcry of cattle ranchers.

Trout lily.

Did you know that apex predators reduce erosion? Yes, they do! If left to their own devices, deer and elk will lazily chill all day by the banks of rivers and streams, right out in the open, where there is plenty of water. They nibble all day on plants and sapling trees that could be combatting erosion. Erosion is the enemy of all the aquatic animals (the macroinvertebrates) at the bottom of the food chain. They simply can't breathe. Fish and amphibians not only have trouble breathing, they have nothing to eat, and that affects all the animals that eat those fish and amphibians, and on up the food chain. But apex predators make deer and elk spend a lot less of their time browsing out in the open, and a lot more time under the cover of the woods. The plants by the water grow back, beaver and songbirds return, and suddenly there's way less erosion. It's pretty spectacular.

White violet.

I was pretty surprised to hear that the first day of deer season is so popular that school is out, and to see that many of the public lands we wanted to wander in the fall are also open to hunters. But maybe all of us should be getting our meat this way? Because the kind of vigilance we have to observe over deer ticks is hard to get used to. But even if we all ate a lot more venison, we humans are just not up to the job of replacing the predators. The ecosystem is badly off kilter. Just saying.

We went on one of Allegheny County Park's lovely Full Moon Hikes recently, and one of the park rangers was talking about little brown bats. They were famously devastated throughout the east by white nose syndrome, and their decline causes insect populations to surge, which in turn causes crop damage and spreads disease. He said that the little brown bat population is at least no longer obviously declining and may even be rebounding. He spoke hopefully about nature's ability to rebound. I had to say, isn't it too much all at once? Haven't we come well beyond the point where we can just shrug and expect it will rebound?

We went to hear a herpetologist give a talk about Pennsylvania salamanders, and he mentioned that they eat a simply astonishing number of mosquito larvae. Who knew? So if we don't care about all our aquatic species, or bats, or apex predators, or any other piece of our web of life, we're going to find ourselves caring a whole lot more about mosquito borne illnesses. They just happen to already kill more people than any other pathogens on earth. The herpetologist said his favorite analogy is about rivets on an airplane. How many rivets do you want to lose?

The first step, I believe, is obviously awareness. You and your kids are not going to care about what you don't know and love. So I hope I'll see you out there, getting your big dose of spring loveliness!