The beasts among us

As I discussed in June, things do change. Changes in wildlife habits have two main causes – human activities and wildlife adaptation. These changes explain, for example, why coyotes now live in most major southern Canadian cities. Let’s look at changes to human activity first.

In agriculture, hand-picking corn cobs did not leave much waste. Large combine harvesters, on the other hand, speed up harvest but drop more grain on the field. Some birds – many of them migratory waterfowl, but also crows, starlings and red-winged blackbirds – then get more food, which produces more stored energy for local winters or migrating journeys. Also, the amount of grain grown as a cash crop – think canola, corn, soybeans – means even more food is available.

Second, the ability of some wildlife species to adapt is very great. The simplification of the landscape to large fields and city-scape greenery has made it possible for “specialist” birds and animals to flourish almost beyond imagining. Examples abound. Ask the people in Calgary or Edmonton about magpies, the people in southern Ontario about huge flocks of wintering starlings, sometimes numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Feral rock doves (“pigeons”) are so common they are simply part of the farm and city landscape (often not appreciated for their “donations”). Introduced grey squirrels (either grey or in the black colour phase) think suburban living is heaven. It’s much easier to spot a mule- or white-tailed deer in many villages and suburbs than it is to find them in the wild.

Concrete jungles

Are things “better” for wildlife now? I suggest that if bio-mass is the deciding factor, it’s possible that human activities may have made things “better” than they were 100 years ago, at least for some species. In terms of the by-products of human activities such as wetland drainage, paving, urban sprawl and pollution, however, things are less rosy.

Finally – perhaps most significantly – a simplified landscape may be a cause and an effect of major ecosystem decline. Compare “feedlot alley” and irrigated cropland in southern Alberta with the same prairie landscape as experienced by indigenous people and a flourishing bison population. Maybe lots of geese and cranes come at the cost of the Bow and Oldman River systems.

More geese may be not just a symbol of successful farming and avian adaptation but also an indication of increasing sterility. More geese and fewer pipits, weeds, grasses, berry bushes, copses of aspen. The “sameness” of a prairie landscape may mean the uniformity of a human machine-mentality. A natural prairie may have 37 species of plants per square metre, not just corn-stalks and a dead mat of glyphosate-killed annual weeds.

As wildlife adapts more and more to landscapes of steel, concrete and lawn, expect more changes. Those of us in southern Alberta have already seen jackrabbits – animals of the vast expanses of short-grass prairie – moving to city lawns. Bobcats have colonized Calgary and feed on jackrabbits. Toronto has perhaps the highest density of raccoons in North America.

More and more of fewer and fewer species may be the future. I admire the adaptiveness of certain animals while I lament the massive decline in diversity. As I see it, our human activities lead to a sort of creational impoverishment.

We may sing “This is my Father’s world,” but only some birds “their carols raise.” In the near future we might have to be content with gobbles and honks while we never hear the song of the bobolink, the western meadow lark or the ethereal evening lament of the hermit thrush.