The study revealed that human hunting and fishing is qualitatively different to the predatory behaviour shown by other species.
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“It is not simply the issue of shifting the extraction rate to juveniles”, said Reimchen, a biology professor, adding that humans would have to drastically cut their fishing quotas in order to better resemble the behavior of other predators.
“Our wickedly environment friendly killing know-how, worldwide financial methods and useful resource administration that prioritize short-term advantages to humanity have given rise to the human tremendous predator”, says Darimont, additionally science director for the Raincoast Conservation Basis.
Reinchen found that 22 predatory fish and diving birds collectively killed no more than 5 percent of the region’s adult fish. The information withdrawn from 2,125 predators has been used for the current survey to let people know that many species could go extinct unless they change their hunting habits.
“They are a predator of predators”, said Chris Darimont, lead author of a new study describing the analysis, “and actually a very extreme predator not only of predators, but pretty much anything with edible flesh on this planet”.
That’s unsustainable, the researchers say, and has resulted in some drastic impacts – populations of many large carnivores such as lions, tigers and wolves are dwindling.
In fact, Darimont said, fish and animals have evolved strategies for reproduction specifically to deal with predation of their young.
A study found that humans exploit fish populations 14 times more aggressively than marine predators such as sharks and killer whales.
Darimont and colleagues Caroline Fox and Heather Bryan conducted the research after senior author Thomas Reimchen noted disturbing patterns during four decades of fieldwork on Haida Gwaii, which is an archipelago on the North Coast of British Columbia. “It wasn’t designed as such, but I suspect many will interpret it as yet another call for humanity to reconsider its impacts on the ecosystem and ultimately upon ourselves”, Darimont said. It has, for instance, concentrated on killing mature adult animals rather than their offspring, which the scientists have likened to eating into the “reproductive capital” rather than the “reproductive interest” of the natural world. The consequences that scientists have enumerated refer to the shrinking number of fish and large land species, as well as the appearance of smaller-sized species that could escape the hunting techniques of humans.
Reimchen noticed that natural predators’ tendency to target juveniles was the opposite of commercial salmon and herring fisheries, which targeted mainly adult, reproductive-age fish.
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“If you use natural predator-prey quotas as some type of sustainable guide, we would be talking perhaps close to an 80 or 90 per cent reduction in our global take”, said Reimchen. As if this was not enough human hunters aim for the largest, biggest and most handsome species in the world.
