- KROMDRAAI, South Africa (Reuters)
- They have been stalking and eating us for millions of years and the evidence
is embedded in South Africa's Sterkfontein Caves.
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- Famed for apeman fossils dating back millions of years,
the caves have also yielded the bones of ancient predators such as big-toothed
cats and long-legged hyenas that would have regarded our distant ancestors
as warm meals.
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- "Until two million years ago, our hominid ancestors
had no tools and so they had no defense against these predators besides
their speed and ability to climb trees," said Tim Partridge, a leading
researcher at the caves.
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- Today people can walk the hills around the caves, about
15 miles northwest of Johannesburg, without fear of being eaten. But the
area is ecologically poorer as a result.
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- The rolling countryside nearby boasts a number of reserves
that have reclaimed former cattle farms for wild antelope.
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- But wild, free-roaming carnivores in the area are rare,
apart from jackals and some small species of wild cats.
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- And the big man-eaters -- what natural history writer
David Quammen in a new book calls the "alpha predators" -- are
confined to fenced-off enclosures.
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- The plight of the planet's carnivores will be discussed
at a meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological
Diversity (COP 7) in Malaysia from February 9-20.
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- Just a few miles from the caves is the Rhino and Lion
Nature Reserve, 1,600 hectares of former cattle land that has been turned
into a park with over 20 species of antelope plus eight white rhinos --
the world's second largest land mammal.
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- There is plenty of room and grassland for the four-legged
herbivores but not enough for big cats.
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- "We don't have enough room here to let a lion have
the run of the place," said Ed Hern, the reserve's owner.
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- Hern has about 40 lions for breeding purposes -- for
conservation and trade -- plus several tigers, an Asian import, in a number
of large enclosures.
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- But wild lions that hunt for themselves need a lot more
room and, in South Africa, those that still do are confined to fenced areas,
albeit big ones, like the Israel-sized Kruger Park.
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- This doesn't mean that Hern's animals are pussycats.
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- One of his enclosures is home to a Siberian tiger, the
world's largest cat. This one, coyly named "Cuddles," is 686
pounds of heart-stopping muscle.
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- "Cuddles is eight years old and couldn't fend for
himself in the wild now if he was set free," said Kelly Pera, the
reserve's conservation manager, as Cuddles menacingly bared his formidable
fangs and snarled at the visitors.
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- But if you were foolish enough to enter the enclosure?
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- "He'll kill you," Pera says, without hesitation.
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- The invasion of his territory, not hunger, would be Cuddles'
trigger. But he would probably eat you just the same.
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- In short, once a man-eater, always a man-eater.
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- GLOBAL TREND
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- It is a global trend -- the large predators that prey
on humans are vanishing or being confined to fenced enclosures or zoos,
which could be their last hope for survival.
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- It comes down to space and our own fears.
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- "The largest predators are spread thinly on Earth
because energy, in forms they can harvest, is limited and broadly dispersed,"
writes Quammen in 'Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles
of History and the Mind'.
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- This is because -- as he explains -- there is only so
much energy passed up through each link in the food chain. When it reaches
the top, there is only so much to go around.
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- "They (big predators) can't afford congregation.
They need to hunt and compete desperately. They must be bold, prudent,
stealthy, opportunistic, and lucky. Their meals are few and far between,"
he writes.
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- For these reasons -- and because of their threat to people
on the ground and their livestock -- they are often the first species to
vanish in the face of human encroachment.
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- And given their crucial ecological role -- and the large
spaces they need for survival -- the loss of the sharp-toothed carnivores
bodes ill for countless other species on the lower rungs of the planet's
many food chains.
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- The big predators help to keep a varied population of
herbivores and smaller predators in check. And as the first to suffer from
human activities and habitat loss, they warn of the grim road ahead for
other species.
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- REMIND US THAT WE ARE MEAT
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- The big man-eaters also remind us of our own precarious
place in the natural world -- something the pre-historic hominids at Sterkfontein
would have been well aware of as they ventured out into a world inhabited
by horrifying creatures.
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- "Great and terrible flesh-eating beasts have always
shared landscape with humans. They were part of the ecological matrix within
which Homo sapiens evolved... Among the earliest forms of human self-awareness
was the awareness of being meat," writes Quammen.
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- Wild beasts that hunt and devour human flesh -- Quammen's
'alpha predators' -- are actually few in number.
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- They include the big cats, a few bears, crocodiles, some
sharks and (nightmare of nightmares) a couple of gigantic snakes, plus
the Komodo dragon, the world's largest lizard.
-
- The rare Chinese tiger is on the list, and two young
ones have been brought to a reserve in South Africa's northern Limpopo
province to learn how to hunt in a bid to save the species from extinction.
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- The Chinese sub-species of tiger is highly endangered,
with only about 60 left in zoos and perhaps 30 in the wild.
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- The goal is eventually to release the pair or their offspring
into a specially created reserve in southern China in 2008 -- the year
Beijing hosts the Olympic Games.
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- But saving this alpha predator will not be easy.
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- Quammen refers to a noted scientist who found wisdom
in an ancient Chinese proverb that captures the ecological reality of the
predators: "Each hill shelters only a single tiger."
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- And there may not be enough untouched hills left to shelter
viable populations of the planet's big predators.
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