NATURE AS A CULLER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 August 1939, Page 5

NATURE AS A CULLER

FUNCTIONS OF PREDATORS. A reminder that nature still believes in the law of “survival of the fittest” is given by a member of the Forest and Bird Protection Society, in reference to a statement of Mr T. Shout at a meeting of the Waimarino Acclimatisation Society. He said he believed that there were too many fish in Taupo and that netting would be beneficial. It was his opinion that the quality of fish in Lake Toupo improved considerably after the netting undertaken in 1919. The critic remarks that no doubt, if the authorities decided to do some more netting, they would take out some healthy fish as well as "slabs’ and other poor specimens. In the ordinary course of nature, black shags could act as cullers of weaklings, and thus help to establish a proper balance, but these birds are ruthlessly persecuted. This subject of the predator’s place in nature has received the keen attention of many expert observers in the United States of America during recent years. For example, in the magazine, "Hunting and Fishing, Richard Pough has a thoughtful article. “Are we over-controlling predators?” He mentions that predators serve to check an increase in the numbers of animals or fish beyond the food-yielding resources of their haunts. “Another job that predators have to perform is the one of selecting those individual animals that will perpetuate the species,” he states. “This culling of the weaklings and abnormal individuals from each generation is something predators do quite automatically, because misfits invariably are easier to kill. “In nature’s communities the job of checking the spread of such diseases and parasites falls to the predators. Predators eliminate—because of the ease with which they can be caught—animals so sick as to be dangerous potential sources of infection “Not only do they get rid of the sick, but they usually kill off animals that are getting past the prime of life and therefore more likely to serve as a focal point for the start and spread of an epidemic.”