The deck outside my window is usually thronged with chattering birds—mourning doves, chickadees, redwing blackbirds, nuthatches, cardinals, blue jays, flickers, juncos, and an occasional redheaded woodpecker—that peck at the suet and gobble up the hundreds of pounds of birdseed that I throw out for them every winter.
It is quiet now, and I know why. The hawk that lives in an old pine tree near my house must be looking for prey, and my usual visitors are alert to his presence.
Hawks are predators—defined as animals that live by killing and eating other animals.
Predators (probably wolves in particular, but maybe lions, tigers, and bears too) have a bad rap with many people. But predators, like scavengers (e.g., vultures, yellow jackets, and raccoons), play an essential role in maintaining the ever precarious balance of nature. If you have never learned to appreciate predators, read Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver.
There is another definition of predator that does not apply to the creatures playing an essential role in our ecosystem. The other definition is “a person who looks for other people in order to use, control, or harm them in some way.” Synonyms and related words include bloodsucker, exploiter, destroyer, and leech.
Those kinds of predators–a subspecies of homo sapiens–are a threat to the balance of nature and to the survival of their own and other species. They don’t kill to eat. They kill to feed an insatiable bloodlust; they glory in killing the last surviving members of other species. They rush to frack land that is not in their backyard. They lie about global warming because they dream of an iceless arctic where they can get more oil, oil, oil. They sell weapons to anyone. What do they care if children of a U.S. ghetto, let alone “foreigners” with different religions and different color skins, kill each other?
Thankfully, there are a lot fewer human predators than there are people who love this land and seek peace and social justice for all. We who are opposed to human predators must recognize how much stronger and louder our voices could be if we united.
Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology