North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Charles Paradise <machelp@attglobal.net>]

Thanks to Ginda for plausible reasons why wild animals are becoming more 
prevalent.

Indeed my father commented again and again about the loss of New England's 
majestic elms.  A squirrel would have a long climb out in the open to ascend 
from an elm's base to its first branches - open and vulnerable to attack all 
the way up.  That plus the ever-present roaming dogs must have made a 
squirrel's life in a New England town seem much less secure.  Oh, plus 
shooting was a pastime for a population without TV.  So I can see how my 
father didn't observe many squirrels in the town.

In my town there's more woods than there has been since the 1600's.  Not only 
was most all food grown locally, but also food and bedding for their horses 
too.  Imagine the pressure to grow if you had to grow enough corn to make 
alcohol to fuel your car, as well as feed your family!   No wonder farming 
was a viable career in the 1600's, 1700's, 1800's North America.

Incidentally wooded areas in New England increase by ten percent a year - in 
ten years wooded area double - deer increase about proportionally - experts 
predict the return of the Cougar to eastern woods - as an inevitable fact.   
Twice this year in Beverly, a small town north of Boston on the coast, 
multiple people saw a Cougar.  Isolated noticings are dismissed as a pet that 
got released;  however the Cougar has returned to Missouri where it had not 
been for many years because of similar reasons, reforestation, increase of 
deer.  Incidentally, once Cougar return your days of jogging in the woods are 
over...notice that in California Cougars almost inevitably attack 
joggers...the running just gets their instincts going.  Rule one dealing with 
Cougars is, don't run.

Re: the increase of the predatory birds Ginda notices, perhaps the raptors 
are still increasing and we have yet to see their maximum....is there a 
possibility that then finally they will start taking squirrels?  Is there 
hope?
Charlie Paradise
still waiting in zone 5 for predators to take more squirrels

list@ginda.us wrote:

> The prevalence of wild animals just seems to grow, in my experience. I live 
> in a suburb of Boston that is well groomed, but has lots of wooded patches 
> between houses and several protected natural areas. I am 42. My theory is 
> twofold:
>
> 1) In my youth, the population of birds, especially predatory birds, was 
> depressed by DDT and similar insecticides. The birds are coming back.
> 2) In my youth, the population of everything else was depressed by pet 
> dogs. A leash law was instituted when I was about 20 - until then, packs of 
> pet dogs used to roam freely, generally showing up on school playgrounds at 
> recess-time. I bet at other times they were chasing whatever deer, 
> raccoons, groundhogs, coyotes, etc. that happened by. Even if they didn't 
> chase large predators like coyotes, they kept down the population of good 
> prey for coyotes, and made the neighborhood less attractive. The predators 
> also seem to be coming back - we now have lots of coyotes, and there's a 
> fisher a few towns over, and bears can't be far behind.
>
> That being said, I've not seen a change in the squirrel population in my 
> lifetime. There were plenty when I was a kid (living on a lot with mature 
> oak trees) and there are still plenty (again, living on a lot with mature 
> oak trees.) 1922 falls between chestnut blight (widespread in the NE by 
> 1904) and Dutch Elm Disease (first reported in 1930). Perhaps the parks 
> your father frequented were lined mostly with majestic elms, and not with 
> trees more hospitable to squirrels.
>
> Ginda
>
> That being said, in
> On Jul 4, 2004, at 9:27 AM, Charles Paradise wrote:
>
>      I still don't understand the inadequacy of natural predators.  Why are 
> fishers so uncommon?  Why don't hawks and other raptors taking enough 
> squirrels so we see less squirrels?  Makes me appreciate natural predators 
> more.  My father told me that when he was a kid around 1922, that squirrels 
> weren't seen in town parks but mostly when out in the woods.  What could 
> have been different in 1922?