The Missing Megafauna.

Everyone is quite aware of the big animals that have gone extinct around us in historical times. And no one who is sane and reasonable would argue against the fact that it is humans who have destroyed so many creatures. Either through hunting or by habitat destruction, it is modern industrial-era humans who have wiped out a disturbing chunk of our own natural heritage. And, of course, we continue to do this at an alarming rate.

But what I often discover is that a lot of people I encounter refuse to acknowledge the fact that ancient cultures were also guilty of wiping out the large animals that once wandered across vast swathes of land in the paleolithic world. There are several reasons for this stubborn refusal to see the facts as they stand. One of these is a certain kind of inability to think of Stone Age people as being capable of wiping out large numbers of big mammals, reptiles, and birds.

But humans armed with stone tools, spears, darts, atlatls, and fire were quite capable of slaughtering tremendous numbers of big animals in a short period of time. And when you factor in that detail that people were spreading across the world and moving into areas where such animals had no experience with humans...it was a recipe for mass extinction. People with throwing sticks tipped with razor sharp spears were extremely efficient in slaughtering big animals.

The other reason I for resistance from people who won't seriously consider the facts is that they have a picture in their minds of ancient people being beatific, of living in some kind of perfect harmony with Mother Nature. The noble savage. The human who only takes as much from the Earth as it can provide, and who gives back as much as he takes.

This is bullshit.

Ancient humans were as rapacious as modern ones, albeit in a different way. If they were hungry and figured that they had to run an entire herd of horses or bison over a cliff to feed one hundred people, then they would gladly force a thousand prey animals over a precipice to their deaths, even if they were unable to consume but a tiny percentage of the tons of meat produced in such a slaughter. They thought only of their immediate needs, just as humans often do today. As Homo sapiens moved across the lands they discovered, they killed off many of the animals that they encountered.

People like to think that the Aboriginal people of Australia lived in harmony with the land. And this may have been the case of the tribes the Europeans found when they first arrived by ship to that huge island. It's quite possible that the Aborigine had learned after tens of thousands of years how to maintain something like a balance with the ecosystem that remained to them after killing off so much of it. But when you look at the fossil record you will see that the mass extinction of the megafauna of Australia coincided with the arrival of the native humans. As they sped across the land they killed off many of the big animals they found and cleared them out to the last individual. There were bellies to be filled.

Similarly in North America you see the arrival of the first people and then the demise of Mammoths and Mastodons and American lions, Saber-toothed tigers, Megatherium, Glyptodons, Castoroides, Camels, Horses, the Short-faced bear, and on and on. Humans had to eat. And eat they did. Only animals who could reproduce in sufficient numbers stood a chance.

Humans found New Zealand and moved across that island paradise that had been all but isolated from the rest of the world for millions of years. And as they settled it from east to west, north to south, sea level to mountains...they killed off all of the big animals that lived there, wiping out almost every type of giant bird that had lived there. Of this there is absolutely no doubt. There was no living in concert with the land and finding harmony with the natural processes. They found and killed and ate until all of the megafauna were dead.

And it's pretty much the same today. There's almost nothing that moves on the land or swims in the sea or flies through the skies that we aren't going to eat or kill out of a sense of competition or just plain old cruelty. Worse than that...almost no one cares.

Life-size statue of the extinct Moa of New Zealand.

The extinction of the Australian megafauna and the North American Pleistocene megafauna occurred just after humans arrived. This was not coincidence. Humans wiped out all of the big animals wherever they moved.

The Last Big Predator

When humans first reached North America, there was a wealth of giant mammals roaming the continent. Our land was home to amazing creatures that we can only imagine today because the Native Americans wiped them all out.

There were all manner of vast mammals wandering the forests, plains, mountains, streams, rivers, and canyons. Among the many things we will never witness are Mammoths, Mastodons, Glyptodonts, Megatherium, Camelops, Smilodon, Homotherium, Miracinonyx, Arctodus, Tapirs, Bison antiqus, Bootherium, Castoroides...I could go on.

But they're all gone. Fled into oblivion. Of the great Pleistocene mammals, few remain in North America today, killed off by the humans who first colonized the New World.

A griz I saw in Lamar Valley in Yellowstone. I was well over a mile away when I photographed him asleep on the banks of the Lamar River. The best way to see a Griz. From a distance.

The last truly great Pleistocene predator still roaming small pockets of North America is the Brown bear. These animals were more than equal to the task of competing with giants like the Short-faced bear and the American lion. Their enormous wild companions all fell before the onslaught of human depredation, but the grizzly bear remains.

I've read accounts of how and why they made it through the great extinction that took their fellows, but I take no sides. Perhaps they were just too damned mean to fade before fire and arrows and superior numbers. Maybe they just toughed it through. One of my guesses is that humans never squeezed them out of the territory they preferred, finding those places too cold, too high, too wet, too inaccessible. The Brown bears that inhabited the deserts and the plains did fall before those early Americans and were too few in number to last out the first wave of gun-toting Europeans who journeyed across the lands killing everything that they perceived as even the slightest of threats.

But the griz held on in some few places. The wildest and most inaccessible lands remained their final redoubt.

I have a healthy respect for Grizzly bears. They are today, as in the past, the biggest and baddest soul in the Valley. They know they're tough. They have to be. I've only hiked and camped in the lands where they live a few times. I saw some of them, at a distance, which is the best and only real way to witness them. I'll go again to roam the same lands of this last of the Pleistocene giant predators, but I will tread lightly in their home, as I always do. I will make noise to let them know I am there, and I will retreat if I find myself too close to them. They are, indeed, awesome creatures.

I'm glad they toughed it out.

My favorite hike in Griz country to date: to the summit of Avalanche Peak. I did see a griz just as I began the hike. He wanted nothing to do with me and quickly moved off into the forest in the other direction.

Here's a good video about hiking around big animals. It doesn't concern Grizzly bears, specifically, but the same general rules apply.

The Osage Orange

An Osage orange I picked up along the upper reaches of the Potomac River and brought home. It has a most pleasing scent.

While Carole and I were exploring the Smokehole Canyon in West Virginia, I happened to see an Osage orange tree growing along the banks of a branch of the Potomac River. The tree had dropped ripe fruit into that river, perhaps aiding in spreading the seeds downstream.

And this reminded me of the fate of that tree.

The Osage orange is native to parts of Texas and Arkansas and Oklahoma. It does grow in other parts of North America due to it being planted by Europeans. I recall seeing them from time to time in the woods of my native Georgia where it was known as "the horse apple", because of the fact that horses will sometimes eat the ripe fruit.

The pre-Indian North American horse.

However, from evidence, it was once far more widespread than it is today. This is probably because the "oranges" were a favorite food of several large extinct mammals. Back then, the fruit would go through the digestive systems of these large animals and the seeds would be distributed widely in their travels within their dung. It's figured that such creatures as Mammoths, mastodons, giant sloths, and probably even horses ate Osage oranges and shat the seeds far and wide.

The Imperial mammoth, which likely ate lots of Osage oranges.

Alas, the arrival of humans to North America put an end to most of our continent's megafauna, and so the Osage orange lost its main vectors of distribution.

Today, you see it rarely out of its current range. But at one time it went wherever the big mammals roamed. Mammals that were all killed and eaten up by the vast tribes of the folk we now refer to as the Native Americans.

And now the tree probably best finds distribution via waterways?

(With a tip of the hat to Mark Gelbart's GEORGIA BEFORE PEOPLE.)