By Bert Gambini, WBFO
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wbfo/local-wbfo-755360.mp3
Buffalo, NY – William Stolzenburg, author of Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators
Friday July 25th at 12:00pm
Fables Cafe at the Central Library, 1 Lafayette Square
In this impassioned debut, wildlife journalist William Stolzenburg examines predation's crucial role in the preservation of ecological diversity, painting nightmarish pictures of what happens when top carnivores are exterminated from ecosystems. Without sea otters to keep ravenous sea urchins in check, some ocean floors in the North Pacific have been stripped of kelp. In Yellowstone National Park, the eradication of wolves has resulted in a glut of elk that have trampled river banks and chewed down young trees. White-tailed deer have denuded the undergrowth in the forests of the eastern United States, because wolves and cougar have disappeared. Without large meat eaters, mid-size predators raccoons, blue jays, crows, squirrels, opossums have proliferated, to the detriment of songbird populations. In dazzling descriptions, Stolzenburg demonstrates how the delicate balance between predator and prey is so essential, and his book, rich in dramatic accounts of life and death in the wild, is powerful and compelling.
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