3.1: Relationships between wildlife and humans
- Page ID
- 95318
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Modern humans, Homo sapiens, arose about 300,000 years ago. For millions of years, our species’ predecessors lived by hunting and gathering wildlife and plants, and we did the same. One study shows that 1.8 million years ago, Homo habilis settlements contained stripped bones from individual wildebeest, antelopes and gazelles from specific age classes that were different from what the predators around them hunted. This indicates that they were targeting these animals by hunting, not just scavenging (Burns, 2020). There is fossil evidence of our species cooking and eating shellfish as much at 160,000 years ago, and crafting fishing tools 90,000 years ago. (Smithsonian Institution) Later evidence (petroglyph art and remains at human settlements show that hunting wildlife has been a time honored tradition throughout the existence of humanity.
The switch from hunting and gathering to domestication of wildlife and plant resources started about 12,000 years ago, and greatly changed our relationship with wildlife. This change in human habits did not occur evenly across the globe, however. Those populations of humans who produced their own resources were able to outcompete native populations of hunter/gatherers for habitats critical for wildlife. By drastically altering habitat with agriculture and settlements as they moved around the globe, they have disrupted ecosystem balances upon which wildlife species depend. There are still populations of hunter/gatherers today, but they are as much endangered as the wildlife they depend upon.
When humans settled, claiming land as their own, wildlife become a competitor for the resources on this land. In modern times, endangered wolves that take cattle are hunted and killed. Foxes and raccoons that hunt our flocks are trapped. Bears who raid our trash cans are, at best, relocated, but if they are too habituated to humans, they are put down. Our general relationship with wildlife has drastically changed from our early beginnings, and part of the role of wildlife biologists is to seek ways in which we can coexist, each with the resources we need for survival.