Death is simply the way of nature

By CRAIG MEDRED

MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — All things die. Some die slowly day by day in a steady decay from mountain to rock to sand to dust. Others go with the flick of a switch from the world of light to eternal darkness.

As the animals who have carved out the most comfortable niche in the global ecosystem, we expect a steady progression from birth through infancy on into childhood, adolescence and old age. Most of us live that progression.

There are sad exceptions, but they are exceptions. Today, most newborns in the Western world survive infancy on the way toward becoming adults.

Some of us come to think of this as the natural order of things.

It is anything but.

The natural order is that the young die. They die in great numbers. And they often die brutally no matter what some of us believe because violence rarely touches our world.

Some, of course, long for a better world, a more peaceful world, a world where all people and animals live in blessed harmony.

It is nice to dream of this biblical Eden. It is delusional to believe, as some do, that wild nature is that Eden.

Wild nature is a war zone where every animal is at risk every day.

This is how the natural world works:

From 1988 to 2005, “99 of 148 [grizzly bear cubs] died, and 20 of 54 yearlings died” in Denali National Park and Preserve, according to the latest report on grizzly bear population ecology in the park.

These cute little bears died in overwhelming numbers despite being watched over by what are arguably the most protective and caring mothers in the wild kingdom.

Weather probably killed some cubs. Starvation claimed others. And past studies have shown many were killed by other bears.

Think about these numbers.

If you are a cub born into that unhunted population of Denali bears, you have about a 3-in-10 chance of surviving your first summer, and if you beat the odds in that first year, there remains a 40 percent chance you will die the next year.

Unseen and thus unnoticed, cute, cuddly baby bears die with astonishing regularity at Denali every year.

No one has ever called, written or e-mailed me to express their concerns, fears, worries or anger about these animals’ deaths.

But when the Anchorage Daily News runs a story about a big, old bear being shot by a hunter on Kodiak Island, the floodgates open. For some people, it’s worse, much worse, when man does the killing in nature.

Little old ladies, their voices choked with emotion, leave phone messages bemoaning the death of the bear.

Younger folks call to lecture on how “distasteful” the photo of a dead animal (how many burgers has McDonald’s sold?) before promptly hanging up the phone. Letter writers try to accuse the hunter in question of killing this particular animal and leaving it to “rot,” a charge that displays a stunning ignorance of the Kodiak ecosystem.

No protein goes to rot on the Emerald Island. Ask any hunter who has pursued Sitka blacktail deer there. Brown bears are everywhere, and they are efficient scavengers. The carcass of a Kodiak brown bear left behind by a hunter who took the hide doesn’t rot; it feeds other bears.

It could even end up feeding the cubs of a sow struggling to get her litter through that first, most dangerous year of life.

Given all of this, I can feel no grief when a bear that has lived a long and murderous life is itself shot dead as part of a well-regulated, sustainable harvest of a natural resource — even if I have no desire to ever shoot another bear myself.

(I have shot two, for the record; in neither case was there any choice. I hope not to have to shoot another, but one never knows about these things.)

I like bears, but they are all destined to die.

That is what nature is all about. That is the way nature works, and it’s not something about which to get upset.

If you want a valid reason to get upset, turn your attention to the people of Africa dying from diseases associated with the simple lack of access to clean water. Now that is upsetting.