Are trappers the new keystone predator?

Trappers get a bad rap.  If we learned anything from 101 Dalmatians, we know that killing cute, fuzzy animals to make coats is a bad thing.  Many environmentalists these days oppose any “tampering” with nature (including raiding the forests and trapping aforementioned cute animals). The danger with this logic derives from the fact that the Adirondack’s ecosystem has already been sufficiently tampered with to the extent that it cannot control itself.  The Adirondacks have lost their keystone predators.

During the colonization of the Adirondacks, the traditional European land ethic encouraged subjugating the wilderness, giving the settlers carte blanche to dispose of any less than desirable aspects of their new home.  This included killing predators such as mountain lions and wolves, keystone predators that kept the natural order by maintaining populations of smaller mammals such as beaver and deer.  In fact, the meager town budgets of the initial settlements funded two projects: constructing roads and paying bounties on the heads of the predators.

In that day and age, trapping for most people was an essential source of income to supplement their less than sufficient harvests.  Famous trappers were even lauded for their outlandish accomplishments, representing the reliance on and respect for trapping.  The days plenty did not last, and even with the keystone predators gone, people hunted the Adirondacks out of game.

In the last hundred years, however, with the founding of the park and decline in trapping as a profession, the small mammal populations (most notoriously the beaver) have been making a comeback—too much of a comeback.  With secondary growth in abandoned agricultural fields, deer populations are exploding, munching up a good portion of the understory.  A rise in beaver populations, too, has seen detrimental effects on the environment as they completely reroute streams, in extreme cases forcing them into an entirely new watershed.

Trappers today, therefore, play a crucial role in maintaining small mammal populations as they grow unchecked.  The State of New York recognizes trappers’ ecological importance in the Adirondacks.  It also realizes that selling native pelts to China does not bode well with the general American public, so they are taking steps to improve the image of the trappers.

The fact remains that without the existence of a keystone predator, an ecosystem will collapse from overconsumption of resources by exploding populations at the bottom of the food chain.  Some argue for the reintroduction of wolves into the park, but this suggestion meets fierce resistance from not only the trappers, but also hunters and natives to the park.  Conservationist movements within the park have never succeeded without the support of these groups.  Thus, we are faced with a difficult choice: do we allow trappers to act as a keystone species, or do we attempt to restore the pre-colonial Adirondack ecosystem by reintroducing predators?  If the former, what happens when fashion trends shift and furs no longer provide a viable income or incentive for the trappers?

All ecosystems need a keystone predator.  Do we trust ourselves to perform such crucial functions within an ecosystem?  Is such micromanagement sustainable?

Source: The Adirondacks: a History of America's First Wilderness, by Paul Schneider.