I have wanted the face of many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed, first to anemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen ever edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddle-horn... In the end the starved bones of the hoped-for deer herd, dead of its own too-much, bleach with the bones of the dead sage, or molder under the high-lined junipers.
"Desuetude"is a state of being unused. Leopold's description reveals what happens when predators are removed from an ecosystem. Herbivores overpopulate and eventually overex-ploit their food resources. Left with no food, they die. since Leopold wrote that essay in the 1940s, biologists have learned that wolves typically kill sick, elderly, or very young prey. Rather than harming herds of deer, elk, and caribou, this strengthens the population. In general, predators-sharks, hawks, snakes, and others-take only what they need to survive. That's a good lesson for humans.