Humans as Prey :
Thoughts on Rewilding

In February 1985, the philosopher and ecofeminist Val Plumwood crossed paths with a crocodile on a river in Australia’s Kakadu National Park. The crocodile attacked her and she narrowly escaped death. This traumatic encounter came to deeply inspire Val Plumwood in the years that followed. The encounter led her to reflect on life, death and the human condition. She wrote many texts on this subject, including a book of essays entitled In the Eye of the Crocodile, which was published posthumously in 2021.

Before her encounter with the crocodile, Val Plumwood’s view of the world was surely similar to that of all those of us who have never had an unfortunate encounter with a hungry predator. This worldview implies our widely accepted idea: “We can eat animals, but they can never eat us”. Yet for Val Plumwood, the altercation with the crocodile will profoundly alter this preconceived concept.

In the Western World, the idea that an animal could regard us as food seems almost absurd. When Val Plumwood is attacked, she feels this aberration in the deepest depths of her Western self. She describes the scene of the attack and says: “When its powerful jaws closed on me, I had the feeling that what was happening was absolutely inconceivable, that there had somehow been a mistake”. She continues: “My incredulity was not only existential but ethical; this was not happening, could not be happening. The world was not like that! The creature was breaking the rules, it was wrong to think that I could be reduced to food”. As if wild creatures of the living world had a duty to recognise the superiority of the human species that prohibits any attack on the human flesh.

Later in her text, Plumwood links her incredulity to what she calls “the human exceptionalism of Western modernity”. This exceptionalism is reflected in the superiority that the humans of Western modernity have granted themselves over the environment and the other species of the living world.

This feeling of superiority in the face of all other living things leads us to think that we dominate, disregard and ultimately underestimate them. However, the story of the encounter with the crocodile highlights a terrifying reality, buried deep in the bowels of Western society : “We are food and we feed other beings through our death”. Humans are food for other living things. We are edible, we are prey.

  In his book Métamorphoses, Emmanuele Coccia describes food as “the contemplation of life in its most frightening universality”. Val Plumwood also describes a form of frightening metamorphosis, when the jaws of the crocodile clasped around her limbs and dragged her down. She describes that “I had suddenly metamorphosed into a small edible animal whose death is no more important than that of a mouse. And the moment I began to think of myself as game, I realised to my amazement that I inhabited a sinister, implacable and deplorable world that would make no exception in my favour, […] for like all living beings I was made of meat – I was for another a nutritious commodity”.

One could expect that after such a traumatising encounter, Val Plumwood would turn her back on predators. However, her encounter was as horrific as it was transformative. When she was safely in hospital after her attack, a hand-full of people suggested going out to kill a crocodile in vengeance. Plumwood protested vigorously against such an attack, arguing that she had presented herself in the crocodiles’ territory – as an apex predator, it had merely hunted her as prey. For the rest of her life, she continued to question our relationship with the environment and challenge our perception of Predator & Prey.

Perhaps challenging our notion of the Predator itself is a good place to start. We western folk sometimes perceive ourselves to be apex predators at the top of the food chain. However, there is an objective tool, the Trophic level, used to measure and identify the position of an organism in the food web. Using this tool, humans are far from being predators. “This first estimate of HTL [human trophic level] at 2.21, i.e., a trophic level similar to anchovies and pigs, quantifies the position of humans in the food web and challenges the perception of humans as top predators”. On the Trophic Level, true apex predators such as polar bears score a solid 5.5. Yet in the western common imaginary, humans still view themselves as the top predator, perhaps owing to the ongoing extermination of wild life and predators from the face of the earth.

We nurse a deep rooted fear (and fascination?) for predators such as sharks, bears, crocodiles and wolves. Growing up in France, the wolf was the lead predator in all of my nursery rhymes and bedtime stories. However, in their roles within ecosystems, predators are not only fearful – they are fundamental.

The Yellowstone experiment is a striking example. In 1926, after relentless hunting of the grey wolf in the region, the last pack was killed. Since then, the fragile ecosystem of the park faltered. The elk, one of the main prey of the grey wolf, grew heavily in numbers. The lack of wolves chasing the herds meant less movement, compacting of soil and excessive grazing of the young willow trees, aspen and cottonwood plants. These plants are essential for beavers and other species for survival. The forest was dying and the species of the region were reaching the “limits of Yellowstone’s carrying capacity”.

In 1995, the park took a radical decision – reintroduce the grey wolf into the park. The Yellowstone Wolf project has been a major success, the wildlife biologist Doug Smith observes that the predatory presence of wolves keeps elk on the move throughout the seasons and “the beavers spread and built new dams and ponds”. A cascade effect was put into motion by the presence of wolves. In an ecosystem, every organisms is connected, “the dams have multiple effects on stream hydrology. They even out the seasonal pulses of runoff; store water for recharging the water table; and provide cold, shaded water for fish, while the now robust willow stands provide habitat for songbirds.” Contrary to common thought, the presence of predators revealed itself to boosts biodiversity, refurbish forests and change the course of rivers themselves.

Understandably, reintroducing predators such as wolves in today’s widely urbanised and inhabited areas is more than complex. Wolves have been reintroduced in France since 1992, however the relationship between predator and farmers in certain regions remains tense. As our ecosystems perish, the reintroduction of past predators presents itself as a possible solution. This poses the burning question ; how can we best plan rewilding and learn to cohabited with those we fear ?

Although we are not predators, we do have a huge impact on ecosystems around the globe. Unfortunately, unlike the predators of Yellowstone, this is far from a positive one. Today, no ecosystem is free from human influence and destruction. Rethinking of our place in the so-called food-web may humble us into accepting we – as all living beings – are food. This may also encourage us to learn to live alongside the wild apex predators who can replenish devastated environments and contribute to the re-balancing of dying ecosystems.

References

Emanuele Coccia, Métamorphoses, Paris, Éditions Payot & Rivages, 2020. p. 116.

Val Plumwood, Dans l’œil du crocodile, translated by Pierre Madelin, Marseille, Éditions Wildproject, 2021.

Brodie Farquhar, Wolf Reintroduction Changes Ecosystem in Yellowstone, Yellowstone National Park Trips.com, June 2021. https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wildlife/wolf-reintroduction-changes-ecosystem/

Fanny Privat, Loup, y es tu ?,  Le Monde Diplomatique, Publication Juin 2023. https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/cartes/loups#partage

Sylvain Bonhommeau sylvain.bonhommeau@ifremer.fr, Laurent Dubroca, Olivier Le Pape, and Anne-Elise Nieblas. Eating up the world’s food web and the human trophic level,  Edited by B. L. Turner, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, and approved, 110 (51) 20617-20620, December 2, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1305827110