Introduced donkeys and indigenous pumas are helping to resurrect extinct food webs in Death Valley

[Pantheraman]

"The authors compared the behavior of wild donkeys at wetlands with and without mountain lion predation on wild donkeys in Death Valley National Park. They found that donkeys were active day and night and were active up to ~5.5 hours a day on days over 95 degrees Fahrenheit at wetlands without predation. However, at sites with predation on donkeys, donkeys used wetlands only during the day, when the risk of ambush predation by mountain lions is lowest. And they used wetlands sparingly: visiting wetlands for only ~40 minutes a day on days over 95 degrees.

Sites without predation have numerous trails, very little vegetative cover, and huge areas of trampled bare ground. "These are the areas land managers and conservationists are concerned about and use to argue for the wholesale removal of wild donkeys," Lundgren told us. "However, if you go just a few kilometers away to wetlands where mountain lions are hunting donkeys, wetlands are lush with untouched vegetation, have only one or two donkey trails, and limited trampling," Lundgren continued."

https://phys.org/news/2022-07-donke...wmHFUUvTCCxpco_oFONNWhBS-19taUmEv_nfEXzWkCCF0

The paper: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2656.13766

I'm very skeptical of compassionate conservation towards invasive species which is something a couple of this paper's authors are in favor of, but the important thing here is that this shows a native predator learning how to catch an introduced ungulate, and maintaining the balance in the ecosystem. Something we should celebrate. Plus one can now use this as evidence for the landscape of fear.

 

[equidae]

Good to see more work demonstrating that burros aren’t the problem as much as not having predation on them is. Would be interesting to see what percentage burros make up of a mountain lion’s prey.

 

[birdsandbats]

Good to see more work demonstrating that burros aren’t the problem as much as not having predation on them is. Would be interesting to see what percentage burros make up of a mountain lion’s prey.

I'd say the Burros are definitely a problem. If they weren't there the Cougars would just take different prey and the donkeys wouldn't cause any damage - it would be better in every way. It would be fairly easy to get rid of the Burros, too, if the US didn't have that stupid law protecting them.

 

[Birdsage]

I'd say the Burros are definitely a problem. If they weren't there the Cougars would just take different prey and the donkeys wouldn't cause any damage - it would be better in every way. It would be fairly easy to get rid of the Burros, too, if the US didn't have that stupid law protecting them.

I definitely agree.
There’s two major arguments used to support the protection of feral equids in North America.
1. Feral horses and donkeys should be protected for their cultural/historical/nostalgic value.
This of course has zero relevance to ecology.
2. Since equids did originate in North America and members of the genus Equus have existed there up to the Pleistocene, horses and donkeys should be considered native.
To me, however, this is like saying that since the genus Tapirus existed in the various parts of the US in the Pleistocene, tapirs are therefore native the US. The ecosystems have changed some since the stem-horses disappeared from the North American landscape, and there’s no real reason to keep feral domestic equids around when they compete with native animals.

Side note: it always seems misleading to me when the term “horse” is used paleontologically to refer to all species besides Equus ferus or its domestic descendant. I can understand if the species is closer to true horses than to other living equids (though I would prefer the term “stem-horse”), but just for the record, Hyracotherium, Eohippus, and others were not horses any more than they were donkeys or zebras.