Stories of Predation : Sixty Years of Watching Wildlife

Sixty years ago, Dick Dekker immigrated from one of the smallest countries in Europe to the second-largest country in the world- Canada. Dreaming of Canada’s wilderness, he risked his life to find wolves and spent half a century watching eagles and falcons for which his native Holland had become too small to support. The ancient maxim that nature is red in tooth and claw, attributed to Shakespeare, is still true today. But rather than just concentrating on the predators, Dekker’s focus is also on the prey species, how deer, ducks, and sandpipers manage to cope with their peril. Hiking and camping in Jasper National Park, he was first to describe that the return of wolves had led to the restoration of the ecological balance between vegetation, grazing elk, and wolves, with beneficial side effects for the intertwined lives of beavers and other wildlife. His insights became the inspiration for what has since become known as a trophic cascade in Yellowstone. Dekker’s detailed studies of the hunting tactics of Peregrine Falcons on ocean coasts and inland lakes are unprecedented. He has recorded more prey captures by wild falcons than anyone else in the published literature. His discoveries and unique observations are narrated in simple yet evocative prose the reader can identify with.