Arizona

Arizona is the setting for the book’s account of the Kaibab deer, a case in which an effort to protect one animal by killing its predators disrupted the ecological relationships that had kept the population in balance. The resulting increase in deer brought food shortages, starvation, and wider environmental damage, turning the landscape into evidence against managing nature by eliminating its supposed enemies.

Setting and Ecological Context

The Kaibab example is introduced as a case of deer living in equilibrium with their environment. That balance depended in part on predators—wolves, pumas, and coyotes—which prevented the deer population from growing beyond the available food supply. Arizona is therefore not merely a backdrop: the place’s vegetation and animal populations form a connected system whose stability depends on relationships among species.

The Predator-Elimination Campaign

A campaign was launched to “conserve” the deer by killing off their enemies. The aim was to protect the deer, but the intervention removed the checks that had previously limited their numbers. The book places this decision alongside the stockman’s efforts to eliminate the coyote, which had controlled field mice: in both cases, removing a predator could produce an increase in the animals it had kept in check.

Population Growth and Environmental Consequences

Once the predators were gone, the deer increased prodigiously. Their numbers soon exceeded the food available to them, and the browse line on trees rose as they sought nourishment. Starvation then killed many more deer than predators had previously killed. Their desperate search for food also damaged the wider environment, extending the consequences beyond the deer themselves.

Significance in the Book

The Kaibab case gives the book’s argument about ecological balance a specific chain of cause and consequence: predators limited deer numbers; their removal allowed the population to surge; scarcity followed, harming both the deer and their surroundings. The account also sharpens the irony of the campaign’s stated purpose. An attempt to conserve the deer produced conditions in which many more died, demonstrating why intervention cannot be judged by its immediate target alone.