Casting a kind eye on the ‘bad guy’

When it comes to the animal kingdom, Peggy Clark thinks the predators get a bad rap.

Clark, a senior double majoring in geospatial science and biology, is well aware of the reasons behind that stigma.

Indeed, the predator, by its very nature, sustains itself largely by killing and consuming its fellow creatures, but it also plays important roles in natural food chains and population growth. In short, the eternal "circle of life" simply can't maintain its roundness without a generous amount of theoretical "villains."

That's a point Clark has been amplifying over the past year through a string of articles she's written for "Wildlife for All, " a website that advocates for respecting and protecting wild species and ecosystems.

As an uncompensated volunteer, she has posted extensive pieces about cougars, jaguars and lobos, but with a degree of compassion those animals might not always be afforded.

"If you just present predators as a threat and view them in a negative light, that really undermines conservation," said Clark. "It gives the impression that they're only a problem and doesn't explain why they're beneficial and when they have value."

Take the urban coyote, for example, which Clark wrote about in March. In her article, she references the more than 1,400 members of that species that lived in the Chicago area between 2000 and 2022 and notes that, as apex predators, they strengthen biodiversity by limiting the number of mesopredators, such as skunks, raccoons and feral cats.

Her piece also points out that coyotes are monogamous creatures that sustain faithful and lifelong pairings with their mates, and that they reside in 49 of the United States, all except Hawaii.

"Coyotes are versatile to the point that urban landscapes can actually be safer places for them to raise a family," she wrote, adding that while they often share spaces with humans, they tend to avoid them. "A few [individual coyotes] can sway people to believe that coyotes are bad, while the majority of animals go about their lives without ever being seen."

In crafting these pieces, Clark often applies her own personal research to her coursework and vice versa. Her look at coyotes interwove with an assignment in an African American studies class she took, in which students were asked to evaluate the ways the media uplifts or devalues a race in ways that create lasting and sometimes harmful stereotypes.

"The goal was for students to think through our social perceptions … as creating our normative logic," said sociology instructor Jacob Robinson, who saw Clark focus that approach toward the typical image of coyote as scavenger. "Peggy's work investigates these normative thought patterns that create and perpetuate our processes that value and devalue people, places, animals and more."

Similarly, her research from another upcoming article overlapped with her work within an Environmental Regulation course.

"In that class, I was working on a project about rodenticide and its impact on wildlife, with a specific case study of bobcats on Kiawah Island in South Carolina," Clark said. "Bobcats are probably my favorite animal in Virginia. They're the mascot of Montana State University in Bozeman, where I lived, and they're the mascot of Radford High School."

The incident she examined for Environmental Regulation involved the decline of Kiawah Island's modest population of bobcats, reportedly due to their consumption of rats that had previously eaten slow-acting rodenticides. It's believed that the bobcats' ingestion of those second-hand toxins caused their numbers to drop by roughly two-thirds, after which the wild felines' larger prey - deer - became overpopulated on the island.

"Once people found out that the rat poison was the source of the problem, local pest control operators took a 'bobcat pledge,' an agreement not to use poison to control rodents," Clark said. "They addressed it, and the population is slowly recovering.

"In 2025, the state actually implemented new restrictions on that poison, and that was based directly on the research on bobcats and understanding how it's impacting wildlife."

Clark's Environmental Regulation instructor, Assistant Professor Naveen Joseph, said he saw her work evolve from abstract to scholarly paper and then into a poster project she exhibited at Radford's Student Engagement Forum in April.

"She's really interested in suggesting stricter environmental regulations on using these poisons because you may think you're just killing these rodents, but, in fact, it can actually move up the food chain, not just for bobcats but for predatory birds and other animals," he said.

Clark began her essays after she undertook a web content internship with Wildlife for All in the summer and fall of 2024. In addition to writing articles, she also contributes to other stories, usually without credit, and occasionally includes art in the form of pencil sketches.

Most recently, she's stepped beyond the realm of the predator for a piece on the endangered Sonoran pronghorn - reportedly the fastest land mammal in North America, achieving speeds in excess of 60 miles per hour - and the conservation challenges they now face.

Professor Jason Davis first met Clark when she took biology under him, and he called her "a standout student … always there, always present."

Faculty members who lead introductory-level courses frequently make a point to ask students what they want to know, Davis explained, and he said Clark "always had questions. And I would say, like, 90% of the time, they were the kind of questions you've got to stop and think about, right? They were really good."

He was surprised to discover not just the existence of Clark's online posts - "Peggy does not broadcast herself, does not brag, does not show off," he added - but also their quality.

"She's way better than I would have expected for somebody who has, to my knowledge, no formal training at all," Davis said. "She's clearly doing it because she's passionate about it. She's very worried about the state of the world, but more than a lot of her peers, she's really plugged into it. I think it does cause her some stress, but it's so good to see her channeling that."