Protecting biological communities in specific locales is a worthy goal. Saving endangered species and creating robust habitats for them to thrive is another worthy goal. These goals are not always in perfect harmony. Sometimes species have to migrate to survive and thrive. Unfortunately, between farmland, roadways, towns, cities, and other anthropogenic barriers to movement, species just don’t get around like they used to. They need help.

That’s where rewilding comes in. Rewilding is the process of reintroducing species to ecosystems they no longer inhabit (usually extirpated by humans in the Pleistocene).  Obviously rewilding would need to be done very carefully.   Rewilding efforts would have to proceed incrementally, much like the progression of clinical trials: start with small lab studies and go on from there. For example, Donlan et al suggested the following steps:

1. Small programs to monitor species interactions and potential effects on biodiversity and ecosystem health.
2. Experimental maintenance on private property of small numbers of cheetahs, lions, elephants and other contemporary proxies for reintroduced species, with experts studying effects on the local ecology and biology of the species.
3. Much larger nature reserves for more reintroduced species and their proxies.

Secure fencing and 24/7 staff would keep reintroduced species within the boundaries of these projects and mitigate potential conflict with humans. Of course, there will be some escapes – just as there are with zoos.

Here’s the thing about risk, though. Everything is risky: doing something…doing nothing…being bold…being timid. You have to take a case-by-case approach and look at the types of risks, probability of risk, alternatives, trade-offs, and how well risks can be managed.

Reference:

Josh Donlan et al Pleistocene Rewilding: An Optimistic Agenda for Twenty-First Century Conservation vol. 168, no. 5 The American Naturalist November 2006, 660-681.

Acknowledging that ecosystems are in constant flux doesn’t mean all change is good. But it does change our conception of what’s at stake. It’s not about preserving a biological moment in a specific locale. It’s about saving species.

Sure, protecting current locale-based biological communities is a worthy cause, but it’s not the only cause. The bottom line is to protect species and create robust habitats for species to thrive.

The history of the biosphere is a history of ecosystem upheaval.  Humans may have accelerated disruptive processes but the genie is out and we can’t turn back the clock anyway. All we can do is try to manage the disruption so that life continues. For me, that means thinking about how to maintain the reproductive viability of the flora, fauna and microbial life forms we’ve got now – without any precondition that they’ve got to stay put. Species have rarely stayed put unless natural boundaries prevented their migration.

Why should natural boundaries have the last word?

Ecosystem: “A biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment.”

– https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/ecosystem

According to many ecologists, ecosystems are either in a stable state or shifting from one stable state to another – otherwise known as “catastrophic change”. Although ecosystems are never completely stable, the idea is that they achieve a dynamic equilibrium by absorbing and accommodating change. But once some threshold of change is reached, we get catastrophe.

Are those the only choices we get:  stability or catastrophe? Does such a categorical approach represent how ecosystems actually work?

Not according to an increasing number of bioscientists. For instance, Brian Huntley and Thompson Webb argue that biological communities are bested viewed as temporary assemblages of flora and fauna that have come together by chance and opportunity, in continuous flux as species migrate in and out and evolve in response to changing conditions. Long before humans entered the scene, dynamic disequilibrium ruled the biosphere.

When the parts of a system are constantly changing, at what point do you say that the system is no longer itself? That may be easy to answer when the system is a living organism, which is either alive or dead. But ecosystems aren’t single organisms, so the either/or approach doesn’t really apply.  The concept of ecosystem needs to be freed from the shackles of its founding metaphor – that of a living organism – for us to better understand and manage ecological processes and change, without the bias inherent in presenting catastrophe as the sole alternative to stability.

References:

Huntley, B.  and Webb, T.  Migration: Species’ Response to Climatic Variations Caused by Changes in the Earth’s Orbit Journal of Biogeography Vol. 16, No. 1 (Jan., 1989), pp. 5-19. DOI: 10.2307/2845307

Kricher, John (2009) The Balance of Nature: Ecology’s Enduring Myth Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ; ISBN: 9780691138985

Mascaro J, Hughes RF, Schnitzer SA (2011) Novel forests maintain ecosystem processes after the decline of native tree species. Ecological Monographs 82(2): 221-228. http://dx.doi.org/10.1890/11-1014.1

Scheffer, M., Carpenter, S., Foley, J.A., Folke, C. & Walker, B. Catastrophic shifts in ecosystems Nature 413, 591-596 (11 October 2001) | doi:10.1038/35098000

Truitt AM, Granek EF, Duveneck MJ, Goldsmith KA, Jordan MP, and Yazzie KC What is Novel About Novel Ecosystems: Managing Change in an Ever-Changing World. Environmental  Management (2015) 55: 1217. doi:10.1007/s00267-015-0465-5 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00267-015-0465-5

“Any form of balance of nature is purely a human construct, not something that is empirically real.”

 – John Kricher; The Balance of Nature: Ecology’s Enduring Myth

 “We’ve forever altered the Earth, and so now we cannot abandon it to a random fate. It is our duty to manage it.”

– Emma Marris; Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World

 “Influenced by natural climatic, geological, and evolutionary changes, landscapes and the ecosystems within are continuously changing.”

– Truitt et al; What is Novel About Novel Ecosystems: Managing Change in an Ever-Changing World

“Our results support empirical predictions of the functional effects of diversity, but they also suggest basic ecosystem processes will continue even after dramatic losses of native species diversity if simple functional roles are provided by introduced species.”

– Mascaro, Hughes, and Schnitzer; Novel forests maintain ecosystem processes after the decline of native tree species.

“Nothing endures but change.”

– Heraclitus, Greek Philosopher (c. 535BC-475BC)

Saving threatened species will require a lot of creative problem solving. Let’s not make the job harder than it already is by letting nostalgia limit our options.

This by way of softening you up for an upcoming post on rewilding.

I’ve been thinking about  ocean acidification,  the ongoing decrease in the pH of the Earth’s oceans due to global warming.  What to do? Last post considered the possibility of   adding iron in the ocean to stimulate phytoplankton, which consume CO2 and ultimately reduce acidification. In theory.

Risky. All sorts of unknown unknowns. Likely unintended consequences.

To which my first thought is: well, that’s life. Not acting is risky too.

The problem with the oceans is that they’re all connected. So how to experiment in one area with triggering a ripple (hah!) effect? Can areas of experimentation be confined? Like adding iron in a sea where natural barriers prevent, or minimize, spread?

That’s the idea of the US: states as centers of experimentation. If an experiment works, other states will copy it. If not, well at least the damage is contained to Missouri.

Growth in global GDP increases energy consumption in the near term but reduces GHG emissions over the longer term.  Economic growth promotes urbanization, education of women, delay of childbearing, lower fertility rates, improved agricultural productivity, and technological innovation. These developments ultimately reduce emissions via fewer humans, more land available for wild habitat and reforestation, and increased energy efficiency. As economies become increasingly affluent, urban and service-based, further reductions in emissions are achieved through changes in transportation and consumption patterns. Healthy and growing economies will also be able to generously fund R&D to continually improve on ways to reduce energy intensity and carbon intensity of energy consumption.

Sounds a bit too idealized? These processes are already happening. For instance, in the US energy intensity – measured as energy consumption divided by GDP – has been dropping for decades. Carbon intensity has been dropping as well.  A carbon tax would help quicken the pace of change. Of course, a carbon tax would need to be phased in gradually so as not to disrupt economic growth.

Reference:

Carbon vs. Energy Intensity; posted on January 14, 2013 by Maximilian Auffhammer (the George Pardee Professor of International Sustainable Development at the University of California Berkeley). https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/carbon-vs-energy-intensity/

In a recent post I wrote how Vietnam’s stronger land tenure rights have contributed to reforestation in the countryside by giving smallholders a greater stake in maintaining their woodlands, which have economic value. But context is all: Secure property rights is not a cure-all for environmental degradation.  Vietnam has a lot of other things going for it, including a major forest rehabilitation program and a strong state that can enforce compliance with government initiatives. Add a growing economy that is rapidly industrializing and urbanizing, the people of Vietnam can afford to be forward-thinking in the management of their natural resources.

These advantages are absent in many countries. In conditions of extreme poverty, life is pretty much hand-to-mouth. Short-term survival takes precedence over long-term planning and stewardship of natural resources. Take the case of El Salvador, where rural poverty and variability of income are a leading cause of tree cover loss in coffee growing areas. Since shade grown coffee sells at a premium, many farmers have sought to maintain trees on their lands for their coffee to be certified as shade grown. But the coffee market is subject to periodic oversupply crises, and when that happens, prices drop so much that even premium beans cannot command enough for poor farmers to meet their basic subsistence needs.  So they clear portions of their land, sell the wood, and plant basic food crops.

The main lesson: small scale subsistence farming is a lose-lose proposition: it perpetuates poverty and degrades the environment. Smallholders cannot afford to be stewards of their environments: between the vagaries of growing conditions and food prices, they can’t count on a stable income year to year, so they have little incentive to forego additional income or food now for better returns later. Larger farms are in a better position to ride out price fluctuations and to maintain the long-term vitality of their land.

(And please don’t suggest subsidies for poor farmers:  https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/agricultural-subsidies-reform-government-support )

Reference:

Allen Blackman, Beatriz Ávalos Sartorio, and Jeffrey Chow (2007) Tree Cover Loss in El Salvador’s Shade Coffee Areas RFF Discussion Paper 07-32