Falling Baselines and Ecological Ignorance

Lonesome George is dead and with him died his species.  But you probably knew that.  You probably also know about the extinction of the dodo and maybe the sea cow.  Fewer people know about the extinction of the Moa birds of New Zealand or the estimated extinction of 2,000 bird species from pacific islands in the last 2,000 years.  My point is not any kind of ‘I can name more extinct species that you’ conservation snobbery.  My point is that the over the past hundreds and thousands of years, extinctions and population crashes have happened, some without us even noticing as is thought to be happening today with tropical insect species.  However, our current generation is also unaware of extinctions and population crashes which were well observed.  In this blog I will be exploring this forgetfulness considering why it is an important problem, I will use the example of oysters as it is one with which I am familiar.

In England, and America too, 200 years ago oysters were a common food consumed primarily by the poor.  The oysters were so cheap as the supply was so great.  Today, oysters are a luxery item and many of the oysters consumed are grown in artificial ponds.  How is it that, until I began exploring the history of oyster consumption, I was completely unaware of just how many oysters there used to be?  For example, at the end of the 19^th century, just under 60 million oysters were landed in UK and these catches were considered poor compared to those of the middle of the century, in 2010 just under 2 million oysters were produced in the UK.  Yet today we do not miss the age of cheap oysters largely because we do not know it ever was.

So why is ecological ignorance a problem?

Every mistake is an opportunity to learn.  If we are not aware of our mistakes then we miss out on valuable opportunities to learn.  Therefore, by examining the past we can attempt to identify why species were forced to extinction in the past, the effect of these extinctions and how they may be avoided in the future.  Secondly, just knowing that extinctions have happened can change our view of the current situation of the world by making us realise that what we consider to be ‘normal’ is a world of biodiversity in peril.   Lastly, in the natural history museum at Cambridge is a Giant Sloth skeleton.  It’s huge. I wish I lived in a world in which the giant sloth was alive.  Or Woolly Mammoths or 12 foot tall Moa birds or Irish deer or Lonesome George and his subspecies.  Looking instead to the future, how disappointed will future generations be if they think of tigers and tree frogs, turtles and corals and species from the old videos which are gone now?

We must look to the future of our planet and ask ourselves what lessons we can learn from our past.  Using these lessons we will also have to ask ourselves if what we consider to be ‘natural’ is natural enough or if large scale restoration projects are required.  If we, as a developed nation which has significantly eroded our biodiversity, are to attempt to restore our landscapes to a more pristine state, we must first identify what constitutes a pristine state.  To do this we must turn to the past, to examine the landscape before we altered it so drastically.  In doing so we must raise our aspirations and reverse the imperceptible erosion of our view of what is natural and what is not. In short we must purposefully and explicitly address our falling baselines.

Opportunities for the use of evidence in conservation

Conservation is a subject which, over the past decades has suffered from a split between those who study it and those who practice it.  This gap, resulting from a lack of communication between the two groups represents the loss of a great opportunity a problem which is now beginning to be addressed

In 2005 an academic called William Sutherland found that less than 3% of conservation practitioners in an area in the South East of England chose their conservation interventions on the basis of primary literature- articles published in academic journals.  As academic journals are the medium by which scientists communicate their findings, if conservation practitioners are not basing their decisions on primary literature, what are they basing their decisions on?  Many practitioners based their decisions on ‘common’ sense, whilst others used past experience or recommendations from a peer.  Though these may all seem sensible options it is important to note that ‘common sense’ can be misleading when dealing with complex biological systems.  It is the role of science to test ‘common sense’ ideas and find out which are correct and which are not.

To look at things another way, if two different conservation practitioners are using different interventions in similar situations then the likelihood of these interventions both being equally effective are pretty much zero.  This means that one of the practitioners is using a more effective intervention than the other.  By finding out which intervention is most effective and then ensuring that both practitioners use this intervention, conservation can effectively get more for its money by avoiding ineffective actions.

But biological systems are complex and present managers with a huge range of challenges.  Academics can’t test all ‘common sense’ approaches to all problems and recommend the best solution on a case by case basis.  Instead two approaches are needed both of which are being implemented.  Firstly, scientists need to work with practitioners to identify the largest sources of uncertainty or disparity between alternative interventions, identifying the best intervention to make the largest possible contribution.  This requires academics to communicate with conservation practitioners asking where the largest uncertainty exists

Secondly, academics need to ensure that the most is made of the small scale imperfect experiments carried out every year by every conservation practitioner.  This was the main thrust of Sutherland’s paper which argued that every conservation practitioner should record details of their management of a habitat or ecosystem and the consequences of these management interventions.  Ideally experiments would be repeated and a control experiment, in which no action is taken, should be carried out alongside the intervention, this is unlikely to be the case for conservation practitioners who cannot justify a control experiment (as no intervention may be too costly) or who do not have the means to carry out multiple, well controlled repeats.  However, this is not to say that nothing can be learned from the experience of each conservation practitioner.  By summing the experience of all conservation practitioners, just in England, it would be possible to identify interventions which do and don’t work.

Futhermore, I believe that the greatest gains in knowledge will be made when conservation runs in both directions between conservation academics and practitioners.  Academics posses the skill of ensuring that, for given resources, they can create an experiment which maximises the knowledge gained.  Therefore, I suggest that a structure should be in place which ensures that those with an experimental background help co-ordinate the work of conservation practitioners so that valuable information regarding the effectiveness of current interventions (as well as novel potential interventions) can be generated and captured

If you are interested in this subject then please check out www.conservationevidence.com