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

Green and pleasant land?

Returning to blog again after a long break whilst I sat my finals I will start with a late blog regarding the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony.

It was recently revealed that Danny Boyle has designed a huge British ‘countryside’ set to celebrate the ‘green and pleasant land’ of the UK.  His notion of the countryside and the implication that he is celebrating (fairly) wild nature is an indictment of our relationship with nature in my opinion. 

Firstly it is worth considering the phrase ‘green and pleasant land’, first penned by William Blake in the verse

‘And did those feet in ancient time.
Walk upon England's mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!’

Here Blake used the phrase to complain that England’s ‘green and pleasant lands’ had been lost to the industrial revolution at the start of the 19^th century.  So when Blake used the phrase he was complaining about the state of wild nature in the UK.  Since then agriculture has been revolutionised such that the farms are now struggling to support wild ‘farmland’ birds.  Yet somehow Danny Boyle is celebrating the current state of English wild nature, using the term ‘the green and pleasant land’, which has been largely lost to industrialised agriculture since Blake used the term to complain that the industrial revolution had damaged nature.

Essentially, our concept of wild nature has shifted over time as cities and industrial farms have replaced more wild landscapes.  Hence it is hugely important that people are aware of what is wild and just what nature looks like when people don’t interfere too much.  Otherwise, successive generations grow up believing that the farmlands they see represent ‘nature’.  This problem has been termed the ‘falling baseline syndrome’ and has been neatly demonstrated with respect to fish stocks by showing that successive generations of sport fishermen have considered successively smaller fish to constitute a ‘big catch’.

If Danny Boyle is aware of the changes which have occurred to the English landscape over the past 200 years and still wishes to celebrate the British countryside then that is fine but I believe that he has a responsibility to communicate that to his audience.  I believe that there is still a lot to be celebrated in our dramatic coastline and protected areas however I do not agree that we should romanticise ignorantly over a countryside which largely doesn’t exist.

Moreover, the whole set strikes a chord with me in the way in which it aims to take control of nature by selecting a certain number of sheep and other animals, bringing them into the stadium and showing them off to the rest of the world.  If Danny Boyle wanted to celebrate our landscapes then I would far prefer it if he sent everyone to walk along the Welsh coastal path or the London WWT so that they could experience nature as people instead of spectators.  Nature should not be paraded we should be encouraged to go and explore it for ourselves.

Therefore I am sad that a largely false and romantic idea of the British countryside will be paraded in front of a stadium of spectators in the Olympic ceremony.  Yet perhaps some publicity is better than none.  I just wonder what Blake would say?

Finding beauty in nature

A surfer will tell you that they find intrinsic beauty in a clean, well shaped wave.  They will have gained an appreciation of waves over many hours spent among them.  Similarly a climber will be able to point out to you a challenging rock face and with their eyes will be able to trace a possible route of assent, a skill they were not born with.  My point is this: we can all, with experience, find beauty in nature and by nature I do not only mean that which is alive.

Forests of pines, or intensively farmed fields, fairly poor in terms of biodiversity can hold a beauty.  Whilst you may argue that a tropical forest or biodiverse meadow is more beautiful because it has more species and there is more to appreciate, we are unlikely to appreciate this beauty without exposure, without a chance to learn to enjoy it. 

As we become accustomed to habitats impoverished of biodiversity we learn to love these habitats, the habitats we grow up with.  Conservationists, therefore, may sometimes face a challenge in convincing people that the felling of a pine forest to restore an area to a more natural and biodiverse state such as a heathland is a good idea.  It is not an easy issue to solve and in my opinion it requires a combination of good clear communication (in two directions) between conservationists and members of the local community as well as encouragement for local people to spend time enjoying the new habitat.  Ultimately, individuals will favour conservation where they have a strong, personal appreciation for the landscape, probably not because they 

believe a world with more species is better per se.

Ecological snobbery clearly is not the way forward.  The National Trust has, over the past few years, made a great push to get more people from more backgrounds involved.  Some people are of the opinion that this has resulted, in some way, in a lowering of the naturalist ‘quality’ of the members.  Organisations such as the National Trust need not concern themselves soley with those that appreciate nature but should direct their efforts, as they do, at involving those who value nature less.

We can learn to love any aspect of nature.  Scientists may be said to have a slightly unfortunate role in as much as, when conducting research etc, they must act logically to provide high quality information to ensure that the information required to protect the planet is available.

Please take a few minutes to watch this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1swPZzxv0tI by a surf photographer Mickey Smith who is better than most at conveying his love for the natural world.

On criticism of scientists and their work

After reading the following article http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/datablog/2012/mar/26/climate-change-oceans  and the comments left regarding it, I wish to consider the role of climate scientists as well as their public perception.

Climate scientists’ work seems to be the subject of some of the most fierce criticism aimed at any scientific work.  Intelligent scientific criticism can only be a positive force, encouraging improvements.  Climate predictions are based on models and models contain uncertainty.  However much of the criticism climate scientists receive regards not the parameters used in their model (criticisms which, if correct could lead to an improvement of the model), but more general criticism.  They are accused of being alarmist for reporting worst case scenarios (as well as best case scenarios) or flat out dismissed on the basis that members of the public have no confidence in scientist’s ability to model future climate change or accurately incorporate their uncertainty into their model.

In the face of this criticism I feel it is important to reflect upon the role of climate modelling.  I maintain that it is the role of conservation scientists (including climate modellers) to inform policy makers such that better informed decisions can be made.  For example, the article to which I have posted a link above refers to a paper yet to be published.  Based on the article the authors have, in my opinion, attempted to answer a very relevant question: based on current knowledge and understanding what is the projected cost of not reducing CO₂ emissions?  Their answer appears to be 2 Trillion Dollars per year by 2100 (worst case scenario).  Next they ask another relevant question: what would be the benefit of reducing CO₂ emissions (to a quantified lower level)?  Their answer is 1.3 Trillion Dollars per year by 2100.  With these two pieces of information (particularly the later) as well as the costs of reducing CO₂ emissions (which I hope will be included in the full paper) policy makers are in a better position to decide whether, from a purely economic perspective, investments in reducing global CO₂ emissions are economically viable.  As a result, I feel that this paper will only contribute to our understanding of the potential costs and benefits of mitigating CO₂ emissions.

paper will be peer reviewed before being published and once published is open to scientific criticism.  The authors themselves acknowledge that ‘much is still unknown and uncertain’ and have only quantified the costs of changes to the 5 best understood components of the oceans yet it has still be fiercely by members of the public (please see comment section of above link).  On another point, the costs of climate change considered do not take into accounts the costs of damage to terrestrial ecosystems and changes in rainfall pattern etc.  This is not a flaw of the paper and the paper should not be criticised as being incomplete because of it.  In a similar way, many papers which promote land sparing (intensive agriculture coupled with preserved ‘pristine’ habitat) are criticised as not taking into account whether ‘pristine’ habitats will be preserved or socio-economic impacts of intensive agriculture.  I also believe that these criticisms, which may be correct, are misguided.  A scientific paper should be assessed on its responce to the question it attempts to answer.  Stating that it considers the wrong question may be helpful for further research but each paper should be assessed on its attempt to answer the question which was considered. 

Food and Biodiversity

The food and biodiversity crises are and will continue to be the biggest problems facing the world for the next 100 years at least.  Currently, of the 7 billion humans on the planet roughly 1 billion live in food poverty, malnourished.  At the same time, over the past 100 years the greatest cause of extinctions has been the conversion of natural habitats for human uses, the most important human use being agriculture.  Our current system of food production and distribution has the potential to be greatly improved without large damages to biodiversity however, with the population predicted to rise to around 9 billion by 2050 and as individuals across the world demand a higher quality diet consisting of more meat, improvements to the current system will be insufficient to prevent more damage to the world’s biodiversity.  The question which scientists should help answer is ‘how to produce a set yield at the lowest possible cost to biodiversity?’.

A consideration of the current situation reveals that there is potential for the relief of food poverty without damage to biodiversity.  Food is not equally distributed throughout the world and, whilst 1 billion people live in food poverty, another billion suffer from obesity.  It is therefore clear that a more fair or ‘equitable’ distribution of the food produced by the world could help alleviate food poverty.  Secondly, much of the food we produce we do not eat.  I am not only talking about food waste through supermarket discard or food lost due to lack of infrastructure in developing countries (e.g. food which expires before consumption due to lack of good storage and distribution infrastructure).  I also refer to food crops which are fed to animals for the production of meat for example, 7 kilograms of grain are required to produce 1 kilogram of beef.  As a result, 7 times more land is needed to produce the grain to feed people on meat than on grain directly.  Analogously, any potential food crops, or land which could be used to grow food crops, which are used for biofuels instead of human consumption should be expected to result in increased land conversion as land elsewhere is converted to fill the gap of foregone food production.  Therefore, if the whole world ate a vegetarian diet and if food equity was greatly increased then it would be possible to feed the current population without further land conversion.

The food demand of the planet is the product of the world population and the per capita (or individual) food demand.  Unfortunately both of these are set to rise as the world population approaches 9 billion and Eastern countries approach a Western, meat rich diet.  As a result conservationists are left to inform policy makers how this increasing world demand can be met at least harm to biodiversity.  Recently this has given rise to a debate which highlights interesting aspects of our attitude towards science.  The debate revolves around the following question: is it better to farm at a lower intensity, producing less food per hectare but maintaining more biodiversity on-farm and using more land or is it better to farm at a higher intensity, preserving less on-farm biodiversity but using less land (therefore sparing more ‘pristine’ habitat)?  If I were to ask you whether it would be best to farm less land intensively or more land in a wildlife friendly way to produce the same yield then what would you say?  There can only be one correct answer: I need more information.  The answer to this question depends on how much biodiversity survives on wildlife friendly farms and how the yield differs between these farms.  So far, work in Ghana and India has supported the idea that farming some land intensively and sparing other natural land is best.  Many people, including scientists, have objected to this finding for many reasons, none of which are, in my opinion, good reasons.  People look at a monoculture of coffee and cannot believe that this is better for biodiversity than coffee grown organically amongst native trees which are preserved.  This is precisely where science excels, to show not what ‘feels’ right but what is right.  So far, as I have stated, the answer appears to be land sparing.

Considering how to use the agricultural tools available (see above) is one issue.  Another is deciding which agricultural tools to use.  More specifically, should GM crops be used  After attending a debate regarding the future of GM crops I was surprised by the reaction of many members of the audience, it was one of fear, fear that GM crops will turn out to be a dangerous mistake.  I believe it is the role of conservation scientists (I include agricultural geneticists in this category) to explain, in a way in which the general public are happy with, why, in their scientific opinion, GM crops are safe.

In conclusion, feeding the world and saving all species will be incompatible.  Conservation scientists have the important role of conducting good quality research addressing the relevant problems such that policy makers can make better informed decisions

For a brief review of the land sparing and wildlife friendly farming debate see http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2011/sep/02/farming-biodiversity-conservation-nature-reserves.

Considering 'Extinction'

The ultimate end point of every species is extinction.  Irreversible and permanent extinction.  This is a natural process, it has been happening for as long as evolution, why then should conservationists and members of the public be worried about current extinctions?  The reason is simple, although extinctions are natural, the rate of extinctions over the past 30,000 years is 100 to 1,000 times the natural rate.  Put another way, the world is currently in the midst of a mass extinction, possibly the biggest ever mass extinction.  It could take millions of years for the World’s biodiversity to recover from our actions over the next few hundred years.

Confronted with statements like this it can be hard to process them, to fully grasp the message.  This blog will present different ways to think about extinction, to make it more real, something you can relate to.

I would love to see a live wild giant sloth or a 12 foot tall Moa bird or a woolly mammoth.  I wont because they are extinct.  I can see their skeletons on the internet or in museums but I will never see a live Moa.  Moas lived in New Zealand until around 800 years ago when the first human settlers arrived and killed them.  They had not been exposed to any land predators before and would walk up to humans who would kill them with ease.  Perhaps you to think the world would be a better place if these, and other, species were still alive today?  Looking at this issue in another way we can ask what species humanity will miss 200, 500 or 1,000 years from now.  What will the humans of the future hold against us as our greatest ecological crimes.  What species will they blame us for depriving them off?  Will they inherit a world without hawksbill sea turtles, Sumatran Tigers or European eels?  Perhaps you don’t care if we lose hawksbill turtles so long as we preserve some other turtles or perhaps you really don’t care because you are never going to see them anyway.  I cannot argue with these personal valuations, we are all entitled to feel however we like about species.

I have already mentioned museums and I think that it is interesting to consider how exposure to extinct species changes how we view these extinctions.  We don’t care about the extinction of species we have never heard about, how could we?  Therefore, zoos can argue that the keeping of species which they know will never be returned to the wild can be justified in terms of their educational value.  What about videos.  If you type in ‘lyre bird’ you can watch as the bird sings elaborate songs including imitating a chainsaw (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjE0Kdfos4Y). Having seen this video how would we feel if this species was threatened with extinction: more concerned that it should be conserved or unconcerned as it has been captured on camera and will therefore be preserved for future generations.  I would argue that the value of this bird to all who ever hear or see it in the wild (and therefore to the world as a whole) is greater than that of any video recording.

Alternatively a more moral consideration of extinction may prove interesting.  You were born onto a planet populated with millions of species, each of which is the result of many millions of years of evolution.  Each of these paths will never be replicated or repeated, no species which is forced to extinction will ever be recreated by evolution.  Therefore, every single extinction represents the loss of a valuable and irreplaceable piece of the world’s history.  Moreover, many of these species won’t end up in museums, species are being lost before they have even been found, perhaps before they have even been seen by humans.

Ultimately, biodiversity is not a luxury but a necessity.  When we force species, which provide the world with services we rely on, to extinction, we have to pay the price.  If we, as a world, make an informed decision that we would rather pay that price and lose species instead of paying an equal or smaller amount to preserve species then conservation scientists can say that they have done their best.  There is still much work to be done to reach that point of species valuation.