The Accidental Conservationists

Those who study ecology become accustomed to a relationship between the humans and biodiversity: the more humans affect an ecosystem, the more they reduce biodiversity.  Yet, there are periods in human history when this was not the case.  By learning from the ways in which humans affected ecosystems in these periods and their motivations for doing so, there are opportunities to recreate these interactions and benefit biodiversity.  Before the industrial revolution many land management practices increased the heterogeneity of (variety in) the landscape.  Examples include the planting and maintenance of hedgerows to divide fields before enclosure and the maintenance of coppiced woods to provide fuel for small scale iron production.  It may be tempting to look back on the relevant individuals as purposefully working to increase biodiversity but in reality it was usually coincidence that the practices which were economically viable for land managers also benefited biodiversity.  More recently, throughout the 20^th Century farmers were incentivised by the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to reduce this heterogeneity, to remove hedgerows and form larger, more uniform fields.  Farmers did this as it made economic sense and one consequence has been the great reduction in farm land birds (presumably mirrored across other taxa).  Viewing the history of our landscape as the history of selfish individuals making economically motivated decisions (some of which benefitted biodiversity and provided ecosystem services and some of which harmed biodiversity and decreased the provision of ecosystem services) opens up new opportunities for conservation.  The ecosystem services movement allows policy makers to appreciate the value of conservation.

It is for these reasons that the leaders of the country’s biggest conservation organsiations wrote an open letter to the Times with the subheading ‘Farmers are vital guardians of our landscape and wildlife, but they need financial backing to be able to do this’ in responce to threats to funding for angry-environment projects.

Just as individuals once helped nature because it helped them (divide fields or grow timber to use as fuel), helping nature must once again help farmers (gain funding from agri-environment schemes).  Farmers must be paid to help nature.  But who should pay?  I think that it is only fair that everyone who benefits from the farmer’s actions, which is...everyone, should pay.  You already pay farmers to farm, through the Common Agricultural Policy, surely farmers should be offering you a benefit in return?  Benefits like increasing bird populations for you to enjoy, ensuring the water running off their land is clean so that your water bills don’t increase to cover the cost of water treatment works to remove pollutants or managing land to increase carbon sequestration so that the costs of climate change, which you pay, are reduced ever so slightly.  These ‘public benefits’ are what farmers are paid to attempt to bring about through the one quarter of the CAP system which subsidises agri-environment projects.  However, it must be noted that this whole system relies on farmers either being paid to carry out actions which are known to bring about benefits or for bring those benefits about.   This may seem a trivial difference but currently many farmers are paid to carry out actions which are thought to bring about benefits where, infact, they may result in no benefits.  This problem could be solved by rewarding farmers for results rather than efforts where the effectiveness of the efforts is not well known.

Before I finish this blog I wish to add some notes of a more personal flavour.  So far I have written from the perspective of a theoretical economist, assuming individuals to be rational.  I accept (as economists do) that this assumption is flawed, not all individuals are completely rational.  For example, many farmers define their job as producing food not as a means to earn an income (which they happen to earn by producing and selling food).  Such individuals may rather use every available hectare of their land for producing food than for set aside a hectare for Skylark Patches even if the profit they would generate by ‘maintaining’ Skylark Patches was greater than the profit they would generate through farming that land.  I strongly believe that individuals should not be criticised for not acting ‘rationally’, for not attributing the same values to things as you.  Whereas the RSPB might prefer Skylarks, a farmer might prefer carrots in his field over extra money in his pocket.  On the other hand, some farmers may carry out interventions which increase biodiversity (or provide ecosystem services) when doing so is a net economic cost.  Such individuals prefer birds in their fields (and nearby land) to money in their pocket.  Therefore, in my opinion, the most that conservation organisations can do is educate, to make sure that the payments for agri-environment schemes reflect the value of the public goods they generate or protect and to make sure that land owners are aware of the options available to them.

Solving the problem of the lack of evidence based conservation, a project proposal.

In 2004 William Sutherland et al outlined the need for a revolution in conservation, a revolution which bases science at the centre of conservation (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534704000734).  I

will try to avoid recapping the entire article; it's short and easy to read so read it for yourself.  The key points are that every conservation intervention represents an opportunity to increase the knowledge base that is 'conservation biology' by carrying out appropriate monitoring (Sutherland later established www.conservationevidene.com as a central repository for this knowledge). In turn, conservation practitioners should basis their choice of intervention not on 'common sense' but on evidence (which can be found on www.conservationevidence.com). 

I have now been working for an organisation which carries out extensive conservation work.  Monitoring is not an integral part of this work.  In fact I think it is fair to say that it is not a significant part.  I want to change this. I have an idea which can change this not just at one site in one organisation but the whole organisation and beyond to other organisations.  I will start by considering how to integrate monitoring into all conservation work, from here I will demonstrate that using evidence to inform decisions should follow naturally.

Monitoring is not carried out for the following reasons:

*       Practitioners see no need to base conservation interventions on anything other than common sense and are therefore ignorant of the benefits of monitoring.

*       Practitioners undervalue the importance of monitoring

*       Practitioners are forced to chose between monitoring and implementing conservation interventions (I think it is human to view monitoring as a 'waste of resources' under these conditions) and chose implementing interventions

*       Funding does not extend long enough for meaningful monitoring, this is a common problem as, even where funding exists specifically for monitoring, it normally expires after 3 or 5 years.

I have designed a method of monitoring which will primarily address the last issue but in doing so will raise the profile of monitoring within the organisation and will therefore address the first three issues.  I will now outline my monitoring design:

*       I will partner conservation organisations with schools, specifically sixth form Biology teachers

*       I will work with organisations carrying out conservation interventions to highlight where they might benefit from monitoring their work

*       I will design a monitoring program including statistical analysis to monitor this work over a period of 10 years (or more depending on the project)

*       I will work with sixth form Biology teachers, providing this monitoring program which can form the basis of the students' coursework whilst students study and monitor succession etc in the field.  Students

will also have the opportunity to publish the results of their monitoring via conservationevidence.com (provided my program was sufficiently well designed and followed).  Students will also be able to use this monitoring work as the basis of their John Muir Award (http://www.jmt.org/jmaward-home.asp)

*       Successive A level classes can return to repeat the monitoring year after year to build up a long term data set.

This relationship between schools and conservation organisations will have the following benefits for each party. Where A level students carried out monitoring (including establishing appropriate controls) as a part of their studies then the awareness of monitoring work within the organisation will be increased.  Where students present their findings to the staff of the conservation organisation (as well as publishing them online) then I hope that individuals will be forced to recognise the opportunities that they had missed, opportunities which

had been taken by 16 and 17 years olds, opportunities they were capable of taking themselves.  In this way I hope that these monitoring projects will result in the relevant staff integrating monitoring work into

their own job.  Moreover, I would like to make such monitoring trips an annual event with the school, a part of the curriculum.  Where this is achieved and A level students return year after year then long term data sets will be collected at little or no cost to the conservation organisation.  These are the benefits of this partnership which will accrue to Conservation Evidence and the conservation organisations. 

Students, and therefore schools, will also benefit from this partnership.  They will learn about the design of scientific experiments in the field and be able to discuss how the project they are involved with could be improved.  They will have an insight into real conservation and ecology work which may help them decide whether this was a subject they wished to pursue at university.  They will be published online which will, presumably, strengthen their university application and they could gain a John Muir award whilst carrying out

their monitoring work.

I anticipate objection on the grounds that 'A level students can't carry out real science, they are not skilled enough'.  I believe that this objection does not withstand scrutiny. ConservationEvidence.com was established with the aim of allowing conservation practitioners to publish the results of their own monitoring.  Many of these practitioners will not have studied science at university and many will not have studied biology at university.  If conservation practitioners can carry out appropriate monitoring then so can A level students.

I am currently an unpaid 'people engagement' intern with an organisation which carries out conservation work.  I have created a monitoring plan (including statistical analysis) to offer to schools which will assess the effect of a valley mire restoration intervention.  More specifically, the effect of damming ditches on the

time taken for the ditch to fill in and slow water flow off the mire will be investigated.  Ultimately, I want to turn this project into paid employment.  If you can help me achieve this or have any constructive feedback then please let me know.

Thank you

Iain Dummett

Marine pollution; out of sight, out of mind

This blog is the first of two regarding the state of marine biodiversity.  In short, it is in a bad state due to overfishing, habitat destruction and degradation and climate change (which is likely to have an increasingly destructive impact).  In my first blog I will explore the ‘ultimate drivers’, the very root of the problem, of marine biodiversity loss and consider how these ultimate drivers differ from those affecting terrestrial (land) species.

It will be important to bear in mind 4 facts: 1) humans do not live in the ocean, 2) the ocean is very big and humans struggle to conceive of its full size, 3) a pollutant may have an effect a long way away from where the pollutant was released and 4) damage to the seas can be hard to see.  That humans do not live in the ocean has spared it of the habitat destruction which has occurred on land to make way for human settlements (with the exception of land reclaimation).  It also means that humans are less likely to notice damage to the marine environment and, as will be considered in my next blog, means that much of the oceans is not owned (unlike land).

For the rest of this blog I will consider pollution.  The problem with marine pollution is that it is so very easy to underestimate.  For one thing the sea is so huge it is easy for us to write it off as near-infinite with a near infinite ability to absorb and dilute whatever waste we discharge into it.  For example, according to a literature review of the dumping of munitions in marine environments, on 8 separate occasions, between 1945 and 1948, over 4,000 tonnes of munitions were dumped into the ocean http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/77CEDBCA-813A-4A6C-8E59-16B9E260E27A/0/ic_munitions_seabed_rep.pdf, page 79.  As the report states, these munitions have significant harmful effects on marine species.

Whilst humans may once have been able to discharge sewage and fertiliser into the marine environment when human densities were low, this can no longer be done without consequence.  When biological waste (sewage or the run off from fertilisers) is discharged in high concentrations then it acts as a fertiliser for algae resulting in algal blooms.  The algae die, are decomposed by bacteria which use all of the oxygen leaving no oxygen for the other species.  The result is a DEAD ZONE.  Our oceans have dead zones because of our actions.

In mentioning agricultural run off I have hinted at another part of the problem.  Fertiliser which runs of a field into a river can have an effect tens or hundreds of miles away.  This distancing of cause and effect means that individuals do not appreciate the effects of their actions and are therefore not in a position to reduce the ecological damage of their actions.  This is where science comes in, to provide evidence that A causes B, to educate the person responsible for A in the hope they will change their actions.  Let me take another example from the Marine Conservation Society website, Chinese lanterns (http://www.mcsuk.org/what_we_do/Clean+seas+and+beaches/campaigns+and+policy/Don't+let+go+-+balloons+and+sky+lanterns).  Chinese lanterns are fire and forget joy, you light them, admire them as they rise and then forget about them as they are carried by the wind.  Yet, that you have forgotten about them does not mean that they have magically disappeared from the world.  A few months back I heard on the radio that the coast guards had asked members of the public to alert them if they were going to release lanterns as members of the public had been mistaking them for flares and alerting the coastguard.  More recently I stumbled across an article explaining the damage they can cause to marine wildlife when they fall to rest on the ocean as litter.  Animals, turtles especially, mistake them for food, eat them and die when the balloons block their digestive systems causing them to starve.

That concludes this blog, let me repeat my main point once more, pollution which affects the oceans can originate many miles away and have effects which humans do not notice.  It is the role of scientists to establish the sources of pollutants which cause harm in the marine environment so that polluters are no longer ignorant and are accountable.  From here, the damage we cause to the oceans can be reduced.  In my next blog I will consider the economics of overfishing.

Losing Stars and Losing Species

Those who live in cities or large towns in the UK are likely to be accustomed to a night sky of just a few stars as a result of light pollution.  Just as light pollution has removed stars one by one from the night sky we see, extinction removes species from the world, forever, one by one.  Each time I spend a long period of time at home or university I forget what it is like to look up on a clear night and see a light studded sky with clouds of stars.  This feeling of wonderment makes up a part of the intrinsic value of a clear night sky, the value of the enjoyment or fulfilment gained not by using or consuming the sky but simply by enjoying it.  It is this value (applied to nature) which motivates most conservationists, it is also the value hardest to convert to a monetary value.

Luckily the stars are not gone and are waiting to be seen by anyone who is willing to get to a remote enough location.  Many of the species already extinct have left no trace, some have left only skeletons and photos and films remain of the species to be forced to extinction more recently.  Yet, just as someone who lives their whole life in a city, by and large, we do not know what we are missing, what it would have been like to sit and see the world by day, to experience the wild nature, and by night to gaze at the full sky hundreds or thousands of years ago.  This ecological forgetfulness which I have considered in another blog (http://valuingnature.blogspot.pt/2012/07/falling-baselines-and-landscape.html) results in us inheriting a world containing less sources of natural wonderment than the one into which we ourselves were born.  Moreover, we consider the world in which we grow to be ‘normal’, how could we not when we have never known otherwise?

Eventually each human generation leaves behind a world more impoverished than the one it inherited and each successive generation is accustomed to a world of less natural wonderment than the generation before.  Next time you are in the middle of nowhere on a clear night, look up.  Enjoy that wonderment and just consider what the wonderment we have lost from the living natural world just as we have lost stars from the city night sky.  Conservationists try to stem this loss and even to reverse it where possible.  I believe this is a truly important cause.  I believe this due to my intrinsic (non-monetary) valuation of nature.

Exploring criticisms of 'Neo-environmentalism'

Having read Paul Kingsnorth’s article regarding ‘new environmentalism’, which was published yesterday in The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/01/neogreens-science-business-save-planet#start-of-comments, I would like to pick out and discuss a few points.  Firstly I would like to state now that I both agree with some points made by the author and disagree with others, infact I think that the author confused himself by treating two different views towards conservation as mutually exclusive whereas in fact they are not.  Secondly, I will be reiterating points which I have already made and will therefore include references to other blogs.

The author uses the term ‘neo environmentalists’ to denote scientists which ‘speak the language of money and power’ to create a ‘business friendly’ argument for conservation.  He states that conservation has failed to changes society’s values as economic growth still dictates the outcome of decisions which have environmental impacts.  In short, I believe that the author is referring to scientists who have recognised that in order to bring about effective conservation they must demonstrate to governments and large businesses that such conservation is economically viable.  For a good example of such a piece of science, here is an article posted on the BBC website on the 31^st of July http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19050796.  I think that it is useful to deem this approach to conservation a top down approach as it attempts to alter the decisions of a few institutions (by better informing these decisions).

The author contrasts this top down approach to conservation with his favoured approach, one of reconnecting people with nature.  He suggests that if people are exposed to nature as a part of their everyday lives then they will come to value this nature and therefore will be more inclined to conserve it.  In this way I believe the author is promoting a bottom up approach to conservation which focuses on altering the attitudes of individuals.  In reading the article I gained the impression that the author feels that the two approaches are incompatible as one promotes an economic valuation of nature and the other an intrinsic valuation of nature.  However, suppose an individual values nature for its own sake and therefore wants to conserve nature.  If this individual feels that they will be most effective by taking a top down, economic valuation approach then promoting an economic valuation of nature and holding an intrinsic valuation of nature are not exclusive.

I would also like to pick up on a few phrases which I believe the author used sloppily.  Firstly he states that under ‘neo environmentalism’ ‘the value of nature is measured by what we can do with it’. This is wrong.  The value of nature is based upon what nature does (and has always done) for us.  Secondly the author states that ‘neo environmentalists’ believe that growth has no limits.  This is not true, such scientists aim to ensure that economic growth is not pursued at the cost of natural capital. 

Lastly I would like to discourage the view that humans and scientists will act as ‘Gods’ managing the planet ‘rationaly’.  This view of nature as a garden created by and for humans does not reflect the current conservation movement which is towards large scale ‘re-wilding’ projects which aim to restore nature to a more pristine state.  If anything these projects move away from the role of humans as Gods present in historical conservation where small sites where micromanaged to achieve very specific (pristine like) habitats which would not occur without human intervention.

I have previously written blogs exploring attempts to value nature economically (http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4254055270310485372#editor/target=post;postID=7495951196544968614) and the importance of humans learning to value nature by being immersed in it (http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4254055270310485372#editor/target=post;postID=6075429287993672434 and http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4254055270310485372#editor/target=post;postID=8039094925610903687) and I would encourage you to read one of those if you found this blog interesting.  I may also pick up on some other points made in the Guardian article at a later date.

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