Tag Archives: wildlife
Almost, a Welcomed Surprise
The dustings from most previous storms, and atypical warm conditions, and storm paths that have gone around our southern Wisconsin farm, have left us in an extended “fall or spring-season-like trance”. Fields of standing upright plant stalks blow and shake in the wind, brown, gray and straw colored. Finally, after much of the winter without winter-like conditions, Stone Prairie Farm is under a blanket of deep snow. Usually, the first heavy snows arch these stems to the ground.
We long for the annual blizzards, the howling winds, snow moving horizontally, sweeping by the windows at race-car speeds. These are the times we move closer to the windows, the woodstove, and on forays outdoors to feel the excitement of the energetic storm. We listen to the thrashing plant stems, ten to fifteen foot tall stems of big bluestem, Indian grass, prairie dock and others whipping each other into tatters. From above, these stems are swinging wildly through circular motions, figure “8”, and irregular patterns. Where they touch the ground, patterns of this energy play out in wind renderings. The story of each plant stem and where they thrash against the snow covered ground speak to the direction and force of the blowing wind.
About Steven I. Apfelbaum
Steven I. Apfelbaum is Chairman of Applied Ecological Services Inc., a company he founded in 1975. He has worked on design, construction, management, monitoring, and research of ecosystems and has taught ecosystem restoration to land trusts, conservation organizations, and families interested in restoring their property.
Historic Temperate Rainforest Agreement Down to the Fine Print
After 30 years of controversy that tore at the social fabric of Tasmania, the federal and Tasmanian governments of Australia finally signed the Tasmanian Forests Intergovernmental Agreement to provide support and funding that will help the timber industry transition out of native-forest logging and will protect the region’s high-conservation-value rainforests. In sum, the government will provide much-needed financial support for workers and contractors to cease logging native forests while it takes legal steps to protect these forests as formal reserves similar to national parks. Financial support for a major pulp mill, which would have literally chipped away at globally irreplaceable rainforests, will be abandoned due to a prohibition on use of government funds for the mill (for further details, see a discussion on the Wilderness Society, Australia, website).
Native forests in Tasmania are global champions in carbon storage and include the tallest flowering trees on earth. These forests are now part of an historic agreement to end logging of native forests in Tasmania thanks to the efforts of conservation groups. Photo credit: Vica Bayley, The Wilderness Society (Tasmania).
Tasmania’s temperate rainforests are world class. Both the World Wildlife Fund and Conservation International ranked them among the most outstanding rainforests on earth, and several of the proposed high-conservation-value forest reserves are juxtaposed with World Heritage Sites recognized for their importance to global biodiversity. In these rainforests, size matters as they include the largest flowering tree – sweet gum (Eucalyptus regnans) – which can grow taller than a 25-story building and live longer than 400 years, the largest (nearly 1 meter) freshwater crustacean (tayeta), eagle (Tasmanian wedge-tail), and marsupial (the infamous Tasmanian devil). The 477,000-hectare (1.2-million acres) Tarkine Wilderness in northwestern Tasmania is one of the largest intact temperate rainforests in the world and this, among several other areas, would be protected under the agreement.
Many of Tasmania’s amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals are found nowhere else on earth, and some of the plants have affinities dating back to an ancient landscape when dinosaurs were dominate and continents were joined as Gondwana. Tasmanian rainforests, as well as those on the Australian mainland, also have been crowned by scientists as global champions in storing vast amounts of carbon in massive trees, dense foliage, and productive soils, an amount equivalent to nearly six times Australia’s annual carbon dioxide emissions. Turning rainforests into wood chips for glossy magazines, as previously proposed, would release most of this stored carbon as a greenhouse gas pollutant, impacting threatened species like the wedge-tail eagle.
Although the ink has barely dried on this historic agreement, the fight to protect these rainforests is far from over. Conservation groups are busy advocating for specific set asides as additions to World Heritage Sites, support is needed from all political parties of the Tasmanian Legislative Council, reforms are being proposed for plantation management, and there is much-needed private lands conservation work ahead. Should all go as planned, the Tasmanian agreement will be hailed as a global model in efforts to save these remarkable but forgotten rainforests. In the weeks ahead, I will be drafting a scientist sign-on letter thanking Australia’s prime minister and Tasmania’s premier for their commitments to the agreement and requesting the designation of high-conservation-value forests identified by conservation groups as new set-asides. Stay tuned!
Sources: Australia’s temperate rainforests store about 300 metric tons per hectare (Keith, H., B.G. Mackey, and D. B. Lindenmayer. 2009. Re-evaluation of forest biomass carbon stocks and lessons from the world’s most carbon dense forests. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106 (28):11635-11640). Carbon dioxide emissions were obtained from the United Nations data source on emissions (2007).
Dominick A. DellaSala is chief scientist and president of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, and president of the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology. He is the author of Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World: Ecology and Conservation.
About Dominick A. DellaSala
Dominick A. DellaSala is Chief Scientist and President of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, and President of the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology.
Governor Parnell Can’t See the Trees for the Rainforest
Containing about one-third of the world’s coastal old-growth rainforests, the Tongass is the “crown jewel” of the National Forest System. Its pristine rivers produce more salmon than any other place on earth. The regional economy is tied to the health of this fishery and wildlife, which in turn, depends on how the Tongass rainforest is managed.
Logging on Prince of Wales Island, Alaska threatens remaining intact rainforests
Most of the productive forests are verdant old growth Sitka spruce and western hemlock, with ideal conditions for abundant salmon, deer, and other subsistence wildlife. But most of the largest trees were logged decades ago. Industrial logging was slowed by landmark policy changes in the last quarter of the 20th century, including the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. But if Alaska Governor Sean Parnell has his way, the Tongass will return to the clearcut strategy of the past.
The Governor recently announced that the State would challenge the Roadless Rule as it applies to the Tongass as well as a federal judge’s recent decision overturning the Bush-era exemption to the rule in Southeast Alaska. In his announcement, Governor Parnell stated that, “this is the wrong time for the Forest Service to further restrict timber supply, new mining jobs and development, and impose higher energy costs on communities.” He also wants to dam and mine the region’s salmon bearing streams and announced a “timber task force” that could lead to a return to unsustainable and damaging logging.
The Governor’s myopic view of the life sustaining Tongass rainforest is at odds with the region’s sustainable economic drivers. Southeast Alaska employment is no longer dominated by natural resource extraction; rather, today’s jobs are in non-extraction services (44%, many in tourism), government (36%), leisure/hospitality (10%), commercial fishing and seafood processing (8%). The mining and wood products industries are dead last, each representing 1% of regional employment. The economic engines derived from old-growth rainforests, intact forest roadless areas, subsistence wildlife, and, especially salmon are what is driving the economy today and into the future.
In trying to prop up the few jobs in logging and mining on the Tongass, the Governor would seriously harm other job sectors— especially Alaska’s healthy salmon and trout populations that pump nearly $1 billion into the local economy every year.
Cruise ships, local guides, and bush pilots are busy not because tourists come to see clearcuts, but because they come for fishing, wildlife viewing, sight seeing, and other rainforest amenities. We know from other regions, like the Pacific Northwest, that logging, road building, mining, and dams have together nearly devastated commercial and recreational fisheries.
Fiscally the Governor’s proposals do not pencil out. According to the Forest Service, total revenues from all timber sales on the Tongass combined were $5.5 million from 2002-2008. During this time, the agency spent nearly $30 million of taxpayer dollars just on building timber sale roads. Far more was spent in planning and administering these sales. The road construction budget for one sale alone (e.g., Central Kupreanof) is $6 million. A University of Alaska study pegged the cost to the U.S. Treasury of each timber industry job in Southeast Alaska at over $170,000 annually.
The Forest Service needs to transition its timber program into restoration, taking out and repairing damaging logging roads and culverts, and thinning overstocked post-clearcut forests. This type of management is not measured in board feet but in restoration jobs and healthy fish and wildlife populations, which in turn create local jobs in sustainable industries. American taxpayers do not want to foot the bill for the timber industry, but are likely willing to invest in restoring damaged fisheries because it is good for the region’s ecology and economy.
The Roadless Rule protects 58.5 million acres of some of the most pristine areas in the nation, including the Tongass. Protecting intact rainforests is sound fiscal and environmental policy and an investment in the region’s future. The Governor’s tunnel vision would send the state down a too familiar dead end.
Dominick A. DellaSala is chief scientist and president of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, and president of the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology. He is the author of Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World: Ecology and Conservation. Randi Spivak is Vice President of Government Affairs, Geos Institute, Washington D.C, and is a national leader in efforts to protect National Forest roadless areas and old-growth forests. Both have worked on the Tongass and other rainforest regions for many years.
Read this blog post translated into Estonian.
About Dominick A. DellaSala
Dominick A. DellaSala is Chief Scientist and President of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, and President of the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology.
Logging Company Threatens Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest
Aggressive logging in one of the last remaining large blocks of temperate rainforests in the world – the Great Bear Rainforest – is jeopardizing an historic agreement designed to boost rainforest protections and shift logging from industrial clearcuts toward ecosystem-based management (a lesser form of logging).
"Spirit Bear" feeding on salmon, Great Bear Rainforest; photo credit Wayne McCrory, Valhalla Wilderness Society
The Great Bear and adjacent archipelago of Haida Gwaii are critically important rainforests (read more in Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World) because they represent over a quarter of the Pacific Coastal rainforest region, a vast area that stretches from Alaska’s Prince William Sound to the California coastal redwoods. Like its northerly neighbor, the Tongass, the Great Bear Rainforest and Haida Gwaii are among the last places on earth where it is still possible to experience untrammeled temperate rainforests. These verdant forests are home to coastal giants like Sitka spruce, a white phase of the black bear (Kermode or “Spirit Bear”), a unique subspecies of goshawk, abundant grizzly bears and wolves, and prodigious salmon runs.
On March 31, 2009, the Great Bear Rainforest agreements were reached (and endorsed by the government of British Columbia) with conservation groups, logging companies, and First Nations to protect half of the intact rainforests from all industrial development while allowing some forms of logging under the yet to be developed principles of ecosystem-based management. And while the agreement falls short of the 70 percent protection targets recommended by scientists, it brought all the major parties together toward agreeing on these science-based goals.
That is except for the TimberWest logging company. The company’s history of opposing forest protections got them fewer restrictions on logging during the transition to full implementation of the agreements. Recently they boosted logging levels in the southern portion of the region before more restrictive rules come into place. This rush-to-log has put the company at the forefront of controversy.
Forest Ethics, Greenpeace, and Sierra Club, BC got a birds-eye view of the companies’ logging practices by flying over the southern region on June 11 where TimberWest was chipping away at coastal rainforests. If this were a hockey game, the company would be sent to the penalty box for un-sportsman conduct. TimberWest can still get out of the penalty box as it just changed ownership and conservation groups are asking the owners to turn over a new leaf (http://forestethics.org/timberwest-logging-threatens-great-bear-rainforest-solution) by supporting full implementation of the agreements now.
TimberWest clearcutting of the Great Bear rainforest; photo credit Garth Lenz
The agreements offer a unique opportunity to halt large-scale logging and manage the region responsibly. Corporations have more than a bottom-line responsibility to shareholders. They also need to be good neighbors and stewards of the same life-support services that provide local communities with clean water, coastal fisheries, a stable climate, and subsistence wildlife. TimberWest is being asked to act as a responsible citizen of the rainforest community by doing its part to abide by the agreements while there is still time to save some of the last intact old-growth temperate rainforests on earth.
Dominick A. DellaSala is chief scientist and president of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, and president of the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology. He is the author of Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World: Ecology and Conservation.
About Dominick A. DellaSala
Dominick A. DellaSala is Chief Scientist and President of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, and President of the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology.
Win-Win for Wind Energy and Wildlife Conservation
Wind energy offers the potential to reduce carbon emissions while increasing energy independence and bolstering economic development. I am a huge proponent of harnessing wind to power our lives but this form of energy development has a larger land footprint per Gigawatt (GW) than most other forms of energy production, making appropriate siting and mitigation particularly important (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Renewable energy reduces our carbon footprint but human disturbance from poorly placed developments has unintended consequences for birds, bats and other wildlife. Photo credit Joe Kiesecker with The Nature Conservancy.
Wildlife species requiring large and intact habitats and those that avoid tall structures are particularly at risk from wind development. Developing energy on disturbed lands rather than placing new developments within large and intact habitats would reduce cumulative impacts to wildlife, a major tenet of our new book Energy Development and Wildlife Conservation in Western North America.
As outlined by the Administration’s report ‘20% Wind Energy by 2030’, the Department of Energy (DoE) estimates it will take 241 GW of terrestrial based wind development on approximately 5 million hectares (12.3 million acres) to reach 20% electricity production by 2030.
In a paper published this week in the scientific journal PLoS One The Nature Conservancy and I (and 5 others) estimate there are ~7,700 GW of potential wind energy available across the U.S., with ~3,500 GW on disturbed lands; plenty of wind potential within disturbed lands to meet our national goal.
Implementing a disturbance-focused development strategy would avert development of ~2.3 million hectares (5.7 million acres) of undisturbed lands while generating the same amount of energy as development based solely on maximizing wind potential.
New wind development has comparatively low wildlife impacts if sited in disturbed areas, and a disturbance-based development strategy is largely compatible with current land uses. Given turbine spacing needs, wind farms typically use only 2-4% of an area, making it compatible with agricultural production on tilled lands where few wildlife values remain.
Moreover, compensation for development increases profitability of disturbed lands that balance agricultural and oil and gas fields with wind development. For example, farmers receive $4-6K per turbine per year on land in corn production that yields an annual profit of <$1K per hectare.
Given the nationwide surplus in wind energy, it is conceivable that states unable to meet goals on disturbed lands could import electricity from states where there is a surplus of disturbance based wind energy (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Available wind-generated Gigawatts (GW) in each state as a percentage of the DoE goal that can be met on disturbed land. Bubbles indicate where goals can (blue) and cannot (red) be met on disturbed lands. Bubble area indicates total GW of wind potential available in the state (Range 0.37 GW in TN to 902 GW in MT). Inset shows potential GW wind production for the entire U.S. and potential on disturbed lands relative to the DoE 20% projection (modified from Kiesecker et al. 2011 PLoS One paper).
A number of states have a significant surplus of wind potential on disturbed lands where additional development would not likely cause significant wildlife losses.
Joe Kiesecker, the primary author on the PLoS One paper and Lead Scientist for The Nature Conservancy notes the importance of mitigating for climate change. “As a climate change mitigation strategy we need to ensure that renewable energies do not result in habitat loss similar to the effects that climate change will likely have. By prioritizing development on disturbed lands we can ensure that we get the benefits of renewable energy while maintaining biodiversity that is critical to human well being”.
Using science to help site wind developments presents a win-win solution for securing our Nation’s energy independence while safeguarding its wildlife heritage.
Readers can learn more about how proper wind siting can conserve wildlife in their state by visiting The Nature Conservancy’s Development by Design website.
David Naugle is a professor in the Wildlife Biology Program at the University of Montana and a leader in wildlife conservation in the West. He is author of Energy Development and Wildlife Conservation in Western North America. Follow Dave’s new book and related work on Facebook.
About David E. Naugle
David Naugle is Associate Professor and Applied Landscape Ecologist in the Wildlife Biology Program, University of Montana, Missoula, where he teaches courses in landscape ecology and wildlife habitat management. Dave's primary applied research interests are in understanding relationships between organisms and their habitats in a landscape context. Using the newest GIS and remote sensing technologies, he and his students quantify the importance of local and landscape attributes influencing habitat use of grassland and wetland birds in prairie and sagebrush ecosystems.
Bird Survey Suggests If You Plant It, They Will Come
The results of last month’s annual Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge Bird Survey indicate that birds may colonize reforested areas much faster than experts had predicted. This year’s surveyors spotted all five of the common native forest birds and four endangered forest birds within sections of the refuge that two short decades ago had been treeless areas dominated by non-native plants and animals. “I never thought I’d live to see this,” said Jack Jeffrey, who coordinated this bird survey and was the refuge biologist from 1990-2008.
Hawaii’s Hakalau (Hawaiian for “place of many perches”) Forest Refuge was explicitly created in 1985 to preserve native forest birds and their habitat. Today the Hakalau NWR comprises almost 33,000 acres between 2,500 and 6,600 feet. By the time the refuge was established, however, more than 200 years’ worth of damage from cattle, feral pigs, logging, fires, and noxious weeds had converted much of what had been a magnificent high elevation native rain forest into a vast ecological wasteland.
Read the rest of Robert J. Cabin’s post at Huffington Post Green.
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Robert J. Cabin is an associate professor of ecology and environmental science at Brevard College. Before returning to academia, he worked as a restoration ecologist for the U.S. Forest Service and the National Tropical Botanical Garden. His new book Intelligent Tinkering: Bridging the Gap between Science and Practice will be published in August 2011 by Island Press.
About Robert J. Cabin
Robert J. Cabin is Associate Professor of Ecology and Environmental Science at Brevard College. Before returning to academia, he worked as a restoration ecologist for the U.S. Forest Service and the National Tropical Botanical Garden.
Restoring Pacific Salmon Makes Dollars and Sense
Pacific salmon are the iconic temperate rainforest species connecting ocean, freshwater, and terrestrial systems, and joining people to the great outdoors. 
They are a keystone species, on the menu of American bald eagles and grizzly bears of the Great Bear Rainforest, coastal wolves of Alaska and British Columbia, and millions of people that depend on healthy fish runs in the clean, cool water that salmon thrive in. Even their decaying spawned-out carcasses play a vital role in the circle of life, providing fish fertilizer for streamside trees whose roots soak up life giving nutrients.
Ironically, all is not well in the Salmon Nation with 214 of 400 at risk fish runs and 106 already extinct according to 1991 data from the American Fisheries Society. Salmon are circling the drain due to: overfishing; logging and road building that choke spawning beds with murky sediments; livestock grazing that removes streamside vegetation providing important shade for fish; fish farms that compete with wild runs; and dams–lots of dams–nearly 90 large ones in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho that stand in the way of ancient salmon migrations.
With all the attention paid to salmon, you would think that their role as the quintessential rainforest icon would play well in bringing them back from the brink even in these fiscally conservative times. Here are just a few examples of where economists have placed a high value on restoring wild salmon runs:
§ On California’s San Joaquin River fish runs have been decimated by over allocation of stream flows and habitat loss: restoring salmon would yield about $1.8 billion annually in commercial and recreational fisheries.
§ On the lower Snake River fish runs have been decimated by four large dams and habitat loss: restoring runs would yield similar benefits.
§ Preventing extinction of one-third of Oregon and Washington fish runs would add an estimated $5 to $45 billion annually in benefits.
Often these benefits outweigh costs associated with reduced agriculture or forestry production as in the case of the Klamath River where conservation benefits outweigh costs by a factor of nine, and in Washington where improved logging practices would generate more than $1 billion in net assets annually. This includes improvements to water quality, flood abatement, and tourism. Salmon are also a cultural icon with deep spiritual ties to Native American communities that celebrate their return annually with rituals handed down from one generation to the next.
But there’s something really fish going on–and not in a good way–in Washington D.C. where congress is poised to zero out funding for popular fish and wildlife programs including those on the Klamath and San Joaquin rivers. The House of Representatives just passed H.R. 1: Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act that attaches scores of anti-environmental riders that have little to do with the intent of the legislation but are designed to fish gut popular programs. While the bill heads to the Senate for a vote this month, conservation groups are scrambling to strip these dangerous riders from the bill while taking stock of what is at stake.
The fate of salmon may just depend on how severe these cuts will be to one of the nation’s premier rainforest species.
Sources Cited: Niemi, E. 2005. Comments on the draft economic analysis of critical habitat designation for Pacific Salmon and O. mykiss. EcoNorthwest, Eugene, Oregon.
About Dominick A. DellaSala
Dominick A. DellaSala is Chief Scientist and President of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, and President of the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology.
Island Press Launches TrekEast Book Club
We are very excited about calling attention to a new action campaign by Wildlands Network called TrekEast. John Davis, a founder of Wildlands Network and a “triathlete meets John Muir,” begins a ten-month trek on the Eastern Wildway today, February 3. He will start his trek in Key Largo, Florida and will hike, paddle, cycle, and ski nearly 4,500 miles to complete the journey in Forillon National Park in Canada.
Why is he doing this?
John is on a mission to attract new advocates for the creation of an Eastern Wildway. Creating connectivity between protected wild places is necessary for the survival of eastern species, and can only be accomplished with public support. The Eastern Wildway would provide a corridor for coyotes, moose, martens, deer, and cougars to traverse from the Everglades through the Great Smoky Mountains, Shenandoah, Adirondacks, and up to the wilderness of Quebec.
Island Press and Wildlands Network
Island Press is rooting for John and is supporting his journey and the mission of Wildlands Network. We’re offering discounts on books that incorporate issues and places he will pass through as he makes his way north. As John paddles, cycles, and walks from Key Largo to Tampa, we invite you to read Tim Beatley’s Planning for Coastal Resilience with us, which explores how best to design cities for stronger and more frequent coastal storms. We’ll also read Saving Nature’s Legacy by Reed Noss and Allen Cooperrider. Noss will join John as a guest trekker, whose classic book presents a broad land-based approach to biodiversity conservation in the United States. Later, as John journeys to Birmingham, Alabama, we’ll raft the Suwannee River with him by reading Tim Palmer’s America by Rivers.
Follow TrekEast
Join us on John’s TrekEast to learn more about what he encounters along this winding wildway.
Human Impacts on Natural Systems
As a conservation biologist, I study the ecological effects of wolves on food webs, focusing on their primary prey (elk) and the foods their prey eat (aspens). My work takes place in Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta, which has many bears in it. Doing wolf research provides essential lessons about the web of life and coexisting with bears.
Bears are considered a “generalist” species, which means that a wide range of habitat and food meets their needs. While they tend to be patient with humans, food issues can put humans in conflict with bears. Which is exactly what happened two months down the line from a series of seven late-spring snowstorms in Waterton in 2010—a force of nature, right?
Well, yes, and no. While the unseasonable snow was undoubtedly a force of nature, this disturbance had an anthropogenic aspect. Human use of natural resources—timber harvest and fossil fuel combustion—increase atmospheric carbon dioxide, causing global heat to rise resulting in weather disruptions. The Waterton storms delayed berry ripening by over one month. While the grizzlies had managed well in the interim by eating roots, shoots, and insects, they had become distinctly out of sorts upon discovering that their favorite berries were unavailable when they wanted them.
I went to Waterton in late August to measure the aspens in a fire area in the Stoney Flats—a large prairie patch that is prime elk winter habitat. Stoney Flats lay three miles up the Wishbone Trail. Bears favored this flat, shoestring route hedged by aspens and berry-laden shrubs, as evidenced by abundant bear tracks and dinner-plate-sized purple scats.
Two weeks before my arrival, a grizzly had bluff-charged a friend photographing mountain goats in one of my study sites, stopping short of physical contact. That summer six bluff-charge incidents had occurred in the park. I hoped that now that the berries were finally ripe, the bears would be so busy eating them that they would ignore us.
My five-person aspen survey crew was configured in a “sandwich” formation—those with the most bear experience in the front and rear, everyone else in the middle where they would be best protected. At the end of our fifth day, we were leaving the area moving briskly, talking loudly, when about one mile from trail head, we heard a heavy thud on the path behind us.
The Stoney Flats grizzly began to follow us, about 20 feet away. I kept our group moving. We looked over our shoulders as he approached, head low, hackles up, jaws clacking, hyperventilating and salivating, dark eyes like coals smoldering into ours. In an even voice, I instructed everyone to take out their bear spray.
He closed the gap between us to ten feet. We kept moving, not breaking our pace, and began to scold him like an unruly child. After about three minutes of this, the bear sat down sideways on the trail. He cocked his head and looked at us—a forlorn, utterly confused expression on his face. Clearly he wasn’t used to humans reacting to him this way, so he stayed put. We continued on our way, and I radioed park dispatch. We returned to finish our work three days later, but never saw the bear again.
Climate change driven by human over-consumption of resources helped trigger the late-season snowstorms. The resulting disruption to the bears’ food supply caused them to take out their frustration on humans. This provides a harrowing lesson as we move into a future that includes a burgeoning human population, escalating use of fossil fuels, accelerating global change and few solutions to these issues. The Stoney Flats grizzly was a messenger. If we open ourselves to the lessons he and his kin have to offer, perhaps we can learn to mend the damage.
About Cristina Eisenberg
Cristina Eisenberg is a conservation biologist at Oregon State University, College of Forestry, and Boone and Crockett Fellow who studies how wolves affect forest ecosystems throughout the West.
Geography of Hope
People sometimes ask me what they will learn by reading Heatstroke. Basically there are two key messages.
One I’ve already highlighted in past blogs and in a recent op-ed. Simply put, the first message is this: we’ve got a problem.
Global warming by itself—even absent any other environmental threats—could cause the nature that humanity has long tried to save for its children to slip through our grasp, even if we could hold greenhouse gas emissions to their present values.
Critically, as climate change outpaces nature’s ability to adapt, what it will take to save two of nature’s three faces, ecosystem services and biodiversity, will become exactly the opposite of what it will take to save the third, a feeling of wilderness.
I don’t know about you, but my wife and I want all three for our kids. We were talking about that when she showed me Wallace Stegner’s Wilderness Letter, where he writes about the Geography of Hope—three words that became the title of Heatstroke‘s last chapter.
Those three words encapsulate the second key message—and I have to tell you, I think it is the more important of the two. We don’t have to watch nature die. We can actually treat nature’s heatstroke, now that we recognize its warning signs.
The Geography of Hope lies in marshalling the world’s scientists, conservation organizations, and governments—and ultimately, the world’s people—to coordinate a new conservation strategy I call Keep, Connect, and Create.
“Keep” refers to ensuring that places on Earth where nature still thrives (like the 12 percent of its lands already protected as nature reserves) are retained, and keeping on with successful initiatives already underway, especially some relatively new ones designed to integrate biodiversity conservation with the everyday habits of people, like “win-win ecology” and trading in ecosystem services.
“Connect” requires acceleration of ongoing efforts to connect natural areas with habitat corridors, with the new twist that the corridor strategies now must take into account that climatic zones are shifting and will continue to do so over the next few decades and into the next century.
“Create” is the critical new component, for it requires creating a whole new concept of nature reserves. No longer can we stick to the “one-stop-shopping” conservation strategy of setting aside a big enough piece of land with the thought that in one fell swoop we will protect all of Mother Nature’s Holy Trinity: ecosystem services, biodiversity, and feelings of wilderness.
To save ecosystem services and biodiversity, we may have to move species from some places where their needed climate disappears into others where their needed climate exists. To save feelings of wilderness, we’ll need the opposite, places where we don’t mess with the species composition, where we simply let nature find its own way into this new age.
That means deliberately designating two separate-but-equal kinds of nature reserves, one with the explicit goal of saving species no matter what; the other with the explicit goal of watching what happens to nature if we keep our hands off.
It also means some hard decisions on some very controversial questions. Is it better to watch a species go extinct as its climate disappears, or risk the ecological consequences of introducing it to a climatically-suitable place it has never been? And if the answer is to move it, whose back yard do we move it into?
A tall order, perhaps, to shift away from the prevailing wisdom of nature conservation crystallized in the Leopold Report as: “to preserve, or where necessary to recreate, the ecologic scene as viewed by the first European visitors.” Articulated for America’s national parks in 1963, that conservation ethic has provided a sort of guiding light ever since.
But the visionaries who wrote those words never anticipated a world where the climatic rug would be pulled right out from under the species and landscapes they were trying to protect. That’s today’s world, though, and the world of our children.
The last chapter of Heatstroke is titled Geography of Hope because I firmly believe that if we move forward in the ways suggested there, it is well within humanity’s power to save the aspects of nature we value and need. But, the Geography of Hope has always been a shifting landscape; in an age of global warming, it’s also a rapidly shrinking one for many species. We don’t have much time to get it right.
About Anthony Barnosky
Since 1990, Anthony Barnosky has been on the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, where he currently holds the posts of Professor of Integrative Biology, Curator of Fossil Mammals in the Museum of Paleontology, and Research Paleoecologist in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology.
