Collide-a-scape

Do conservation biologists make ethically questionable trade-offs when trying to save a species? This is the argument that Marc Bekoff makes in a provocative New Scientist essay. Bekoff, who is a biologist and an animal rights advocate, asks:

Can people who value individual lives work with those who are willing to sacrifice lives for the good of a species or an ecosystem? What role should animal sentience play in such decisions?

Bekoff has long been questioning the practices and ethics of conservation biology. I first talked to him 12 years ago, when I wrote this piece about a controversial program that reintroduced Canada lynx to Colorado. (Earlier this year I wrote a short post about the lynx reintroduction program and Bekoff.) I wish I had more time to talk about his current essay, but I wanted to put it out there and get some of your reaction.

It’s not easy being a conservation biologist. You have to fight on multiple fronts just to maintain and preserve viable wildlife populations. Habitat fragmentation often poses the biggest threat to imperiled species. But there is one battle that the media has all but ignored–that between animal rights proponents and conservationists. So this post from wildlife biologist Michael Hutchins caught my attention, because his frustration is palpable, especially here:

I can think of no other issue that illustrates the deep incompatabilities between the values and goals of animal rights and conservation proponents than feral cats.  As I have said previously, it is impossible to be an animal rights proponent and a conservationist simultaneously.  Those who wish to bring these two increasingly disparate movements together will ultimately fail. Some ideas are better than others, and animal rights–with its exclusive and reductionistic focus on individual animals–cannot and will not come to grips with what it is going to take to conserve biodiversity in a human-dominated world.

I first became aware of this rift in the late 1990s, when I wrote a feature story about Colorado’s troubled lynx reintroduction program for Science magazine. At the time, five of the animals imported from Canada and Alaska had starved to death in the San Juan mountains, shortly after they were released. One of the issues I focused on was whether Colorado still had suitable habitat for the transplanted lynx–specifically, whether there was enough snowshoe hares to support a breeding lynx population. Canada lynx are specialists and rely largely on the rabbits for food.

I walked away from the article wondering if cultural attitudes perhaps trumped science in the case of the Colorado lynx reintroduction program. In other words, I wondered if Colorado’s state biologists just really wanted to see the cats back in Colorado. (The species was eliminated from Colorado in 1973, after a hunter shot the last known lynx.) In today’s world, there are compelling factors that work against the lynx repopulating the West and nearly all of them point to humans. That said, over the years I’ve also been impressed by the dedication of Colorado biologists–especially Tanya Shenk– who have stuck with the program.

Since 1999, over 200 lynx have been reintroduced into Colorado’s high country. This article seems a pretty good snapshot of where the program stands today. And this piece spotlights the issue that I explored in my Science story. The bottom line: it’ll be years before experts can say with any certainty if lynx have successfully re-established themselves in Colorado, much less the Western region.

All this is by way of introduction to one of the most fascinating characters I have met in my reporting on environmental issues: Marc Bekoff. Professionally, he’s an animal behaviorist, with distinguished research on carnivores. Until his retirement several years ago, Marc spent decades teaching at the University of Colorado, at Boulder. My thumbnail sketch doesn’t do justice to his career, and of course doesn’t speak to his dual role as a prominent animal rights advocate and outspoken critic of species restoration programs, such as the lynx reintroduction.

I’ve kept in sporadic contact with Marc over the years; we’ve met twice, once in New York a decade ago (where he showed up in the middle of winter wearing sandals) and again last year in Colorado, when I was a Fellow at the University of Colorado’s Center for Environmental Journalism. Marc is one of the smartest people I know and a very articulate and thoughtful advocate for animal rights.

So after I read what Hutchins wrote about the ongoing devastation to wildlife by feral cats, and how this issue encapsulates the irreconcilable differences between animal rights and conservation advocates, I emailed Marc to get his take. Here’s what he wrote back:

While there is a problem I don’t see this as the most significant one at all – maybe ‘up there’ but there are other issues for sure concerning native ‘versus’ non-native species, the fate of individuals in reintroduction programs – should individual wolves die for the good of their species/other wolves – should hamsters/black-tailed prairie dogs be fed to black-footed ferrets so the ferrets can practice predation to increase the ferret’s chance of survival…

I take this to mean that Marc is referring to other issues that are just as divisive to the relationship between animal rights proponents and conservationsts. And his answer got me wishing there was more attention paid to these issues by the press. I have to think that is something that both Hutchins and Bekoff would agree on.

While mulling the 6-year disappearance of the possibly extinct Chinese paddlefish, Andy Revkin reminds us of the enduring problem with our own approach to species protection:

we have an Endangered Species Act intended to save species on the brink, but not a Thriving Ecosystems Act that tries to monitor and sustain diverse communities of species before bad things happen.

This is of course true, but it’s worth noting that we also have a very flawed and controversial Endangered Species Act (ESA), which, for political reasons, will remain flawed and controversial for the foreseeable future. That’s because of this dynamic: every so often (usually when they’re the top dogs in D.C.) conservative Republicans have tried and failed to weaken the act; fearing this, enviros and Dems have chosen not to revisit the ESA–even to improve and strengthen it. Better to have an imperfect ESA goes that rationale, than to risk exposing it to Republican machinations.

So when I examined this stalemate exactly ten years ago for The Sciences (sadly, now defunct), in a piece entitled “Vanishing Act,” I wrote this:

Hailed at its birth a quarter century ago as the strongest and most visionary law of its kind, today the ESA is besieged  from all sides. Developers and local landowners contend that the law is far too sweeping, that it violates their rights and stifles economic growth; environmental advocates complain that the act is poorly enforced, and that it is undermined by insufficient funding and bureaucratic delay. Meanwhile, scientists bemoan the ESA’s “emergency room” approach, which calls for species to be resuscitated only when they are at death’s door.

Legally and politically, nothing has changed since then. However, the point of that ten-year old story was to contrast the traditional single species rescue paradigm with a more holistic one then being implemented in South Florida by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS).  Called the Multi-Species Recovery Plan, its purpose, as I wrote at the time, was to

protect more than 600 imperiled species in an area that includes twenty-three distinct ecological communities, from hardwood hammock forests to saw-grass marshes and coral reefs.

As former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said when the multi-species plan was being unveiled:

We’ve learned that you can’t do these things one species at a time. We have to come to grips with the entire landscape.

In 2005, when I was a senior editor at Audubon Magazine, I wrote another story about how this ecosystem approach was being implemented on an even more comprehensive scale in Tuscon, Arizona. And this effort came after years of meetings and coalition building that involved local politicians, university ecologists, town planners, activists, and the business sector. Called the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, its aim is to rescue 54 plant and animal species.  But as I wrote in my story,

that’s only one cornerstone of something much grander in design. The plan also recognizes that ecosystem repair, via the creation of linked biological corridors, is essential to the recovery of those 54 species, and that creating those corridors, in turn, requires measures to manage Tucson’s sprawling growth. To this end the plan steers future development away from ecologically important areas—perennial streams, for instance, and groves of paloverde, saguaro, and ironwood—and toward existing urban cores. The species targeted for protection were expressly chosen to represent the Sonoran Desert’s diverse web of life.

So while the landmark but badly aging Endangered Species Act remains in place, ecologists have found a way to bypass its limitations. Whether the novel Florida and Arizona efforts are working as intended is another question, one that I should probably try to convince an editor to take a fresh look at.

If you read this article by Carl Zimmer in Yale 360, you might notice that there’s a few looming battles over ecological thresholds.

Climate scientists and climate advocates will be wrangling over acceptable planetary carbon dioxide limits, and conservation biologists and ecosystem ecologists will be arguing over acceptable species extinction levels.

That’s the problem when you try to pin those down elusive tipping points. People don’t even agree on what the tipping point is.

Environmentalists are upset that wolves can now be legally hunted in Idaho and Montana. Michael Hutchins provides some necessary context to this emotional issue:

There is no doubt that some individuals and organizations will have a difficult time shifting from a mindset where wolves are rare creatures that need every protection to one where wolves are common and can become pests.  To quote a 2005 article by Jim Robbins in Conservation in Practice (October-December: 28-34), “In the wake of successful wolf reintroductions, managers who once fervently defended wolves are now faced with killing them. Are we ready for modern predator management?”

Hutchins then points to a similar “transition” that had take place when the alligator population rebounded in Florida.

Once perilously close to extinction, these large reptiles have recovered as the result of government protection.  There are now some 1-2 million in Florida alone.  In order to manage potential conflicts between alligators and people, the state of Florida sanctions a regulated annual hunt.  In addition, it removes another 15,000 or so gators a year following public complaints of aggressive behavior.

As a conservationist, I can only hope that we are faced with many more of these dilemmas, as it will mean that carnivore conservation has been a roaring success.

As this post and this article in Nature suggest, going all-out renewable will gobble up some major habitat–if it’s not done right.

There are two money quotes in Amanda Leigh Mascarelli’s excellent Nature piece. The first is from Jimmie Powell, a policy expert at The Nature Conservancy:

If we are to prevent serious, damaging climate change, it will require one of the largest land-use changes in the history of the country.

The second is from conservation biologist Martha Groom:

I’m someone who believes that habitat change is as big a threat to our world today and our society as is climate change.

A conservationist tries to make sense of a town grief-stricken over a wild turkey that got a little too comfortable among humans.

People in Easton, MA  are so torn up about “Freddie” that a facebook page was created.  It has over 1500 fans. There was also a memorial for the bird, with flowers, all of which leads wildlife biologist Michael Hutchins to surmise:

I have to wonder how we can redirect the tremendous energy and emotion focused on this individual animal toward the conservation of endangered species and their habitats?  I find it almost perverse that people are spending this much of their precious time and resources mourning one individual of a common species ( more than 3 million wild turkeys are estimated to roam the U.S.) when animals like black-footed ferrets, California condors, gopher tortoises, northern spotted owls, and many others are teetering on the brink of irreversible and final extinction.  Who will mourn them when they are gone?

As for me, I’m wondering what all these people eat for Thanksgiving.

As I wrote in this story a few years back, most ancient ruins are discovered

after a bulldozer digs up the ground for a new highway, oil pipeline, or strip mall.

It’s called  “rescue” or “salvage” archaeology.” It’s an ironic way to advance a science–got to build new stuff before you can find the really old stuff.

The same thing goes for conservation biology, as Natalie Angier describes in this recent NY Times story.

One reason scientists are discovering more new species now than they were a couple of decades ago is that previously impenetrable places have been opened to varying degrees of development, allowing researchers to rush in and sample the abundance before it disappears.

Given the unprecedented pace of species extinctions, I’m not sure biologists think they are “rescuing” or “salvaging” their new finds–other than for scientific posterity.

As reported in Nature, two leading ecologists are calling on their colleagues to publish negative study results. Richard Hobbs, a plant biologist and the editor-in-chief of the journal Restoration Ecology, explained to Nature:

The subject of what constitutes ‘success’ in restoration has been actively debated over the last few years, but it is only recently that a few people have discussed the merit of examining ‘failure’ as well.

To that end, Hobbs has just added a new section in Restoration Ecology called “Set-backs and Surprises.”

As discussed in the Nature article, a similar plea to shine a light on failures was made by ecologist Andrew Knight, in a recent letter to the journal Conservation Biology:

The lack of publication is a massive problem in conservation. Firstly, it reflects the fact that the vast majority of researchers are focused on publishing papers as opposed to ‘doing’ conservation. Secondly, as a result of the first point, we have bred several generations of conservation biologists who know absolutely nothing about implementing action.

That can’t be good.

On a practical level, though, how would highlighting research failures help make better conservation policy in, in say, the halls of Congress, or in federal agencies?

David Bruggeman at Prometheus suggests that scientists should not worry:

While policymakers are often focused more on the successes than what didn’t work, they do respond to lessons learned.