Collide-a-scape

Several days ago, Andy Revkin wrote a Dot Earth post about what I would characterize as an ecotopia for conservationists:

After three years of meetings and study, a broad array of conservation groups, government scientists and other experts on North American wildlife policy have produced a road map for restoring some large free-roaming populations of bison in the North American plains.

As Revkin goes on to detail, the plan would have to overcome significant political and cultural hurdles. Tellingly, at the end of his post, Revkin asks a question that hints at his take on the idea:

Can we, or should we, get comfortable with what amounts to an engineered “Eden”?

Ah, what I would give to be able to discuss this more often than the latest skirmish over climate science. Because there is much here that signifies how environmentalists still view nature and humans as separate entities.

One gruff commenter, obviously perturbed at the rewilding concept, nonetheless channels my thoughts when he asks:

what is the reason for this lamentable sentimentalism when it comes to certain animals and physical landscapes? things change.

Another commenter, noting all the positive reaction on the thread to the notion of reintroduced bison, is similarly sarcastic:

It’s fascinating how many of the comments mention the glorious sight of buffalo on the plains…
Are ya just hoping for something better to look at when you drive through?

Did you consider that actual midwesterners would have to be consulted before you went through with your theme-park plan for the Great Plains?

Are *you* going to subsidize the industrial-strength fencing that will keep the behemoths off the highway?

How much to indulge this toxic sentimentality about a mythical before-time when all was bright and clean and morally correct?

As I was reading though the post and comments, I was reminded of a review I wrote four years ago, of a book called Twilight of the Mammoths: Ice Age Extinctions and the Rewilding of America, by Paul Martin. I summarized the book’s concept as thus:

Martin argues for returning the ancient beasts—sloths, saber-toothed tigers, mastodons, and other extinct megafauna—to their old stomping grounds in North America. Okay, what he really wants is to restore their evolutionary lineage by rewilding parts of the American desert and prairie with their latter-day relatives, such as the elephant and the cheetah, whose current prospects in Africa are otherwise considered dim because of poaching and habitat loss.

Now that would be something to see as we drive through.

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.

There are varied forces arrayed against wind and solar, but Todd Woody at Yale Environment 360 nicely sums up the situation in the California desert:

The Mojave has become a metaphor for an existential crisis in the environmental movement as it tries to balance the development of renewable energy with its traditional mission to protect ecosystems.

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.

I’m just catching up with this essay by Mark Dowie. Money quote:

The perceived arrogance of “big conservation” is a confounding factor; so too is the understandable tendency of some indigenous people to conflate conservation with imperialism. The results of this century-old conflict are thousands of protected areas that cannot be managed and an intractable debate over who holds the key to successful conservation in the most biologically rich areas of the world.

Whoa, this headline should snap a few necks back:

Is modern conservation linked with ethnic cleansing?

It’s a link to this article by Mark Dowie, which is based on his new book, Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict Between Conservation and Native Peoples.

Anyone who knows Mark Dowie (and is familiar with his last few books) can expect the latest to ring a few alarm bells in the conservation community (and prompt some top environmental chiefs to reach for their tums).

The last time I talked with Mark he was gasping at the book’s finish line. I can’t wait to read it. And Mark, when Val and I come calling in Point Reyes this summer, where you gonna put the two little kids trailing behind us? You didn’t have to worry about that the last time we visited.