Acid test

ACID TEST, a film produced by NRDC, was made to raise awareness about the largely unknown problem of ocean acidification, which poses a fundamental challenge to life in the seas and the health of the entire planet. Like global warming, ocean acidification stems from the increase of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

Leading scientific experts on the problem, many of whom appear in the film and the outtakes below, believe that it's possible to cut back on global warming pollution, improve the overall health and durability of our oceans, and prevent serious harm to our world, but only if action is taken quickly and decisively.

Oh, and it's narrated by Sigourney Weaver. SIGOURNEY WEAVER!

Hyenas & Humans: Best Friends.

Hyenas have rarely topped the list when it comes to cute fuzzy animals that need to be preserved and protected. Apparently, though, they've decided to take manners into their own hands. Hyenas in Northern Ethiopia have faced severe environment degradation and fragmentation due to agricultural and urban expansion in the area. In turn, their traditional prey sources have been limited or removed entirely. The combination of these two events is a classic set-up for a population collapse, but they Hyenas had different ideas.

The wild dogs maintain significant population density in the affected areas despite the habitat alteration. They've done this by establishing an almost 100% anthropogenic (from man) diet; that is to say cows, sheep, and other livestock. These hardy hunters and scavengers have saved themselves by benefiting from the factors (us) that in the same circumstances might otherwise have wiped them out. Not only have they accomplished this though, but they have done it in such a way as to co-exist with rather than hamper the human communities they are dispersed through. By report from individuals living in the area, the Hyenas operate at a level and in a fashion that is not significantly disruptive to the agricultural endeavors of the communities and so are left widely unharmed.

In fact, the Hyenas even provide a service to the developing communities interloping on their former territory. The small residences that make up a majority of the overlapping area by and large have no waste disposal services, that is, expect for Hyenas. The scavengers do a decent job of clearing organic detritus from around the farms and homes in the area allowing them access to a food source without intruding into the human interests. In short, the Hyenas have adapted admirably to what could have been a disastrous situation. It may not be an ideal solution, and the animals are far removed from their "natural" behaviors, but they do still exist in good numbers. Fixes like this, though not intentional, could pave the way for some integration of large animals into human development areas rather than simply eradicating or displacing them.

From the Article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/20031460

Snakes in a container

I put up two extra slides at the end of today's lecture. These summarize most of the main concepts we have covered (although they don't include the first class on the history of conservation biology). These might be useful in reviewing the course so far. Can you explain each concept in your own words? Can you say why it is of concern for conservation? Can you give example(s) as appropriate?

Here's a snake sniffing dog in action. I hadn't realized the dogs were laid off in 2009 as a result of budget cuts. But, according to KITV Honolulu, it looks like the funding has been found to bring them back: State bringing back canine snake detectors
$162K set aside for hiring of inspector-trainer, 3 dog handlers.

WWJD?

I did say you'd be hearing more about this From NPR today:
When You're Almost Extinct, Your Price Goes Up

When a species gets rare, its market value rises. The higher its price, the more it's hunted. The more it's hunted, the rarer it gets. Not a happy cycle, and this keeps happening ...

The article links to an article in the latest National Geographic on Blood Ivory. Did you know that one of the main drivers of elephant poaching is now the demand for ivory for religious statues?

Although the world has found substitutes for every one of ivory’s practical uses—billiard balls, piano keys, brush handles—its religious use is frozen in amber, and its role as a political symbol persists.

Even the Vatican:

“Ivory, ivory, ivory,” says the saleswoman at the Savelli Gallery on St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City. “You didn’t expect so much. I can see it in your face.” The Vatican has recently demonstrated a commitment to confronting transnational criminal problems, signing agreements on drug trafficking, terrorism, and organized crime. But it has not signed the CITES treaty and so is not subject to the ivory ban. If I buy an ivory crucifix, the saleswoman says, the shop will have it blessed by a Vatican priest and shipped to me.

The home of a Filipino collector is lavish with ivory religious icons. “I don’t see the elephant,” says another Filipino collector. “I see the Lord.”

Restoring Native Grassland Populations in Pacific Northwest

This is a very interesting article that describes a six-year research project done on how to better control an invasive plant species in the interior Pacific Northwest.  The article is based on a paper that was published just this year in the journal Invasive Plant Science and Management. This paper is relevant to our discussions of invasive plant species in lecture and focuses on how we can better control invasive species without harming the native species in the same area.

This particular paper is concerned with the invasive flowering plant Sulfur cinquefoil, which is threatening native grass species in the Pacific Northwest grasslands. Researchers wanted to know whether using herbicides at a specific time and in a specific way might reduce the mortality of native species and increase the mortality of invasive species. They were also interested in whether reseeding of native grasses would help the situation.

The researches found the most of the native grasses in the interior Pacific Northwest are dormant in late summer and early autumn. Using this knowledge and experimental control plots, they found that using herbicides during this time lead to increased mortality of Sulfur cinquefoil along with a recued mortality of native grasses. They also found that using herbicides just once was enough to control the invasive population during the entire six-year study. Finally, they found that although reseeding did not have an effect in the early years of the experiment, by the last couple years the plots that had been reseeded showed a 20% decrease in exotic grass cover.

In this case, the solution was a simple one and because we have seen in class that most cases are much more complicated, it is easy to dismiss it as a lucky break. However, it is imported to note that this simple change in the timing of herbicide use, made a dramatic difference in conserving a native species. This makes me wonder how many other little fixes in species conservation we are overlooking because we are so stuck on solving the big problems.

Here is a link to the article from ScienceDaily:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121004150641.htm

Here is a citation and link for the paper:

Bryan A. Endress, Catherine G. Parks, Bridgett J. Naylor, Steven R. Radosevich, Mark Porter. Grassland Response to Herbicides and Seeding of Native Grasses 6 Years Posttreatment. Invasive Plant Science and Management, 2012; 5 (3): 311

- Megan Ragland

Conserving and promoting evenness: organic farming and fire-based wildland management as case studies

A biodiverse ecosystem is classified by having high species richness, and high species evenness.  Species richness is the number of species and species evenness is the relative abundance of species.  The goal of this study was to examine the benefits to biodiversity from the use of two different land management schemes.

These two different strategies were organic farming practices and the controlled burning of land.  Rather then run lengthy and expensive experiments Crowder et. al searched for old studies of organic vs. conventional farming and burned vs. unburned conservation sites. They found 173 studies comparing organic vs. conventional farming.  These studies included a lot of variety, spanning 23 countries and 38 crops.  They also found 155 studies of burned vs. unburned conservation sites spanning 21 countries. 

Analysis of the studies showed both strategies significantly increased species richness and evenness.  The results also span many taxa showing these conservation practices work for many different types of organisms.  These results support organic farming and controlled burning as viable strategies for increasing ecosystem biodiversity.  The study also provided evidence that species richness and evenness are not correlated.  This shows that species richness and evenness are different aspects of biodiversity and should be addressed separately during conservation efforts.

http://www.esajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1890/12-0110.1

Crowder, David W., Tobin D. Northfield, Richard Gomulkiewicz, and William E. Snyder. 2012. Conserving and promoting evenness: organic farming and fire-based wildland management as case studies. Ecology 93:2001–2007.

-Jimmy Peniston

Counting snakes

Forgive the repeat but I came across this from last year and it made me laugh (again). The comic strip is Slylock Fox and the funny comments below are from The Comics Curmudgeon - making the funnies funnier since 2004.

Instant egghead

There's a lengthy critique of this little video at PZ Meyers Pharyngula blog. I'm inclined to agree with him.

My biggest problem with the video, though, is in Guterl’s suggestion that our changing the atmosphere’s composition — referring to the end-Permian extinction, as well as the “Great Oxygenation” of the Paleoproterozoic — is what’s got scientists worried about mass extinction these days, given that we happen to be adding CO₂ to the atmosphere faster than the Siberian Traps did 252 million years ago. And scientists are indeed worried about the effects of climate change on biodiversity.

But scientists working on studying and preserving biodiversity — which after all is the positive way of saying “not having a mass extinction’ — are worried about a whole lot more than climate change. We could completely solve the atmospheric CO₂overburden on Tuesday and still be faced with an extinction crisis as we plow up grasslands, cut down forests, bottom-trawl the oceans, and build new sprawling cities on land that once supported wildlife.

Trophy hunting

Two very timely articles on trophy hunting. First up is a photograph collection at CNN from David Chancellor who traveled with trophy hunters in sub-Saharan Africa for four years.

Among the animals hunted in Africa are black rhinos, even though they’re an endangered species. Under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, 10 black rhinos a year - five each in South Africa and Namibia - are allowed to be hunted for trophies. It’s estimated that hunters pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the right to take home a black rhino trophy, and the governments said the money is used to help pay for conservation efforts. Only adult male surplus black rhinos are to be hunted.

Arguments for trophy hunting as a conservation tool include sustainability, generating high revenue from few hunters and the ability to reduce illegal hunting,according to a 2008 report (PDF) from the University of Pretoria, South Africa. And some countries such as Namibia have had success with increasing the numbers of its game through hunting and harvesting the animals, according The Economist.

Also from CNN is a report about the attempts to prevent the first regulated wolf hunt of the once-endangered gray wolf: As hunting season looms, wolf advocates move to protect the packs:

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources estimates the state's wolf population to be about 3,000 wolves and says the target harvest of 400 wolves "is a conservative approach that does not pose a threat to the conservation of the population."

The wolf hunting and trapping season closes January 31 or whenever the 400 wolves are hunted, whichever comes first. More than 23,000 hunters entered the lottery to participate in the wolf hunting season, and 6,000 licenses will be given out.

Elephant corridors

From The Hindu:

India’s top bureaucrats managing forests and elephants, and the wildlife conservation NGO community on Wednesday showcased public-private partnership (PPP) initiatives that promise to connect more of the 88 identified elephant corridors with forests, potentially reducing the stress on the species.

On its part, the Centre is considering hiking compensation for voluntary resettlement of residents to increase habitat available to elephants and reduce human-elephant conflict.

At a side event on ‘Securing Wildlife Corridors,’ held at the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity here, director of Project Elephant A.M. Singh said raising the financial compensation to help people voluntarily move out of elephant habitat, particularly in the northeast, was at the top of the list of official priorities and a committee to be constituted soon would go into the question.