Apparently the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission Report was pulled from the USDA website, but not other USG websites.
Here’s the USDA website. With all the other stuff about the Commission but not the report. But the report is still there, but not the link to the other site, apparently. I found it at the US Fire Administration website.
Intentional? Mistake? Over-reaction to some request? Does anyone know?
New Admin.. if you are reading, please set up a place to receive info from the public on missing/broken links.
As promised, this is the first of (at least) two posts on “what people can do about wildfires like those in California?”. Like many problems, there are many “little” things that can be done by a variety of people in different situations to improve the situation. In a way, these are our toughest problems, because they require focused attention over time. People from different disciplines with different interests need to be organized in some fashion to all work together toward the same goal. You have to get into the weeds to make a difference, and be comfortable listening to people with whom you might not have much in common.
We can divide the different pieces of the problem in this way:
1. Improving what suppression folks do and how they do it.
2. Improving what homeowners do.
3. Improving what wildland vegetation managers do.
4. Improving what communities do, aside from strict suppression, like code requirements and evacuation planning. Generally I’d call this “things generally found in a CWPP” (Community Wildfire Prevention Program) although CWPPs can be uneven and not updated. How is wildfire incorporated into community planning and activities?
5. Reducing sources of ignition.
Can you think of others?
On TSW, we spend a great deal of time on 3, and despite the fact that LA fires were in coastal sage-scrub and other brushlands, I think we can skip it.
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So I’ll start with improving suppression.
Turns out that suppression folks have many ideas about this, from the macro to the micro. I’ll point you first to this excellent interview by the Hotshot Wakeup with new Senator Sheehy of Montana, who founded Bridger Aerospace:
Bridger has become a leader in fighting wildfires, specializing in aerial fire-mapping operations, air attack, aerial fire suppression, and wildland firefighter technologies. We focus on providing the most effective and modern capabilities to fight fires from the air, supported by a world-class team and state-of-the-art facilities.
Our priority is to address the increasing threat of economic and environmental damage caused by wildfires and to provide support for ground-based firefighters.
The interview was interesting for a number of reasons. I asked the Sheehy media folks for summaries of his positions, because he is quite articulate on these issues, but I haven’t heard back, so you will get my interpretation (and please listen yourself, it’s not that long). First of all, Sen. Sheehy, having been a Seal and Veteran, brings the idea that “if firefighters are risking their lives, we should pay them decently and give them some of the same benefits we give veterans.” He also said something like “since so much of the FS budget goes to fire, they should have leadership from the fire community,” kind of implying that the new Chief should be from that community. Side note: ensuring casualty assistance for firefighters is included in the current Fix our Forests Act in the House.
This hearkens a bit to the old “should fire folks be put into a separate agency” which has been brewing for decades. Side note: the Fix our Forests Act requires a study by GAO which includes:
SEC. 304. GAO study on Forest Service policies.
Not later than 3 years after the date of enactment of this Act, the Comptroller General of the United States shall—
(1) conduct a study evaluating—
(A) the effectiveness of Forest Service wildland firefighting operations;
(B) transparency and accountability measures in the Forest Service’s budget and accounting process; and
(C) the suitability and feasibility of establishing a new Federal agency with the responsibility of responding and suppressing wildland fires on Federal lands; and
(2) submit to Congress a report that describes the results of the study required under paragraph (1).
Both the interview with Sheehy, and the interview with Orange County Fire Chief Brian Fennessy, had many ideas for improving suppression, including ordering difficulties, lack of communication with the water folks, and other coordination and communication issues. And some of the commenters there thought that those improvements would be good, but wouldn’t help with these kinds of fires. As a non-fire person, what I gleaned from this is that like any human institution, or inter-agency combination of such, there are tedious details about working efficiently and successfully that need to be attended to. Via after-action reviews, fire folks are better than most (I’m still waiting on the Covid response after-action review). But it requires constant attention to keep the wheels greased, the communications happening, and the old ways or systems or regulations updated. The folks who attend to this are the unsung heroes of any organization.
When catastrophic fires occur, experts often blame the so-called wildland-urban interface, the vulnerable region on the perimeter of cities and suburbs where an abundance of vegetation in rugged terrain is susceptible to burning.
Yet the fire disasters that we’re seeing today are less wildland fires than urban fires, Cohen said. Shifting this understanding could lead to more effective prevention strategies.
I agree that it’s difficult to change the narrative from “people shouldn’t build there” to “how can we make cities and suburbs manage wildfire better?”.
“We’re not recognizing, analyzing, questioning how we’re failing,” Cohen said. “We just think we need more airplanes and more helicopters flying 24 hours a day.”
More CL-415 super-scoopers or Firehawk helicopters will not help when water is being dropped into 60 mph wind gusts.
“We don’t necessarily need a trillion-dollar program and a fire czar to get control of the fire problem,” Pyne said. “What we need are a thousand things that tweak the environment in favorable ways such that we can prevent these eruptions.”
For example, municipal and fire prevention agencies must give property owners advance — and continual — warnings to clear dead vegetation and to wet dry brush within 10 feet of the house with periodic, prolonged sprinklings.
I wish the reporter had asked more questions about this:
And while climate change is increasing their frequency and severity, Pyne argues that a society dependent on fossil fuels plays a significant role as well.
“A fossil-fuel society remakes landscapes as well by affecting how humans organize agriculture, urban development, the placement of roads and power lines,” he said.
I’m not sure that that’s true. Maybe it depends on the part of the country you are from. And it’s kind of hard to imagine a fossil-fuel free society in the past, because coal was important for the development of industry and transportation. I guess another society would have stuck with horses and wood for fuel? I’m sure my ancestors came to the US on fossil-fueled ships, so maybe only immigrants from the age of sail? I’m more with Cohen on this one.
For Cohen, shifting the conversation away from climate change is important because it gives us more control over our fire environment and will ultimately make us less vulnerable to these disasters.
“We don’t have to solve climate change in order to solve our community wildfire risk problem,” he said.
Like almost all complex problems or issues, there are many moving parts that can, and should be, improved at the same time.
In the aftermath of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 — 17,000 structures destroyed and more than 100,000 residents left homeless — city planners and local governments began to focus on fire protection engineering as a way of keeping cities safe.
“The idea was not to catch the arsonist or the mythical cow that kicked over the lantern in Chicago,” Cohen said. “Experts began to consider the role that our buildings played in creating the problem.”
Yes, but if there was a new pattern of behavior that led to many more ignitions, certainly that would be a piece of the puzzle. Or if certain things, say powerlines, had a pattern of causing ignitions, you would work on reducing the hazard. You certainly would if you were a power company who didn’t want to go bankrupt from litigation.
It says photo by NASA but I found it at https://www.gallatinscience.org/
Well, we’ve all had a chance to read many wildfire news stories. Reporters of all abilities and proclivities have swarmed upon the tragedy in LA like ravens on a bison carcass.
I’ll attempt to group them here. It’s interesting to me that the blaming effort tends to be big picture, and the fixing effort tends to be lots of little things. This is not unlike our NEPA/project planning discussion. Similarly, the policy discussion tends to take place in “big picture” places, like think tanks, law schools, other academia, and political entities; while practitioners are often not involved in the discussions. We also need to pay attention for how the specific can lead incorrectly to grandiose prescriptions and vice versa. For example, these fires are not in forests… so let’s not even introduce our usual forest discussions. This seems obvious, but folks like to ride any disaster horse toward their preferred destination. Specific- not forest.
Twenty-seven years ago, Mike Davis wrote Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster. One of the chapters is titled “The Case for Letting Malibu Burn.” In it, he argued that the area between the beach and the Santa Monica Mountains simply never should have been developed. No matter what measures we take to prevent it, those hills are going to burn, and the houses we erect upon them are only so much kindling.
OK, as a former resident of a nearby and less well-off area, I would have liked it all turned into a park so I could visit. And that (Malibu and environs) is a specific area. But does this apply to Altadena, or other places destroyed in this set of wildfires? In fact, some people are suggesting this about all of the west, as well as the SE (hurricanes and floods). Then there are earthquakes.
(2) There’s nothing you can do. High winds, dry veg and houses, and ignitions.
Well, that’s a cheery, and not very helpful, way of looking at things. And as we shall see, there are plenty of things homeowners, communities, and suppression folks can do. In fact, other places, like the Front Range of Colorado have similar conditions in the winter (see the Marshall Fire).
(3) Various “it’s all about climate change” narratives
Then there’s “it’s all about climate change and things will get a lot worse!” and/or “it’s all about climate change so we need to change drastically to keep up.” As you can see, climate change itself can go either way.. giving up and freaking people out, or adding to the impetus for implementing a reset of the whole interlocking systems of development, home hardening, vegetation and suppression.
So many people get stuck here at climate change . but scientists disagree on the proportionate contribution as well as on what we should do about it. Most of us see some possible climate impact. But why is it so important for some to blame climate? Sure that gets politicians off the hook, but is that a good goal? And I don’t understand why the details are so important. Let’s see, what should we do differently if models predict we get these conditions 10 percent to 30 percent more often. How much would our potential fixes change? The conversation also devolves weirdly. Like Steve Koonin writes an article saying “not so climate change”; he’s got the political street cred (Undersecretary for Science at DOE under Obama) but is criticized because he’s “not a climate scientist.” So, as we have seen, Jon Keeley who studies wildfires has one view based on historical records and his own research. But we’ve also seen Dan Swain say (who now works for UC Ag and Natural Resources) quoted.
Swain is big on the “whiplash” of wet springs and dry winters (this is similar to the Marshall Fire). I thought that this was an interesting take by ABC news.
“As Daniel Swain, the lead author of the research and a climate scientists with UCLA explains, “This whiplash sequence in California has increased fire risk twofold: first, by greatly increasing the growth of flammable grass and brush in the months leading up to fire season, and then by drying it out to exceptionally high levels with the extreme dryness and warmth that followed.”
Less than a year ago, Los Angeles had historic flooding and is now facing severe drought conditions. That literally adds fuel to the fire.
Finally, it’s important to reiterate that California has and will always be particularly vulnerable to wildfires simply due to its natural climate. The state historically experiences highly variable weather and climate conditions, typically shifting from periods of very dry to very wet weather.
Across the continental U.S., California has the most year-to-year variability between wet and dry conditions. As you move down into Southern California, that variability increases even more, according to Julie Kalansky, a climate scientist and deputy director of operations at the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at the University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Conceivably, wet winters in and of themselves, are not a problem for urban areas. The LA area has a sophisticated system of flood control. An example is the watershed management plan of my home watershed of La Ballona Creek. The urban area is already managed for whiplash, so it seems to me that increased whiplashiness would mostly affect the dry wildland veg getting drier. But how much drier can they get? It seems like too much of this climate discussion gets stuck at the “it’s bad and the reason sounds vaguely plausible” rather than going deeper, into the vegetation or fuels characteristics, and how they are managed today and how that might be expected to change. Because atmospheric scientists aren’t experts on those topics. So when folks say “Koonin isn’t a climate scientist”, I’d say “impacts of climate change are mediated through vegetation, hydrology, suppression and other areas of scientific expertise. It’s the scientific equivalent of “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
(4) Then there’s the political view.. articulated by Sammy Roth, who has changed from being a reporter to a columnist.
For many Angelenos, this is our most jarring confrontation yet with global warming. But hundreds of millions of Americans have faced fossil-fueled disasters, and the politics of climate obstruction have hardly budged……………
None of those climate disasters changed the fact that the Republican Party is almost totally beholden to the fossil fuel industry. None of them changed the fact that the Democratic Party, although largely committed to climate action — see President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act — still hasn’t done nearly enough to phase out fossil fuels.
But what was running the cars that folks evacuated in? Water pumps? Fire trucks? Aviation resources? Could it be that our current physical reality needs to be dealt with alongside climate aspirations? It makes me wonder a bit about whether there is an element in the climate change advocacy movement that was never really about rational approaches to decarbonization, but about sticking it to the the industries- who have traditionally donated and voted for the wrong people in the eyes of some. Will we see big “thank you” banners hanging out for the people who supplied the energy to fight the fires?
And just like the Marshall Fire, we seldom hear “maybe houses shouldn’t be so close together”; “without cars, could people have evacuated safely?” “does it make sense to electrify everything if you have to turn electricity off in high winds?” “could intentional densification have downsides with regard to wildfire resilience?” or other questions that question currently dominant planning paradigms.
On the other side, it’s the “poor management by D Administrations” political view. The political view, in either direction, doesn’t help us at all. Like the framings above, it’s too far away from the real problems and the idea that “if you vote for us everything will be fine” doesn’t seem to be working for either party, and especially not for citizens in general.
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Maybe, just maybe, if we paid more attention to how to fix things, we would involve more people and scientists who understand the problems, practitioners and actually, mutually, improve. With less blame and more creativity; after all that’s the culture of wildfire. Learning organizations, after action reviews, and all that.
As for me, it’s the next layer down that’s interesting. What could communities, homeowners, fire suppression and allied folks, and planners do better? We’ll try to round up those news stories in the next installment.
If you have any other stories you’d like to draw attention to, of the generic persuasion, please post below and add the specific quotes, or describe what about it you think adds value or is off base.
Thanks to the Hotshot Wakeup!. THW made a case in his update today for not putting all one’s political eggs in one basket. According to THW, Sheehy is supportive of firefighter pay.
In November, Americans made clear they want political outsiders to come in and put a stop to status quo politics in D.C. The people want change, and now is the time to bring it by reining in our runaway federal bureaucracy, cutting waste, restoring common sense, and building a transparent government that is actually accountable to everyday Americans.
With President Trump leading the charge, and Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy at the helm of the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), we have a historic opportunity to radically disrupt business as usual, fundamentally reform the federal government, and reorient the mission back to serving the taxpayer.
One area DOGE should focus on: wildfire. Wildfires cost us hundreds of billions in economic impact, harming millions of Americans each year, yet our government response hasn’t changed in decades.
As an aerial firefighter myself, I know firsthand the devastation wildfires cause and have a unique perspective on how the federal government has failed on this issue.
Wildfire management system consists of a plethora of overlapping government agencies and private commercial ventures working within a splintered infrastructure that leads to delayed responses and devastating results – too many acres burned, critical infrastructure and structures destroyed, negative health impacts, lives lost, and communities devastated.
There are dozens of state and federal agencies responsible for wildfire suppression, yet there is no clear accountability nor a national wildfire suppression standard. To put that into perspective, the National Fire Protection Association sets the standard for structure fire response at five minutes and 20 seconds, which reduced civilian deaths by 70%. There is no similar standard for wildfire suppression.
We have brave, selfless public servants who put their lives on the line to fight these fires. I was water-bombing fires and protecting our communities as recently as August alongside these heroes. They are not the problem. The problem lies with bureaucratic leadership and layers of red tape failing the folks on the ground, meaning an overhaul of the federal wildfire system is a great place for DOGE to start.
Adopting a more proactive, aggressive initial attack policy across agencies would dramatically reduce costs and damages. Aggressive initial attack relies on utilizing private resources, which are usually the quickest, most effective response option if we want to limit the size and scope of wildfire damage.
The private sector always has and always will produce new innovations and better results faster and cheaper than the government. The same holds true in wildfire response. We must embrace this truth. Fostering stronger public-private partnerships with the wildland fire industry is essential.
DOGE can help the federal government embrace private partnerships to leverage investment in innovative technologies like advanced aircraft, wildfire intelligence systems, unmanned aerial systems (UAS), and even thermally equipped satellites to better accomplish the mission: protecting people, property, public lands and communities from wildfires.
Together we can incorporate the most innovative technologies and strategies, establish clear roles and missions for federal agencies serving alongside private entities, and build an inclusive national wildfire strategy that best leverages all available resources.
As the only aerial firefighter in the Senate, I look forward to working with DOGE to lead the charge on reshaping our approach to wildfire management in America.
We can streamline wildland firefighting efforts, remove outdated bureaucratic obstacles to getting the job done and cut government waste. We can fight fires better, stronger and faster. And we can do more for our communities threatened by wildfires at a lower cost for American taxpayers.
This is an area that is ripe for collaboration between folks on both sides of the aisle. It doesn’t matter what party you’re from; it’s clear that the federal government must do a better job protecting our communities and public lands from wildfires.
I will work with Republicans and Democrats to deliver commonsense solutions to more effectively fight the devastating threat of wildfires. Americans nationwide made it clear they expect more out of their government, and it’s time we seize the moment and deliver on the mandate voters gave us.
In Book Club we have been talking about whether scientists still refer to the balance of nature, and equilibrium kinds of conditions. So for the purposes of NCFP, I think it’s interesting to pursue this mystery with stories in real time. Thanks to Dan Botkin for sending this NY Times article:
Notice that “scientists say it is a striking example of how.. are disturbing the balance of nature”. But no actual scientist is mentioned saying this.
In an infestation that scientists say is almost certainly a consequence of global warming, the southern pine beetle is spreading through New Jersey’s famous Pinelands.
It tried to do so many times in the past, but bitterly cold winters would always kill it off. Now, scientists say, the winters are no longer cold enough. The tiny insect, firmly entrenched, has already killed tens of thousands of acres of pines, and it is marching northward.
Scientists say it is a striking example of the way seemingly small climatic changes are disturbing the balance of nature. They see these changes as a warning of the costly impact that is likely to come with continued high emissions of greenhouse gases.
The disturbances are also raising profound questions about how to respond. Old battles about whether to leave nature alone or to manage it are being rejoined as landscapes come under stress.
The New Jersey situation resembles, on a smaller scale, the outbreak of mountain pine beetles that has ravaged tens of millions of acres of forest across the Western United States and Canada. That devastation, too, has been attributed to global warming — specifically, the disappearance of the bitterly cold winter nights that once kept the beetles in check.
But the same bark beetle outbreaks have been seen in the past and we have been told in Colorado (by scientists) that bark beetles and fires are “natural disturbances.” Also, fire suppression must have a role or there wouldn’t be so much prime old lodgepole habitat. Perhaps it’s the location and magnitude that are different, but that’s a bit of a finer point.
Now there is an identified scientist, who says…
Dr. Ayres, one of the nation’s top beetle experts, has studied New Jersey closely for several years and has published research saying the rising temperatures have made the invasion possible. “I think the scientific inference is about as good as it gets,” Dr. Ayres said. “This is a big deal, and it’s going to forever change the way forests have to be managed in New Jersey.”
Ah.. here is the overstocked argument; my italics on “unnatural.”
Long ago, fires would have helped keep the forest more open, but they have been suppressed across much of the country for a century to protect life and property. That has left many forests in an overgrown, unnatural condition.
Experience in the South has shown that such “overstocked stands,” as foresters call them, are especially vulnerable to beetle attack because the trees are too stressed fighting one another for light, water and nutrients. Control of the pine beetle has been achieved there by thinning the woods, leaving the remaining trees stronger.
Mr. Williams, who is critical of New Jersey’s government, advocates a similar approach, involving controlled burns and selective tree-cutting. Mr. Smith, whose college degrees include one in environmental science, pushed through a bill that would have encouraged the state to manage its forests more aggressively. But several environmental groups were suspicious that large-scale logging would ensue.
“We saw this legislation as an excuse to come in under the guise of ‘stewardship’ to open up our forests for commercial operations,” said Jeff Tittel, the director of the state’s Sierra Club chapter.
I like the Guv’s attitude:
To allay such fears, the senator included a requirement that any state forest plan receive certification from an outside body, the Forest Stewardship Council, which is trusted by many environmental groups.
That approach has been followed successfully in other states, including Maryland. But Gov. Chris Christie vetoed the bill, saying he could not allow the state to “abdicate its responsibility to serve as the state’s environmental steward to a named third party.”
Below is my bolding:
Dr. Ayres said that if climatic warming continues, nothing would stop them from eventually heading up the coast. That means forest management is likely to become critical in many places where it has been neglected for decades.
“It’s hard for some people to accept — ‘What, you have to cut down trees to save the forest?’ ” Dr. Ayres said. “Yes, that’s exactly right. The alternative is losing the forest for saving the trees.”
Well, I would only argue that the only thing stopping them would be hosts.. which are relatively fewer to the north.
So we have an article in which the quoted scientist is pragmatic about “things used to be different, now they have changed and we have to deal with it.” But we have only the writer’s claim that
“scientists say it is a striking example of the way seemingly small climatic changes are disturbing the balance of nature. They see these changes as a warning of the costly impact that is likely to come with continued high emissions of greenhouse gases.
Still, old pine trees will still die, with or without the pine beetle. And if we can’t burn them to get rid of the tree corpses, they will hang around and ultimately fall over and decay, quicker in hot climates than in the Rockies. Is that what the people of New Jersey want from their forests?
And the Sierra Club guy seems a bit ideological. Local sourcing of things is good but making money from dead trees is bad, because it’s “commercial.” I thought the Sierra Club’s antipathy for selling dead trees was just for federal lands, but maybe not?
One of the topics addressed in Chapter 4 is Margaret Davis’ pollen work (pages 80-82 in the hardcopy edition). We people who study trees are familiar with the ideas of how different species came back from their refugia during glaciation, and how different assemblages of species have occurred through time. Many different groups of plants and animals have existed in different combinations on any particular piece of land through time. Changes can be due to changes in soil (e.g., Mt. St. Helens), changes in human activities (e.g., Appalachian “market-induced succession”) or invasive species (e.g., Chestnut blight) and changes are always going on (e.g., climate, development, etc.).
When I worked for the Forest Service, people would talk about how “ecosystems have evolved” and I would ask “what is the mechanism for an “ecosystem” to evolve?” If I had one critique with the ideas in Dan’s book, it is that he did not go far enough in talking about the Emperor’s missing clothes. Just reifying an “ecosystem” places natural phenomena within a human idea context and makes it possible to say all kinds of fuzzy things about an “ecosystem”. I think people use it as shorthand for more complex ideas, but the problem is that it lacks specificity and clarity.
I just ran across one this morning, that policies need to address “fire’s role in forest ecosystems.” My first question would be “fire’s role as to what aspect of plants, animals, water, soil and air?” Fire’s role, like climate or anything else, is not a constant. I like this quote from the book:
P 85. ..
we find that nature undisturbed is not constant in form, structure or proportion but change at every scale of time and space. The old idea of a static landscape, like a single musical chord sounded foresver, must be abandoned, for such a landscape never existed except in our imagination. Nature undisturbed by human influence seems more like a symphony whose harmonies arise from variation and change over many scales of time and space, changing with individual births and deaths, local disruptions and recoveries, larger-scale responses to climate from one glacial age to another, and to the slower alterations of soils and yet larger variations between glacial ages.
If you have been a reader and writer of Forest Service regulations lately, the “form, structure or proportion” will call back to your memory perhaps “ecosystem composition, structure and function”:
2012 Planning Rule: Alternative A would require plan components to provide for the maintenance or restoration of the structure, function, composition, and connectivity of healthy and resilient aquatic ecosystems and watersheds in the plan area.
2001 and Colorado Roadless Rule: Tree cutting, sale, or removal is needed to maintain or restore the characteristics of ecosystem composition, structure and processes.
These statements, in regulation, imply that certain characteristics should be “maintained or restored”; that is, maintained as they are today, or restored to what they used to be (yes, I realize that some in the FS is talking that “restoration” doesn’t mean that, it really means “resilience to change”, but English is English, and if you mean that you should put in in regulation, IMHO.)
Now, scientists reviewed all these regulations and did not say “hey, that doesn’t take into account current scientific thought, because there is no one unchanging way that composition structure and function is “supposed to be” and that “needs to be” maintained or restored.” I think in Dan’s book, he is again asking the question “if science tells us that everything is changing, why do scientists (including ecologists, I assume) review and accept regulations and other policies that seem to say the opposite?”
I have three hypotheses. One is that the ecosystem idea has fuzzed everyone’s thinking. The second is that so much science is based on these ideas that scientists can’t imagine a world without them. Third is that scientists don’t study the “appeal to nature” idea in philosophy nor the history of its use (see Wikipedia here), so they don’t see that using it has conceptual problems way beyond the scientific community.
Again, I have not allowed comments here on NCFP; f you are inclined you can comment on the Virtual Book Club blog here.
All, thank you for your ongoing comments and discussion while I’ve been off. Due to other commitments I did not get “back” as early as I originally intended and won’t have time to get into posting more thoughts until my last paper for my class is done on Nov. 11.
I do like the gentler and more reflective pace of the Book Club. I like that it allows us time to find related papers, books and articles to bring into the discussion. Nevertheless, I do feel a need to complete a plan, so we will be done with the book before February when the work for my next class will heat up.
So here is a schedule that I plan to adhere to to get through the book.
Nov. 11 Chapter 4 Oaks in New Jersey
Nov. 18 5. Mountain Lions and Mule Deer
Nov. 25 6. Earth as a Fellow Creature
Dec. 2 7. In Mill Hollow
Dec. 9 8. The Forest in the Computer
Dec. 16 9. Within the Moose’s Stomach
Dec. 23 10. Fire in the Forest
Dec. 30 11. Salmon in Wild Rivers and Grizzlies in Yellowstone
Jan. 6 12. The Winds of Mauna Loa
Jan. 13 13. Life on a Climate-Changing Planet
Jan. 20 14. The Moon in the Nautilus Shell
Jan. 27 15. Postscript: A Guide to Action
If you want to go ahead and author a post for any of these weeks, please send to me and I will hang onto it. Otherwise, I will post something to discuss each week.
Some of the ideas that, for example, Guy brought up are broader than any individual chapter and those are fine to send to me to post and discuss anytime. I just want to have a plan so everyone can see where we’re going and when we might get there.
Again, here’s a link to Virtual Book Club discussion and if you want to post, please email me at terraveritas at gmail.com.
If you want to comment on this post you need to go to Virtual Book Club site to do so.
Probably posting this in the wrong place, but the only place where I could figure out how to post it. I did buy Dan Botkin’s book (Moon in nautilus etc), got the kindle version which was cheapest, and am still deciding whether it was a good purchase or not. Anything that makes me think has some value, I guess. My three main problems with the book are 1) Very wordy, he goes on endlessly elaborating on isolated examples (wolves on the island as one instance), they are anecdotally interesting but his use of them to derive grander principles seems contrived. “Cherry-picking” is the term that comes to mind; 2) He repeatedly states the obvious and well-known (e.g., change rather than permanent steady-state is the ecological norm), sets up straw men to compare himself with (e.g., the idea that most ecology is based on, and ecologists believe, that nature is a steady state phenomenon, which is patently false, similarly his trivial and inaccurate exposition of the logistic equation in population biology, which he then proceeds to knock down), thereby proclaiming himself a “renegade naturalist”; 3) endless self-promotion (I guess that’s really just a variation on #2). When I read him, I’m reminded of Walter Mondale’s comment on Gary Hart’s self-proclaimed “big ideas”: Where’s the beef? One example that’s about as vegan as an idea can get, not in his book but on his website (modestly titled “Daniel B. Botkin: Solving Environmental Problems by Understanding How Nature Works”), where he provides “The Rules of Ecology” (so far there’s only one), which includes statement such as “The evolutionary goal is simply to stay around.” If you think just a little bit about that statement, you hopefully realize either that it’s flat-out wrong, or else he’s using the term “goal” metaphorically, much as Dawkins did when he talked about “genes maximizing their representation in the gene pool.” Again, this is metaphor, which is not explanation, and it would be helpful if Botkin would explain and acknowledge that, rather than throwing it out as part of “Botkin Rule of Ecology #1”.
Wondering if maybe I was alone in my discomfort with this book, I did locate one review (coincidentally in one of my favorite journals, Trends in Ecology and Evolution) which takes on Botkin’s book, both the good and bad aspects, much more eloquently than I could: http://sev.lternet.edu/~jnekola/nekola%20pdf/TREE-28-506-507.pdf
Note from Sharon: I left this here but also posted at the Book Club site. Here is the link to the post there. I turned off the comments here but you can post there.
Rather than provide a summary of Chapter 3, as I did with Chapter 2, I am reprinting a recent post by Dr. Ralph Maughan, an expert on wolves and a strong proponent of their reintroduction in former habitats: http://idahoptv.org/outdoors/shows/wolvesinidaho/maughan.cfm. The reason for doing this is that Maughan is commenting on the very focus of Botkin’s 3rd chapter, which starts with the story of his (Botkin’s) experiences researching the predator/prey relationships between moose and wolves on Isle Royale, an island in Lake Superior near the Canadian border that is over 200 square miles in size and contains 45 lakes of its own. What has made the island particularly interesting for this type of study is that it has never been heavily influenced by people; moose first arrived there from the mainland only about 100 years ago; and wolves didn’t arrive (except for a failed National Park Service attempt to establish them with zoo animals in the late 1940s) until the lake froze over more than 50 years later — after the moose had a half-century to build their population without a major predator to inhibit their reproduction.
As with Chapter 2, Botkin uses this story and others — sandhill cranes, Canadian lynx and microbes — to examine the “balance of nature” as it has been defined mathematically and as actually observed, to examine the differences between the two. Both writers cite the work of long-time Isle Royale researcher and wildlife ecologist, Rolf Peterson, but they seem to come to different conclusions as to why that work is important: http://www.thewildlifenews.com/2013/09/26/should-the-declining-inbred-wolves-of-isle-royale-n-p-be-augmented/
I would like to thank Dr. Maughan for permitting me to repost his work here. Of the 72 comments on this topic on his blog, a significant number were my own in sometimes heated response to many of his regular commenters. Tree and Matthew will understand. It was my second visit there, and both times I seemed to stir up the natives with my thoughts and opinions — mostly because of the old “anonymous commenter” discussion. I think JZ first sent me there and after I went and got a similar reaction, he said he was just joking. Maybe it was Derek, but you will see the result if you read the comments, too.
I will leave it up to actual readers to determine their own thoughts on these two perspectives, but I’ll repeat Botkin’s analogy of “resilient stability” in regards to the “balance on nature” argument by his comparison of a person with a drink building a house of cards on a train: the house of cards will collapse with a bump or large vibration, but the drink will only slosh around before it returns to its former level. One is a fragile balancing act, and one is resilient. For me at least, that provides a clear metaphor for this discussion. Now for Maughan’s post:
Should the declining inbred wolves of Isle Royale N.P. be augmented?
Should there be genetic rescue (outside wolves brought in)-
For many years the wolves and moose of Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior have shown that wolves do not wipe out their prey. When wolves become abundant enough that the disappearance of prey seems probable, the wolves die back.
On the other hand, when wolves have declined to few in number, the moose population expands and begins to decimate its prey — the moose-edible vegetation of the island.
This rough balance has existed ever since wolves colonized the island one hard winter. In 1949 a pair of wolves walked over to the island on the frozen lake. The pair found an island overrun with moose. The moose themselves had migrated to the island 40 years earlier.
The wolf population expanded, of course, and brought the moose number in check (and more). Then the wolves began to starve off and the cycle began.
The moose prefer aspen, and they do well eating it. However, they mostly wiped that out before the wolves came. Ever since, they have relied primarily on the less nutritious balsam fir and lichens.
Both the moose and the wolves are also subject to inbreeding. It is especially a problem for the wolves, all of which descended from the original pair. So, in addition to the cyclic malnutrition when the moose population drops too low, the wolves have been seen to suffer from increasing genetic defects. One of these is poor reproduction even when there is enough food.
Down to just 8 wolves, they seem doomed without outside genes from new wolves. There have been up to 50 wolves at a time on the island, although many scientists think a stable number is about 25. It should be noted that there have always been wide fluctuations around this “mean.” The eight wolves seem to have gained a brief reprieve with the birth of 2 or 3 pups in 2013 after several years with none. Nevertheless, it is hard to see how the unaugmented population can survive much longer. It is less and less likely that the lake will freeze and wolves from Minnesota, Michigan or Wisconsin find their way to the island.
The wolves and their relationship to the moose and the vegetation have been studied since 1958. Dr. Rolf Peterson, in particular, is the person most closely associated with the studies. He would like to see some genetic rescue. Dr. Dave Mech, however, who is another avid student of the island’s wolves is reported to want to first let natural events play out.
With the wolf population so low, we would now expect the moose population to be expanding. It is. However, it is increasingly suffering from tick infestation. This is a problem for moose in general during winters, but Isle Royale has seen warmer winters as the climate changes. This makes the effects of the bloodsucking arachnids more severe.
Rolf Peterson recently sent out the following letter.
The National Park Service is interested to receive your input on the pending decision regarding the future management of wolves on Isle Royale. Please send your input to the following email address:
The Park Service is considering three options: (1) do nothing, even if wolves go extinct; (2) allow wolves to go extinct (if that is what they do), and then introduce a new wolf population; or (3) conserve Isle Royale wolves with an action known as genetic rescue by bringing some wolves to the island to mitigate inbreeding.
While expressing your view, consider providing as much detail on the reasons for your preference, as the Park Service believes the reasons for your view are as important as your view. If you have any questions on the process or anything relating to providing input, please do not hesitate to ask me.
