Thanks to a Montanan who sent this link to a Missoulian article entitled “Conservation biologists must take message to politicians, experts say at UM.”
The weeklong gathering has brought scientists, policymakers and journalists from around the world to the University of Montana. While much of the gathering is focused on the latest scientific discipline discoveries, this year’s agenda also features many discussions about getting more science to the general public.
Dominick DellaSala, president and chief scientist of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, argued that even different political camps can end up following the same policy aims. He said that while the George W. Bush administration caught fire for recommending logging and thinning in spotted owl habitat with little evidence that would help the bird, the Obama administration has pursued a very similar policy.
“The thinning goes forward even though the science says, ‘Wait a minute,’ ” DellaSala said. “With the precautionary principle, the agency has the burden of proof to demonstrate it’s not harmful.”
Based on these quotes, the folks there seem to be pretty sloppy about what is “science.” For example, the precautionary principle is not science, it’s an idea or value. I don’t believe that particular idea is enshrined in law but others can help with that.
Here are some more:
But that’s going to take a higher level of commitment and organization than most scientists are willing to assume, said David Johns, a professor of politics and law at Portland State University and co-founder of the Yellowstone-to-Yukon Conservation Initiative.
“Conservationists have abandoned grassroots organizing,” Johns said. “It’s mostly check-writers supporting professional staff. But when you’re only playing the inside game, you can’t match the resources of our opponents.”
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe said managing people is much harder than managing wildlife, especially where science is involved. When people “stack facts based on beliefs,” to make political decisions, it becomes extremely hard for scientific evidence to persuade someone to change an opinion.
Ah.. it sounds like conservation “ists” and “biologists” are the same folks.. but “science” is supposed to be objective (or not..). Even Director Ashe as quoted seems to believe that “science” should drive political decisions.
The curious thing about this is that everyone knows that scientists in the real world do have different values and do disagree about things.. in fact, science is supposed to be open and transparent. Plus our government if supposed to be “of the people” not “of the scientists.”
And politicians get that .. that’s why you see scientists of all persuasions testifying at hearings.
It looked simple enough to find, tucked just east of Tahkenitch Lake near the Pacific Ocean. I’m geographically-challenged in the woods and the directions were a bit vague (“After you turn left from hwy 101 on Five Mile Road (I forget the actual mileage), you will go past Thakenitch Lake. You’ll get to the bottom of a valley, go past a house and small wetlands on your left and before you go back up the hill, there will be a white fence and then a gate on your right. That’s us.“). It didn’t help matters that I blithely went “back up the hill,” (30% grades) for several miles before realizing my error and backtracking. Having given myself an extra half-hour, I was more-or-less on time. The kids and I chatted about owls, salmon and national forest tree thinning.
About ten years ago, the Forest Service bought the 640-acre cattle and hay homestead along Fivemile and Bell creeks to restore coho habitat. Its plans are ambitious. Some old dikes have been removed. Invasive plants are being treated with Glyphosate, mowing and excavation (canary reed grass makes a deep mat that is a bitch to remove). While there, I saw a log loader putting some alder and fir logs into a small tributary creek.
Given that I moved from the east coast where there are too many deer, who seem to be getting along with housing development, I thought this Denver Post article was interesting.
Below is an excerpt:
In Colorado, the latest CPW population estimates, provided in response to Denver Post queries, show a statewide decline in mule deer — the main deer in the West — down to 390,600 in 2013 from 614,100 in 2005.
Some of the decline may be because of changes in methods for estimating deer populations.
Across western states, deer decreased by about 10 percent overall between 2003 and 2009, said Arizona-based wildlife biologist Jim Heffelfinger, who chairs the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies’ Mule Deer Working Group, which draws expertise from 23 states and Canadian provinces.
Deer aren’t likely to join polar bears facing extinction, but the sharp downward trend requires concerted human action, Heffelfinger said.
“We certainly cannot have it all. We need to be smart about our wildlife habitat, especially our mule deer habitat and how we manage the population,” Heffelfinger said. “There are so many different things that are stressing mule deer around the West. Fire suppression has closed the forest canopies, and that has reduced the amount of shrubs and weeds that deer rely on.
“You don’t really like big, catastrophic fires — certainly where human structures are damaged. But we really need to open up the canopies for deer.”
It’s interesting the lengthy list that they came up with for possible causes..
Colorado-based wildlife biologists have pinpointed multiple factors driving deer declines:
• a one-two punch of hard winters followed by drought;
• commercial and residential development in the mountains;
Mule deer make their way across the fencing in an area of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal.
Mule deer make their way across the fencing in an area of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal. (Kathryn Scott Osler, Denver Post file)
• chronic wasting disease;
• aggressive fire suppression that leads to overly thick forests;
• coyote and mountain lion predation;
• more than 2,000 vehicle collisions a year in western Colorado;
• energy development that disrupts deer habitat and migration.
In response to the multi-year decline, Colorado wildlife managers have reduced the number of deer hunting licenses they offer from 130,106 in 2007 to about 80,000 for this year.
Hunters in Colorado kill 35,000 to 40,000 deer a year, said Chad Bishop, CPW assistant director for wildlife natural resources.
As well as the “change in method of estimation.” I’d be interested in hearing what other states think. Seems like if the reduction is westwide, all the possible factors would have different levels of occurrence in different states.
This is an “image” of space junk.I’m taking a break from posting the Festschrift paper to do some reflection on the topic of how people perceive the environmental situation. It’s interesting to me for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that humans have lots of problems to work on and yet some seem to be uniquely pessimistic about the environment (not violence, hunger or disease, bullying, war, etc.) Since I am now in a business that seeks to do away with all bad things, I feel that the gloomy cloud that has settled around our perception of humans and the environment could use some further exploration.
There was an interesting article in New Scientist this week here about changing to a more sustainable future… I hope you can see all of it without a subscription, but below is an excerpt andhereis the essay in Word.
Still, that doesn’t tell us how to get there from here. Again there’s no shortage of ideas. Ecologists, economists and politicians have proposed many initiatives to foster sustainability. Most repurpose tools we are familiar with – international agreements, laws and regulations, taxes and subsidies, plus new technologies. Others are more radical, advocating structural changes to key institutions such as banking and finance, corporations, land and resource ownership, and government. Many individuals, grass-roots groups such as the Transition Network, businesses such as Unilever, universities, cities such as Vancouver, and a few nations, including Iceland and Bhutan, are putting these ideas into practice.
Of course, most of us are not green crusaders. Yet we are already changing our lives, our work patterns and what we consume in ways that suggest the drive for sustainability may be pushing at an open door. For a start, we are driving less. The annual distance travelled by UK car and van drivers fell by 7 per cent between 1995 and 2012. Germany, Australia, Japan and even the US all report the same trend. Why is that? Cost is a factor: young people are learning to drive later, put off by the price. We are also driving less to see friends and making fewer trips to the shops and to work by car – the rise in urban living, social media, online shopping and digital homeworking are seeing to that.
Driving less, and walking and cycling more are seen as positive lifestyle choices these days and are increasingly a feature of city living. Dense urban populations make recycling and other resource use more efficient, too. That doesn’t mean a return to slums. If building materials can be produced sustainably and houses can be designed to be carbon-neutral, people can still live in ample and comfortable homes, says Mary Ritter, head of the European Union’s climate innovation centre Climate KIC.
Porritt believes that the biggest changes will come in response to large popular movements galvanised by droughts, floods, famines and other crises. “Suddenly there’s a shock to the system, and re-evaluation kicks in big time,” he says. Yet some changes just happen and we hardly notice, such as putting out the recycling or insulating our lofts.
One of the most important is that we are having fewer children. Today the average woman has 2.43 children, fewer than half as many as 40 years ago. There is big population growth still to come in some places, especially sub-Saharan Africa where there is less access to contraception. But after quadrupling in the 20th century, the world’s population, currently at 7 billion, is unlikely to rise by more than 50 per cent before settling down. So we can think about how we do sustainability with a stable population, rather than one that is continually growing.
Population is only one part of the equation, of course. Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, points out that the amount of stuff people use and the resources needed to produce that stuff are the other issues we need to worry about. In the developed world, at least, there is growing evidence that we have reached “peak stuff”. Individuals and society have got richer, and the rate at which we use resources has levelled off. Homes and factories are becoming more energy and water efficient and much of our new technology is smaller and lighter, reducing the amount of materials required to make them. So in many ways, the developed world is already dematerialising. The challenge is breaking the historic link between prosperity and energy and resource use fast enough.
This week I happened to spend a great deal of time organizing my electronic entertainment so this article highlighted some things I noticed… I used to drive around and shop, now I don’t. If RS is closer and has price match with BB, I won’t be driving to BB. Shelves of CDs are now on a jump drive. Shelves of sheet music are also on a jump drive.
But there are a couple of assumptions I would argue with.. 1) “cities are better for the environment and people” and 2) “meat is always worse” for the environment. If indeed transportation becomes based on renewable energy sources, I guess we would be reducing it by living in cities because.. (?) And locally meat may be the only food able to be locally produced due to cold or dryness or both.
That evening I was listening to WNYC (the Jonathan Channel, my favorite radio program) and ran across this:
Turn away from factory farmed meat. Instead of trying to get everyone to become a vegetarian, which is an impossible goal, Martins focuses on improving our food system and getting rid of factory farms. “It’s better to construct an action-based result.” Martins said. “ I believe in creating a solution rather than creating a utopia that will probably never exist.”
It seems like many things are getting better due to people’s awareness and economic drivers. Note the question at the end of the essay is whether the link between prosperity and energy and resource use will be broken “fast enough”. We have moved from worry about the ultimate condition being bad to worrying about the speed at which we approach a positive outcome, isn’t that something to celebrate. It does leave the question “not fast enough” for whom or what?
Looking back at this section of the paper through today’s eyes.. I notice that both the Janzen and Soule’ quotes below were published in scientific journals, even though they are their own ideas pretty much about what’s wrong with humanity. Of course, Soule’ doesn’t like the idea that some people know that science is a sociological construct.. it interferes with the idea that they know more and should rule. Let me make this clear, everyone is entitled to their opinions, but when someone says “it’s in the peer-reviewed literature”, this is evidence that all kinds of questionable stuff makes it into the peer-reviewed literature. This is in a review journal, which is kind of like a scientist op-ed, which need not contain much “science”, as we shall see.
I was fairly surprised when I read this, though. Again, back when I learned how to be a scientist, (just past the dinosaur period), this would have been inappropriate for a “scientific” paper. If you’re interested in the cites, I will link to the whole paper after posting each section.
Selection in an academic environment has traditionally been focused on individual scientific achievements and less on work in teams where power is shared. Coupled with a lack of education of many biologists in policy studies, or any social science, for that matter, this can lead to a lack of appreciation for the policy process. Even conservation biology, which considers itself an interdisciplinary policy oriented field, has lacked social science in its curriculum (Noss, 1999). Perhaps this is the source of a lack of respect for the roles of social scientists, citizens and others who participate in the policy process.
For example: “Biologists are in charge of the future of tropical ecology. If the tropics of the world go under, biologists will have no one but themselves to blame. We can see very clearly what is happening, what will be the irreversible consequences for biology and humanity, and how the solutions must be constructed.”(Janzen, 1986). He goes on to say that “the driving force for the reduction of the tropical world is human selfishness, human numbers, human ignorance of its own needs, and the acquisitive nature of life itself applied at all levels.” Despite defining the problem as a basically social and cultural one, he goes on to add that “the true battle is to reprogram humanity to a different goal. The battle is being fought by many more kinds of professionals than just ecologists; however it is a battle over the control of interactions, and by definition, the person competent at recognizing, understanding and manipulating interactions is an ecologist.” The tendency to claim science as a foundation for the legitimacy of one’s perspective and then making statements about an area beyond the expertise of that science, that in fact is the area of a social science, seems rather contradictory, albeit common among some biologists. It is interesting and worthy of comment that the above statements were printed in the Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, a scientific publication.
This claim for superior legitimacy of biologists in policy is echoed by Soule’ (1993) who critiques the “bureaucrats, technocrats, planners, development specialists, lawyers and economists, whose views often determine how governments decide to manage wildlands and biodiversity, or if they should be managed at all.” He goes on to describe some of their good points, but criticizes their lack of biological knowledge, their comfort with the idea that science is a social construct, and their urban backgrounds. Certainly science is a social construct, as is nature. There is a paradox in that scientific information is useful but it is not reality, and science is a social enterprise conducted by humans with all the comedy and tragedy that that entails. Several paragraphs before, Soule acknowledges that the best policy is a mix of science, economics, anthropology, sociology, and local native knowledge, if it still exists. While some would say that social sciences are also sciences (and that makes one wonder exactly what Soule’s definition of a science is), in fact, there are fields such as policy analysis and decision science which are specifically about policy and decisions. Why do some of our most prominent biologists appear to be unwilling to grant scientific legitimacy to social scientists? Why are they unwilling to allow that good policy comes from teamwork from people with different backgrounds? There are too many of these to cite, but particularly egregious are statements such as “the Endangered Species Act is scientifically sound” after a description of incentives, tax code and other issues traditionally the realm of social scientists (Eisner et al. 1995).
Sheila Jasanoff (1994) cites several cases of scientists who “Given a choice, tend to define problems in ecological terms, although other possible framings may coexist in the social domain. To the extent that their shared values promote boundary shifting (by allowing issues to be moved across the society-nature boundary from “politics” to “science”) it is tempting to interpret the values in question as nothing more than the overriding interest of scientists in enlarging the influence of science.” The recent Committee of Scientists report (1999), which predictably focuses the need for science to help make better decisions on public land management and planning. No one would argue that a basis of science is good. However, since scientific information is a product of funding, one must ask the question “does science as used in the process inform citizens in the democratic process or establish a system of experts that (necessarily or not) does an end run around democracy?” Probably due to the lack of social scientists in natural resource departments, these questions remain mostly unexamined. Lee (1994) addresses this question and Profeta (1996) discusses the role of laypeople compared to experts in determining risk. Once again, there is a paradox, by trying to dominate and advocate in the name of science, trust and credibility, the long run chips at the policy table, may be lost long before the stakes get high.
“My point is that science is a large assemblage of parts, and it takes a supple mind to put those parts in order to have a comprehensive result. An artist, if you will. Big Picture person. Visionary. Those people exist and I have seen their work all my life in many aspects of our natural resource economy.”
reminded me of this Commentary I wrote for the Journal of Forestry in 2002 linked here.
I wrote it as the Chair of the Forest Science and Technology Board at the Society of American Foresters. More recently, I was the Chair of the Committee on Forest Policy. Does that give me credibility to talk about these things? I must admit it was sometimes frustrating to be involved in discussions of the 2012 planning rule, given that some external groups treated Science and Scientists more like sacred objects and high priests. Despite the existence of the science of science and technology studies that says that that isn’t an appropriate way to deal with policy. I was always mystified (including during the 2001 Planning Rule, in that case by internal folks) by people who say their science should rule policy, but not other fields of science ;). Anyway, below is the test of the Commentary.
When we use the term “science-based,” I think we really mean that we would like decisions to be informed by the most-current, highest-quality scientific information. Using the term “science-based” can be misleading, as it implies that “science” is the foundation for the decision; in fact, people choose practices that best meet their values. Scientific
and other types of information should inform the decisionmaker of the effects of different choices.
To me, making good resource management policy is both an art and a science. For policymakers or decisionmakers, it’s a little like making lentil soup. They have tasty bits—the research articles, legal expertise, indigenous and practitioner knowledge, and monitoring information. They want each bit to
be of sufficient quality, so they ask us scientists or other experts (the lentil and sausage specialists) for our advice.
The process of turning informational ingredients into policy soup has well-developed sciences to support it— the decision sciences. Researchers in these fields examine the processes for
making decisions and how information can best be used in those decisions in a variety of contexts. Without quality decision science information and quality policy practitioners, taking information from all the disciplines can result in a tasteless jumble rather than a mouthwatering delight.
Potentially even more dangerous is putting the lentil and sausage specialists to work in the kitchen. Since we scientists and other specialists tend to love our particular bit, we tend to overestimate the importance of that bit to the soup, and have an inherent conflict of interest in the soup’s development.
I agree with my colleague Bob Lee at University of Washington that the beauty and attraction of science is that it “gives us rules that protect us from the all-too-human tendency to fool
ourselves, either individually or collectively.”
But because all policy issues cross disciplines, the only truly “scientific” claim for the policy product is that of the decision sciences. I believe that in addition to quality ingredients, our best bet for a nutritious and delicious
policy soup is civil public debate of competing knowledge claims, improving our decision science capacity, and a structured way to learn from our policy practitioners who dependably deliver quality products.
“Of those polled, 48 percent listed conservation issues as the primary factor in supporting elected officials and 38 percent they were somewhat important. Conservation issues were less important for 9 percent and not important to 4 percent.”
“When asked if protecting public lands in Montana has generally been more of a good or bad thing, 78 percent responded “good” and 15 percent “bad.””
“A slim majority of 51 percent favored protecting more lands as wilderness.”
But of course, “it probably will not affect how legislators vote …”
As usual, Region 5 (California) led the nation, accounting for over 7 million gallons. And the Stanislaus NF led Region 5 with over 2 million gallons dumped. Ahh, the good old Rim Fire, of course.
So what did retardant accomplish at the Rim Fire?
Obviously, retardant didn’t achieve the initial attack objective of keeping the fire below 300 acres in size. But not for lack of effort. As one informed commentator pointed out over at wildfiretoday.com “over 32,000 gallons of retardant were applied between detection (approx 1540) and dark on the first day, 65,000+ the second day and (largely due to visibility issues) 23,000 the third day.” Within 20 minutes of first detection the incident commander had decided that the steep, dry, remote canyon was too dangerous to insert boots on the ground (“CALFIRE helitack pilots refused to insert crews at the origin for lack of safety zones”), without which retardant is largely ineffective. With that sensible decision to put firefighter safety first, it’s a head scratcher why the retardant air attack continued.
But, continue it did. Not just during the next three days, but as “the fire grew, literally, exponentially for 6 days. That’s doubling in size every day. 55,000 acre runs.” Did retardant use slow that doubling, stop those runs? Of course not. The prevailing winds blew the fire across the Stanislaus, into Yosemite, until the fire ran out of fuel on barren granite hard surface of the Sierra mountains.
Question for readers. How would the Rim Fire’s outcome been different had retardant not been used?
In the “New Topics or Questions from Readers” thread, Bill Keye posted a link to a New York Times op-ed, “Rethinking the Wild” — which might as well have been entitled “Rethinking the Wilderness Act.” The author, Christopher Solomon, suggests that we may need to manage wilderness areas to some degree, to mitigate the effects of climate change. For example:
“A great example is Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California, most of which lies within the 595,000-acre Joshua Tree Wilderness. Up to 90 percent of the park’s namesake trees could disappear by century’s end, according to models that factor in expected warming. Should we let that happen as nature’s atonement for our mistake? Or should park managers instead intervene in some way — relocating trees to higher elevations to promote their survival, for instance, or finding or creating a hybrid species that can withstand the hotter temperatures and combating exotic grasses that increase the threat of fires?”
Or cutting lodgepole to prevent their invasion of alpine meadows, or watering giant sequoia to help them survive a drier climate.
However, over in the “Bob Berwyn: Forest health crisis ends with a whimper” thread, Matthew K. posted a link to and an excerpt of an article in which USFS biologist Diana Six says, of cutting “survivor” trees during salvage logging:
“It’s natural selection. The bugs wiped out the trees that are not adapted to current conditions … Underlying genetics will determine future forests,” she said, challenging the conventional wisdom that logging is needed to restore forest health.
Many of alpine meadows previously were alpine lakes and wetlands. Over time, some have already filled in and now support trees rather than water plants and critters. How much of this process was the result of human activity, and how much was “natural”? The same goes for bark beetle infestations and fires that have affected wilderness. At what point, and under what circumstances, is active management of wilderness areas acceptable? Or is it, ever?
