Loss of Predators in Northern Hemisphere Affecting Ecosystem Health

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The entire report, Large Predators Limit Herbivore Densities in Northern Forest Ecosystems, is available here.

ScienceDaily (Apr. 9, 2012) — A survey on the loss in the Northern Hemisphere of large predators, particularly wolves, concludes that current populations of moose, deer, and other large herbivores far exceed their historic levels and are contributing to disrupted ecosystems. The research, published recently by scientists from Oregon State University, examined 42 studies done over the past 50 years.

It found that the loss of major predators in forest ecosystems has allowed game animal populations to greatly increase, crippling the growth of young trees and reducing biodiversity. This also contributes to deforestation and results in less carbon sequestration, a potential concern with climate change.

“These issues do not just affect the United States and a few national parks,” said William Ripple, an OSU professor of forestry and lead author of the study. “The data from Canada, Alaska, the Yukon, Northern Europe and Asia are all showing similar results. There’s consistent evidence that large predators help keep populations of large herbivores in check, with positive effects on ecosystem health.”

Densities of large mammalian herbivores were six times greater in areas without wolves, compared to those in which wolves were present, the researchers concluded. They also found that combinations of predators, such as wolves and bears, can create an important synergy for moderating the size of large herbivore populations.

“Wolves can provide food that bears scavenge, helping to maintain a healthy bear population,” said Robert Beschta, a professor emeritus at OSU and co-author of the study. “The bears then often prey on young moose, deer or elk — in Yellowstone more young elk calves are killed by bears than by wolves, coyotes and cougars combined.” In Europe, the coexistence of wolves with lynx also resulted in lower deer densities than when wolves existed alone.”

In recent years, OSU researchers have helped lead efforts to understand how major predators help to reduce herbivore population levels, improve ecosystem function and even change how herbivores behave when they feel threatened by predation — an important aspect they call the “ecology of fear.”

“In systems where large predators remain, they appear to have a major role in sustaining the diversity and productivity of native plant communities, thus maintaining healthy ecosystems,” said Beschta. “When the role of major predators is more fully appreciated, it may allow managers to reconsider some of their assumptions about the management of wildlife.”

In Idaho and Montana, hundreds of wolves are now being killed in an attempt to reduce ranching conflicts and increase game herd levels. The new analysis makes clear that the potential beneficial ecosystem effects of large predators is far more pervasive, over much larger areas, than has often been appreciated.

It points out how large predators can help maintain native plant communities by keeping large herbivore densities in check, allow small trees to survive and grow, reduce stream bank erosion, and contribute to the health of forests, streams, fisheries and other wildlife.

It also concludes that human hunting, due to its limited duration and impact, is not effective in preventing hyper-abundant densities of large herbivores. This is partly “because hunting by humans is often not functionally equivalent to predation by large, wide-ranging carnivores such as wolves,” the researchers wrote in their report.

“More studies are necessary to understand how many wolves are needed in managed ecosystems,” Ripple said. “It is likely that wolves need to be maintained at sufficient densities before we see their resulting effects on ecosystems.”

“The preservation or recovery of large predators may represent an important conservation need for helping to maintain the resiliency of northern forest ecosystems,” the researchers concluded, “especially in the face of a rapidly changing climate.”

Slug Life: Effects of Forest Land Management on Terrestrial Mollusks

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The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation is an international nonprofit organization that protects wildlife through the conservation of invertebrates and their habitat.  They have just released this new literature review summarizing the effects of logging, road building and burning on snails and slugs, which was funded by the Forest Service/BLM Interagency Special Status and Sensitive Species Program.

Summary:
Snails and slugs are essential components of forest ecosystems. They decompose forest litter, recycle nutrients, build soils, and provide food and calcium for birds, amphibians, reptiles, small mammals, and invertebrates. Although mollusks have been a crucial part of the ecology of temperate forests for millennia, recent loss and fragmentation of natural habitats due to clearcut logging, road-building, and altered fire regime have resulted in both extinction and extinction risk for many mollusk species (e.g., Curry et al. 2008). Mollusks (including aquatic species) represent 20% of all threatened animals, and 37% of known animal extinctions since 1600 A.D. (Seddon 1998 in Dunk et al. 2004). In an era where the extinction rate is an estimated 400 times the natural rate (reviewed in Werner & Raffa 2000), it is important for land managers to take mollusks into consideration when developing or re-evaluating strategies for managing forests ecosystems to achieve forest health and biodiversity conservation goals.

Key findings of the review include:
•    While some level of exposure in the physical environment is tolerated by certain mollusks, most species are extremely sensitive to temperature and moisture extremes.
•    Research suggests that the majority of snails and slugs are dependent on litter from deciduous trees and have higher abundances in multispecies forests with strong broadleaf components. Additionally, mollusks in deciduous forests appear to rebound from disturbance more quickly than in coniferous forests.
•    Forests with old-growth characteristics supply microhabitat and microclimate conditions capable of supporting a diversity of mollusks, and forest age is often positively correlated with mollusk richness and abundance.
•    Numerous studies stress the importance of refugia in gastropod recolonization potential and community resilience following forest disturbance. Since land mollusks are small animals with limited mobility and dispersal capabilities, the maintenance of refugia in disturbed habitat is particularly important for this group. Refugia should include logs, snags, fallen branches, and other forms of coarse woody debris, as well as areas with thick leaf-litter. Woody debris and litter provide islands of habitat, food, and protection from microclimatic extremes, increasing species’ tolerance of temporarily inhospitable environments.
•    Research suggests that in order to reduce microclimate extremes and protect gastropods, partial cuts should be favored over clearcuts, aggregated (group) retention over dispersed retention or thinning, and larger group retention over smaller group retention. In particular, harvesting with large group retention helps to maintain pre-harvest boreal gastropod assemblages and will likely conserve boreal gastropod species if used as a tool for biodiversity management.
•    Fragmented habitat limits the dispersal and post-disturbance recolonization potential of gastropods. Tracts of intact forest and connected groups of old trees help provide dispersal corridors for gastropods and can lead to significant increases in the survival of disturbance-sensitive species.
•    Research suggests that techniques that minimize soil compaction and damage to (or removal of) the organic layer favor survival of gastropods. For example, Timberjacks have been found to cause less damage to the organic mat and resident invertebrate populations than feller bunchers, single-grip harvesters, and grapple skidders.
•    Due to the tendency of mollusks to avoid non-vegetated and/or dry environments, even narrow, unpaved roads with low traffic densities are barriers to the dispersal of mollusks.
•    Numerous studies have found negative and long-lasting responses of gastropods to fire, including population extirpation and reductions in abundance and species richness. Small burns surrounded by unburned plots have been most successful at maintaining gastropod community structure. Although there is little information comparing gastropod responses to differences in burn severity and frequency, it is presumed that a fire regime involving low-intensity burns at infrequent fire-return intervals (>5 years) would best maintain gastropod communities.

Download the entire literature review here.

Mark Squillace on the New Planning Rule: About Science

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I ran across this on the Red Lodge Clearing House newsletter…

Here’s a link to his comments.

Here’s what he said about science:

Use of science in planning.36 CFR §219.3.The proposed rules required the Forest Service to“take into account the best available scientific information throughout the planning process…”
Many,including me,suggested that it was not enough merely to take the best science into account,as if it were only one factor to be considered. The Forest Service apparently agreed and the final rules require the agency to “use” the best available science.

It’s discouraging to me that anyone could believe that “scientific information” is somehow hardwired to any decision. That’s the linear model of science in policy that no one in the science policy science community sees as accurate. I have noticed that lawyers often seem to believe in the linear model. The problem will be when a judge decides what “using” the “best scientific information” means. It won’t be a requirement, I don’t think, that the judges familiarize themselves with the science policy literature before making a judgment on the Forest Service’s adherence to this new regulatory standard.

As I’ve said before, it seems contradictory to write a regulation that requires the use of ” the best current scientific information,” but not to use the best scientific information from the science policy or science and technology studies literature in development of the regulatory standard for the use of science.

Scientific information, in reality, is only one factor to be considered in making decisions, as stated by Sir Peter Gluckman, Science Advisor to the Prime Minister of New Zealand here (I became aware of this due to a post from Roger Pielke, Jr., here.

We live in a democracy, and governments have the responsibility to integrate dimensions beyond that covered in this paper into policy formation, including societal values, public opinion, affordability and diplomatic considerations while accommodating political processes.

Here’s a longer quote from the paper.

It is important to separate as far as possible the role of expert knowledge generation and evaluation from the role of those charged with policy formation. Equally, it is important to distinguish clearly between the application of scientific advice for policy formation (‘science for policy’) and the formation of policy for the operation of the Crown’s science and innovation system, including funding allocation (‘policy for science’). This paper is concerned with the former. A purely technocratic model of policy formation is not appropriate in that knowledge is not, and cannot be, the sole determinant of how policy is developed. We live in a democracy, and governments have the responsibility to integrate dimensions beyond that covered in this paper into policy formation, including societal values, public opinion, affordability and diplomatic considerations while accommodating political processes.

Science in its classic linear model can offer direct guidance on many matters, but increasingly the nature of science itself is changing and it has to address issues of growing complexity and uncertainty in an environment where there is a plurality of legitimate social perspectives. In such situations, the interface between science and policy formation becomes more complex. Further, many decisions must be made in the absence of quality information, and research findings on matters of complexity can still leave large areas of uncertainty. In spite of this uncertainty, governments still must act. Many policy decisions can have uncertain downstream effects and on-going evaluation is needed to gauge whether such policies and initiatives should be sustained or revised. But, irrespective of these limitations, policy formed without consideration of the most relevant knowledge available is far less likely to serve the nation well.

Note that Sir Peter also uses the term “consideration.”

Mono Lake Tufa Preserve

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On the south shore of the picturesque Mono Lake is a collection of rock formations known as tufa. For thousands of centuries, the level of Mono Lake has fluctuated, with ancient lakeshores easily visible from commercial airliners. As the lake rises, more minerals cling to the existing structures, building them larger and taller. It really seems unlikely that the water levels will be rising, in the near future, even with the waters from Rush Creek being permanently sustained. There are just a few pocket glaciers left in the Sierra Nevada but, there were some very wet years in the 80’s which pushed water levels higher. This is a Forest Service site, which requires a fee or pass. Improvements include a nice boardwalk, bathrooms, a parking area and periodic road grading.

I stayed until well after sundown, capturing some dramatic shots. There were about another 30 photographers there, as well. It is a fragile place but, I haven’t seen much damage in the 30 years since I first saw it.

http://www.facebook.com/LarryHarrellFotoware

Here Comes the Sun, There Goes the Mojave

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Over the past few months, this blog has explored some of the differences between the ways smaller, grassroots non-profit conservation organizations go about their campaigns compared with the actions taken (or not taken) by the largest, most well-funded conservation groups in America. We’ve covered this dynamic as it relates to logging, lawsuits and collaboration…but not how it impacts solar energy development on public lands.

This weekend, the LA Times took at how one smaller grassroots group – the Wildlands Conservancy – working their tails off to protect southern California’s Mojave Desert feels abandoned by many of the biggest, and best known, conservation groups in the country.

AMARGOSA VALLEY, Calif. — April Sall gazed out at the Mojave Desert flashing past the car window and unreeled a story of frustration and backroom dealings. Her small California group, the Wildlands Conservancy, wanted to preserve 600,000 acres of the Mojave. The group raised $45 million, bought the land and deeded it to the federal government.

The conservancy intended that the land be protected forever. Instead, 12 years after accepting the largest land gift in American history, the federal government is on the verge of opening 50,000 acres of that bequest to solar development. Even worse, in Sall’s view, the nation’s largest environmental organizations are scarcely voicing opposition. Their silence leaves the conservancy and a smattering of other small environmental organizations nearly alone in opposing energy development across 33,000 square miles of desert land.

“We got dragged into this because the big groups were standing on the sidelines and we were watching this big conservation legacy practically go under a bulldozer,” said Sall, the organization’s conservation director. “We said, ‘We can’t be silent anymore.’ “

Read the entire LA Times article here.

Virgin Forests Redux

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A very kind editor at High Country News worked with me to improve the “virgin forests” post below. One good thing about this blog is that it helps folks work on our writing.

Here’s the HCN version..
and the original version.

One of the commenters wrote that the piece was “inflammatory.” That may be an honor for someone who mostly writes emails and briefing papers so inoffensive that the interns reading them as part of a litigation record probably need extra caffeine jolts to stay awake ;).

Effects of fuels treatments on the spatial probabilities of burning and final size of recent wildfires across the United States -webinar

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This webinar was interesting, also the questions and responses. Here’s the link to the recording of the webinar.

One of the things that stood out for me was how hard it was for the researchers to get information- still – in this day and age. The other thing that stood out is how much of understanding complex issues depends on modeling rather than observation. That’s what makes it post-normal science, and why trust of scientists, and scientists maintaining trust, is so important.

For me it was just fun to hear about people studying something we’re all interested in and having a seminar for folks from all over the country. And quite a break from the legal issues of the day.

You might also want to check out the Lessons Learned Center here, or firescience.gov, for related information.

From Me to We: The Five Transformational Commitments Required to Rescue the Planet, Your Organization, and Your Life

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Tree submitted the below as a comment, but I thought it worthy of its own post, since it hits on our current theme of discussing the good we should do, in addition to the bad others shouldn’t do. Maybe we could all read it and have virtual book club? I have to say that the idea that all things are connected is not particularly novel for those who are familiar with the world’s spiritual traditions. As Paul said, long before industrial economies (Romans 7: 18-19)
“For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.”

From Tree:

There is new book just published by Bob Doppelt. I have not read it, but it looks interesting.

http://www.greenleaf-publishing.com/productdetail.kmod?productid=3587

In “From Me to We: The Five Transformational Commitments Required to Rescue the Planet, Your Organization, and Your Life,” systems change expert Bob Doppelt reveals that most people today live a dream world, controlled by false perceptions and beliefs. The most deeply held illusion is that all organisms on Earth, including each of us, exist as independent entities. At the most fundamental level, the change needed to overcome our misperceptions is a shift from focusing only on “me” – our personal needs and wants – to also prioritizing the broader “we”: the many ecological and social relationships each of us are part of, those that make life possible and worthwhile. Research shows that by using the techniques described in this book this shift is possible – and not that difficult to achieve.

From Me to We offers five transformational “commitments” that can help you change your perspective and engage in activities that will help resolve today’s environmental and social problems. Not coincidentally, making these commitments can improve the quality of your life as well.

Bob Doppelt’s latest book is a wake-up call to the creed of individualism. He calls for recognition of the laws of interdependence, cause and effect, moral justice, trusteeship, and free will. The book will be essential to all of those interested in how we can create and stimulate a sea change in how to enable the necessary behavioral change we need to deal with the myriad environmental and social pressures consuming the planet.

Contents

1 ‘Me’ to ‘We’ throughout history

2 The first commitment: See the systems you are part of

3 The second commitment: Be accountable for all the consequences of your actions

4 The third commitment: Abide by society’s most deeply held universal principles of morality and justice

5 The fourth commitment: Acknowledge your trustee obligations and take responsibility for the continuation of all life

6 The fifth commitment: Choose your own destiny

7 Conclusion: It is up to you


Here’s a link to the author’s website.

Conservation in the Real World: Suckling responds to Kareiva

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Thanks to Sharon for posting the article about Peter Kareiva’s research and thoughts, which recently appeared on Greenwire, as well as linking to Conservation in the Anthropocene, written by Kareiva, together with Robert Lalasz and Michelle Marvier.   The comments section quickly filled up with some great perspectives.  Regular commenter “TreeC123” highlighted the fact that the Breakthrough Journal invited Kierán Suckling, with the Center for Biological Diversity, to provide a response to the piece by Kareiva et al titled Conservation in the Real World.  Below are snips:

Had the article been published a century ago, the author’s decision to frame the environmental movement through a critique of Emerson (1803-1882), Hawthorne (1804-1864), Thoreau (1817-1862) and Muir (1838-1914) might have made sense. But alleged weaknesses of these dead white men is an entirely inadequate anchor for an essay that bills itself as a rethinking of contemporary environmentalism. Indeed, the only 20th century environmentalist mentioned in the essay is the novelist and essayist Ed Abbey. It is frankly bizarre that Kareiva et al.’s depiction of environmentalists is not based on NRDC, the Audubon Society, National Wildlife Federation, Trout Unlimited, Environment America, 350.org, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, or indeed, any environmental group at all.

Bizarre, but necessary: Kareiva et al.’s “conservationist” straw man would have fallen to pieces had they attempted to base it on the ongoing work of actual conservation groups.

Consider their take on wilderness. The straw man is constructed by telling us (without reference to an actual conservation group, of course) that “the wilderness ideal presupposes that there are parts of the world untouched by humankind.” Then the authors smugly knock it down with the shocking revelation that “The wilderness so beloved by conservationists — places ‘untrammeled by man’ — never existed.”

Do Kareiva et al. expect readers to believe that conservation groups are unaware that American Indians and native Alaskans lived in huge swaths of what are now designated wilderness areas? Or that they mysteriously failed to see the cows, sheep, bridges, fences, fire towers, fire suppression and/or mining claims within the majority of the proposed wilderness areas they have so painstakingly walked, mapped, camped in, photographed, and advocated for? It is not environmentalists who are naïve about wilderness; it is Kareiva et al. who are naïve about environmentalists. Environmental groups have little interest in the “wilderness ideal” because it has no legal, political or biological relevance when it comes to creating or managing wilderness areas. They simply want to bring the greatest protections possible to the lands which have been the least degraded….

At a time when conservationists need honest, hard-headed reassessment of what works and what needs changing, Kareiva et al. offer little more than exaggerations, straw-man arguments and a forced optimism that too often crosses the line into denial. There are plenty of real biodiversity recovery stories to tell, but to learn from them, we have to take off the blinders of sweeping generalizations and pay attention to the details and complexities of real-world conservation work. That’s the breakthrough we need to survive the Anthropocene.

Large-scale bioenergy from additional harvest of forest biomass is neither sustainable nor greenhouse gas neutral

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I’ve been down and out with the crud this week, so some items I’ve been meaning to post have been stacking up.  Researchers from Europe and the United States have ‘collaborated’ on a new study titled, “Large-scale bioenergy from additional harvest of forest biomass is neither sustainable nor greenhouse gas neutral.”  Below is the abstract and a snipped portion from the study.

Abstract
Owing to the peculiarities of forest net primary production humans would appropriate ca. 60% of the global increment of woody biomass if forest biomass were to produce 20% of current global primary energy supply. We argue that such an increase in biomass harvest would result in younger forests, lower biomass pools, depleted soil nutrient stocks and a loss of other ecosystem functions. The proposed strategy is likely to miss its main objective, i.e. to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, because it would result in a reduction of biomass pools that may take decades to centuries to be paid back by fossil fuel substitution, if paid back at all. Eventually, depleted soil fertility will make the production unsustainable and require fertilization, which in turn increases GHG emissions due to N2O emissions. Hence, large-scale production of bioenergy from forest biomass is neither sustainable nor GHG neutral.

Environmental consequences
Homogeneous young stands with a low biomass resulting from bioenergy harvest are less likely to serve as habitat for species that depend on structural complexity. It is possible that succession following disturbance can lead to young stands that have functional complexity analogous to that of old forests; however, this successional pathway would likely occur only under natural succession. A lower structural complexity, and removal of understory species, is expected to result in a loss of forest biodiversity and function. It would reverse the trend towards higher biomass of dead wood (i.e. the Northwest Forest Plan in the United States) to maintain the diversity of xylobiontic species.

Cumulative impacts of bioenergy-related management activities that modify vegetation, soil and hydro- logic conditions are likely to influence erosion rates and flooding and lead to increased annual runoff and fish habitat degradation of streams. Young uniform stands with low compared to high standing biomass have less aesthetic value for recreation and are less efficient in avalanche control and slope stabilization in mountains owing to larger and more frequent cutting. A potential advantage is that younger forests with shorter rotations offer opportunities for assisted migration, although there is great uncertainty in winners and losers (species, provenances, genotypes) in a future climate. Plantations, however, largely contribute to pathogen spread, such as rust disease.

Forests offer several important ecosystem services in addition to biomass and some would be jeopardized by the bioenergy-associated transition from high to low standing biomass. Agriculture provides a visible example for abandoning most ecosystem services except biomass production; communities in intensive agricultural regions often rely on (nearby) forested water sheds for drinking water, recreation and offsetting GHG emissions from intensive agriculture.