Introduction to Wildlife & Fisheries ConservationWFSC 304

Lecture 2: What is conservation biology?

This figure may help clarify the demographic transition I described on Tuesday. Advances in medicine and sanitation resulting from economic capacity (and foreign aid) first lower the death rate, increasing population growth rate at first. The social security of reduced death induces smaller families, and the economic capacity provides opportunities for education and jobs and often increases social gender equity. So age of first reproduction increases and birth rates fall, leasing to stabilization or reversal of population growth.

Minor corrections to the figure… In the first segment (leftmost on the graph), the yellow line should have slightly positive slope because births exceed deaths (green and maroon lines). In the last segment (rightmost on the graph), the green line should drop below the maroon line in the last segment (like in the US and Germany) and the yellow line should have slight negative slope.

What is Conservation Biology?To answer “what is conservation biology” we should define environmental science and environmentalism, then contrast conservation biology and biodiversity. And we should understand the historic development of these fields.

Defining things…Environment –The complex of physical, social and cultural conditions that affect biotic or abiotic entities

Environmental Science –The systematic, scientific study of the environment as well as our role in it —McGraw Hill web

Conservation biology –An applied field creating solutions based in environmental science to protect biological diversity (biodiversity)

Biodiversity –Detail to unfold but basically biodiversity is a catch-all term for organismal diversity at multiple levels of biological organization from genetics to communities.

Environmental science and conservation biology are critical to sustainable human economy, health and quality of life. These fields are multidisciplinary, seeking to unite ecological principles with other natural sciences, such as geology and chemistry, as well as social sciences such as politics and anthropology. Environmental science is about understanding how the environment works, and as such, it is core to conservation biology, which focuses on our understanding of environmental science to create strategies to protect, sustain or restore biodiversity.

The multidisciplinary nature of environmental science and conservation biology requires that students learn subject matter well beyond their usual bounds of learning and experience. The result should be a broad and balanced perspective that will help students understand the depth of environmental issues, and ideally, to see the way to environmental remedies and sustainable practices to foster biodiversity.

Problems, remedies, enactmentFor many environmental issues the difficulty is not to formulate remedies. Typically remedies are already well understood. The trick is to make them socially economically and culturally acceptable.

– Barbara Ward, economist

Classification of Perspectives Pragmatic/Utilitarian—concerned over

resource depletiono George Marsh, Gifford Pinchot, TR Roosevelt US Forest Service (USFS)o Conservation of products of use to humans

Moral/Aesthetic—intrinsic beauty; imperative for nature to persisto John Muir (Sierra Club), Aldo Leopold (Wilderness Society) National Park

Service (NPS)o Conservation of nature

Health and Ecological—toxicology & pollutiono Rachel Carson and Silent Spring, Tyrone Hayeso Clean environments for nature and human health

Global Environmental Citizenship—globalization of environmental science, policies and ecological economics

o Al Gore Inconvenient Truth, Kyoto protocolo World Mercury Summit, etc.

All these perspectives have in common the theme of stewardship for the futureHistorical development

Plato and other classical authors understood and described environmental problems 25 centuries ago, such as denudation of the landscape around Delphi. Plato’s lamentations were both aesthetic and utilitarian.

The Greeks knew the desertification was due to grazing and monoculture.

Other societies had similar realizations and some small scale conservation action, but the modern environmental movement picked up in the mid 1800’sin the US.

Naturalists through the ages

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) Transcendentalist“In wildness is the preservation of the world.” – Walking

“Nowadays almost all man's improvements, so called, as the building of houses and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap.” – Walking “I would not have every man, or every part of a man, cultivated, any more than I would have every acre of earth cultivated: part will be tillage, but the greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serving an immediate use, but preparing a mould against a distant future, by the annual decay of the vegetation it supports.” – Walking (http://www.transcendentalists.com/walking.htm)

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and to be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.” – Walden (see http://www.transcendentalists.com/walden.htm)

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)Transcendentalist, but a particularly pious, anthropocentric and egomaniacal one

"My good Henry Thoreau made this else solitary afternoon sunny with his simplicity and clear perception. How comic is simplicity in this double-dealing, quacking world. Everything that boy says makes merry with society, though nothing can be graver than his meaning." —Emerson's Journal, Feb. 17, 1838

A subtle chain of countless ringsThe next unto the farthest brings;The eye reads omens where it goes,And speaks all languages the rose;And, striving to be man, the wormMounts through all the spires of form…

—Nature

Aldo Leopold, 1887-1948. (see http://www.wilderness.org/profiles/leopold.htm )"We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect." —A Sand County Almanac

“It is a century now since Darwin gave us the first glimpse of the origin of the species. We know now what was unknown to all the preceding caravan of generations: that men are only fellow-voyagers with other creatures in the odyssey of evolution. This new knowledge should have given us, by this time, a sense of kinship with fellow-ceatures; a wish to live and let live; a sense of wonder over the magnitude and duration of the biotic enterprise.”

– A Sand County Almanac

“Since then I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves. I have watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed, first to anaemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen every edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddlehorn. Such a mountain looks as if someone had given God a new pruning shears, and forbidden Him all other exercise. In the end the starved bones of the hoped-for deer herd, dead of its own too-much, bleach with the bones of the dead sage, or molder under the high-lined junipers.”

– A Sand County Almanac

Where do naturalists fall in the classification on the previous page?How about hunters? What about farmers? Etc.

Utilitarian campSeminal book by George Perkins Marsh (1864), Man and Nature, was an early exposition of ecology and was influenced by his travels in the Mediterranean and classic literature, including Plato. Marsh (channeling Plato) argued that land clearing in the Mediterranean created desertification: "the operation of causes set in action by man has brought the face of the earth to a desolation almost as complete as that of the moon." He argued that welfare is secured if man manages resources and keeps them in good condition. Welfare of future generations should be a resource management goal. Resource scarcity he argued results from disrupting environmental equilibrium (channeling GE Hutchinson). In other words environmental problems stem from unreasoned human action rather than a cause intrinsic to the natural system.

Marsh’s writing influenced Theodore Roosevelt and TR’s Conservation Advisor, Gifford Pinchot, and played a role in the creation of the Adirondack Park.

Resource conservation:1. "the art of producing from the forest whatever it can yield for the service of man"

2. "the greatest good for the greatest number for the longest time" —Pinchot G (1914) The Training of a Forester.

Can the two views reconcile?

Here are Pinchot’s core principles: Development: "the use of the natural resources now existing on this continent for the

benefit of the people who live here now. There may be just as much waste in neglecting the development and use of certain natural resources as there is in their destruction. … The development of our natural resources and the fullest use of them for the present generation is the first duty of this generation."

Conservation: "…the prevention of waste in all other directions is a simple matter of good business. The first duty of the human race is to control the earth it lives upon."

Protection of the public interests: "The natural resources must be developed and preserved for the benefit of the many, and not merely for the profit of a few."

 Pinchot, Gifford (1910). The Fight for Conservation.

So by 1914 it seems Pinchot developed an appreciation for sustainability and posterity.

A student of Pinchot’s was the first USFS director.

Contrast discussion: USFS v. NPS

Aesthetic campJohn Muir was very influential in US conservation. He founded and was first president of the Sierra Club. He also advised Roosevelt and lobbied strongly for establishing a system of National Parks. A disciple of Muir’s was the first NPS director.

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." —John Muir Papers

Health and Ecology (Environmentalism) campRachel Carson (1907-1964) published the hugely influential Silent Spring in 1962, an essay which rose awareness of pollution and toxic chemicals. This launched modern environmentalism, which has come to be characterized by solid scientific foundations, political activism, and grass-roots movements.

"Man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself." —CBS interview, 1963

David Brower (Sierra Club, Earth Island Inst.) developed many tools of modern environmentalism (litigation, lobbying, intervention in regularory hearings, book and calendar publishing, mass media blitzing)

Barry Commoner (molecular biologist) – major leader in defining and stressing links between science, technology and society.

Global citizenship phase (modern environmentalism)Multinational summits, pacts, UN, USAID, World Bank, IUCN, IPCC, many NGOs (e.g. Gates Foundation)

Now it is time for a (not entirely rhetorical) thought exercise / discussion:Does the fellow on the right have and intrinsic right to exist?

The preceding sections developed environmental science and resource conservation.What then is conservation biology in this enriched context?

Environmental Biologists—Study the interactions of different species with each other and with their physical environment. Understanding ecosystem processes is the focus for Environmental Biology.

Conservation Biologists—Study and design means to maintain biodiversity using knowledge of environmental science, coupled with other forms of social and political mechanisms. In some sense Con Bio it is a branch of Environmental Science, with an applied goal—a mission. And why not? Understanding environmental issues and doing nothing to protect the planet and its inhabitants is an affront to all creation.

Conservation BiologyThere is a famous article entitled “What is Conservation Biology” from 1985 by Soule, and a followup 15 years later by Kareiva (I may post one or both). Another article argues there are so many definitions of Con Bio that there is no definition.

For purposes of being on the same page:Conservation biology is a response by the scientific community to the biodiversity crisis. (Environmentalism is the public’s response)

Conservation biology merges applied and theoretical biology and incorporates ideas and expertise from a broad range of fields outside the natural sciences, toward the goal of preserving biodiversity.

Conservation biology, like Environmental Science, represents a synthesis of many basic sciences that provide principles and new approaches for the applied fields of resource management. The text aptly expresses this connection:

It applies principles of: Natural Science Social Science Policy and Governance Humanities (e.g. aesthetics, ethics…)

The field is becoming increasingly applied (meaning “utilitarian”; not “used”)

One attempt to put all this together is represented by a program here at TAMU:

What is Biodiversity?The complete range of species and biological communities as well as the genetic variation within species and all ecosystem processes. This includes:

Species diversity Genetic diversity Phenotypic diversity? Community diversity Ecosystem diversity Both pattern and process***

Species diversity—Big picture

Ignore numbers in the pie chart except to contrast with the modern numbers below, and for the proportional representation of varied taxa

The diversity of organisms and plentitude of species we see today have been and are being evolved. We will explore evolution later in the course but a brief definition is change in gene frequencies through time. This process is readily observed and happens at a rate that has shocked us (the scientific community).

Many processes create evolution but among the strongest driving forces is ecology and environmental change.

The goal of conservation biology is not to stop genetic change, nor to conserve the status quo, but rather to ensure that populations may persist by continuing to respond to environmental change in an adaptive manner.

Ecological systems are not in stable equilibria . A sort of stochastic-dynamic equilibrium, mixed with some chaos, is a better mental model. Therefore adaptability is needed by organisms.

Ecosystems consist of patches and mosaics of habitat types, not of uniform and clearly categorized communities. And patches change. Again, organisms must be able to persist by evolutionary or physiological adaptation and migration.

Humans are and will continue to be a part of both natural and degraded ecological systems. Their presence must be included in conservation planning.

For tomorrow I may jump the gun on developing evolution. I feel it is good to present here in light of the present discussion. Also the concepts should be available for developing other topics as we go.