Why don’t ecologists get more respect?

Dawn R. BazelyBiology Department, York University, Toronto

Wed 29 Oct 2014, Carolinian Canada Ecoystem Recovery Forum, Royal Botanic Gardens, Hamilton, ON, Canada

http://bit.ly/13muPEZ

“If you want advice on how to save the planet don’t walk into an ecology department.”

Hugh Possingham (Ecologist & co-developer of MARXAN software)March 2009, Fenner Conference on the Environment, Australia

The ecologists’ framework...

 

“Today the world’s major unsolved challenges all revolve around science. By the 2012 election cycle, at a time when science is influencing every aspect of modern life, anti-science views from climate-change denial to creationism to vaccine refusal have become mainstream.”

Shawn Otto in Fool Me Twice

Why don’t people listen to ecologists?

• The science is too difficult?• Ecologists are terrible communicators?• We talk about depressing doom & gloom

scenarios?

Only 18% of Americans have actually met a scientist

Council of Canadian Academies report: Science Culture: Where Canada Stands 2014http://www.scienceadvice.ca/en/assessments/completed/science-culture.aspx

Ecologists need help with

• Understanding:• How science feeds into policy…• How policy is different from politics• We need social scientists!

The policy ecosystem

Hoogensen et al. 2009 Journal of Human Security.

Policy Defined

“A policy is typically described as a principle or rule to guide decisions and achieve rational outcome(s). The term is not normally used to denote what is actually done, this is normally referred to as either procedure or protocol”

Wikipedia

Human Security“freedom from fear, freedom from want”United Nations 1994

CAUX Forum

International Polar Year GAPS project Gas, Arctic Peoples & Security

Students: Nora, Paul & Milissa

Conceptualizing Human Security

Movement corridors for species

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Non-Indigenous Plants in the Northwest Territories, Canada

• Non-indigenous species are already here

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Non-Indigenous Plants in the Northwest Territories, Canada

Their numbers decline as we go further north

Making the case for the concept

Interdisciplinary collaborations

• Are not all equal• science academics + NGOs + government

bureaucrats (multiple stakeholder groups)

• ≠• collaborations between science

academics and different kinds of academics from the social sciences and humanities

Uncomfortable & not for everyone!

• Not all academics share the same goals• e.g. Political Ecologists offer a critique that includes the “science agenda” and ecologists

Benefits of interdisciplinary collaborations are still unclear

• Science of Team Science research asks IF & HOW collaboration generates novel, innovative, transdisciplinary solutions

• Previously, there’s been little rigorous assessment

Drolet, D. 2014. Meet 5 academics who have switched disciplines mid-career. University Affairs, February 12. (that’s me…)

My world for 7 years!

Bringing it back to Southern Ontario Forests

Forests in Southern Ontario

Trillium

Tanentzap et al. 2010 Forest Ecology & Management

How deer alter forests

RONDEAU 2009

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Rondeau Provincial Park post-years of deer herd reductions: politically unpopular but evidence-based management

Don’t hide from media

Ecology’s contribution…• … to the broader collaborative,

interdisciplinary table?• IMO, kick-ass flow charts

Knowledge as a nutrient

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For increasing resilience

Dr. Carlos Nobre, Brazil IPCC

“get a meeting with the minister”

I explained to Donna Cansfield (Minister of Natural Resources) in 2009 that science was being swept aside and that forest health, as assumed under various acts (eg ORM) was declining via lack of action

Participate beyond science eg. Ontario’s Human-Wildlife Conflict Advisory Group

• Provides advice and support to the implementation of the “Strategy for Preventing and Managing Human-Wildlife Conflicts in Ontario” and “Strategy for Preventing and Managing Human-Deer Conflicts in Southern Ontario””.

• notes from first meeting June 2009

Engage in the Science-Policy Interface

Write text books!

Why get out of our comfort zone?

Acknowledgements

• Norwegian Research Council, for Leiv Eiriksson Mobility Fund support.

• International Polar Year, Government of Canada 2006-11.

• Harvard Forest, Harvard University, for a Charles Bullard Fellowship 2011-12

• For opportunities to get outside of the science box into the science-policy-politics space