Rewilding

Re-wilding North America: Nature 436, 913-914 (18 August 2005) North America lost most of its large vertebrate species — its megafauna — some 13,000 years ago at the end of the Pleistocene. And now Africa's large mammals are dying, stranded on a continent where wars are waging over scarce resources. However much we would wish otherwise, humans will continue to cause extinctions, change ecosystems and alter the course of evolution. Here, we outline a bold plan for preserving some of our global megafaunal heritage — one that aims to restore some of the evolutionary and ecological potential that was lost 13,000 years ago, and which offers an alternative vision for twenty-first century conservation biology.

Definitely one of the more controversial Nature papers of recent years. Just Google Pleistocene rewilding for lots of links. Or go to the Wikipedia article for lots of links and this handy guide for who replaces who:

• African Bush Elephant (as a proxy for the extinct Columbian mammoth)
• Sumatran Elephant (as a proxy for the extinct American Mastodon)
• African Forest Elephant (as a proxy for the extinct Pygmy Mammoth of Channel Islands of California)
• Mountain tapir (as a proxy for the extinct California tapir)
  
• Bactrian camel (as a proxy for the extinct camelops)
• Capybara (as a proxy for the extinct species of North American capybara)
  
• Onager (as a proxy for the extinct species of North American horses/asses)
• Grant's Zebra (as a proxy for the extinct Hagerman horse)
• Asiatic Cheetah (as a proxy for the extinct American cheetah)
• Barbary Lion (as a proxy for the extinct American lion)
• Siberian Tiger (occurred in Alaska during the Pleistocene; might also serve as a proxy for the extinct American Lion)

For a contrary view see Pleistocene Park: Does re-wilding North America represent sound conservation for the 21st century? in Biological Conservation

Oldest living clone

I mentioned that some clonal organisms may be older than the Bristlecone pines, or at least have occupied the same location continuously for longer. Everyone loves a record breaker so a paper in PLoSONE suggesting that patches of seagrass in the Mediterranean may be up to 200,000 years old got a fair bit of press coverage. The future may not be so bright for these clones though:

This further supports the hypothesis of phenotypic plasticity associated with large clonal size and old age. Nevertheless, even though such phenotypic plasticity possibly evolved across millennia, it may well be challenged by the unprecedented rate of environmental change imposed by current global climate change, including temperature increase and ocean acidification, and recent anthropogenic pressure on coastal areas resulting in changes in water quality, eutrophication, and nutrient load, particularly in seagrass meadows.

E.O. Wilson on saving life on Earth

What great opportunities to see E. O. Wilson: this Thursday at CCS from 4-5 in the art gallery (free), and/or at Campbell Hall at 8pm ($15). Hope you will take advantage.

To inspire you, here is his biography. And here is an interview of E. O. Wilson on “Bill Moyers Journal”

And finally, in 2007 he won the prestigious TED prize.

See his TED talk and what he wants to do with his $100,000 prize money:

Weekend squirm

Most people could do without the discovery of a new species of leech that specializes on the mucus membranes, including eyes, urethras, rectums, and vaginas.

The new species—dubbed Tyrannobdella rex, or "tyrant leech king" was discovered in the remote Peruvian Amazon region

The full report is in PLoS ONE this week: Tyrannobdella rex N. Gen. N. Sp. and the Evolutionary Origins of Mucosal Leech Infestations and National Geographic also has a write up with a catchier title: "Tyrant King" Leech Discovered, Attacks Orifice- Toothy new T. rex saws into eyes, rectums ... and so on.

"As Douglas Adams would say: Do we want a planet that is only full of panda bears and pine trees?" he said. "The loss of any species is going to make this planet colder and lonelier."

Hmm. I'm not convinced that most people would see the argument this way. I could be wrong but I suspect most people would rather live on a planet without orifice invading leeches. I'm a card carrying bleeding heart liberal tree hugger and I'm in two minds about this one so I don't see Mr and Mrs Middle America caring too much for the Tyrant Leech King. I believe that conservationists need to get their story straight, or at least consistent. Why should we care about the tremendous diversity of life on the planet? Because we might get valuable products from it? Because it provides invaluable ecosystem services? Because we have a moral responsibility to do so?

Bioswale

On Friday I thought I'd post something about the bioswales at Manzanita village that I briefly mentioned in class. However I couldn't actually find any particularly good links online.

Today I open 93106, the weekly faculty and staff newspaper to find an article about the restoration project and the bioswales - Restoration Project Provides Model for Future Environmental Efforts.

The principal challenge of the restoration was creating an ecologically functional habitat in such close proximity to an urban environment. If untreated, fertilizers from the courtyard lawns and seagull guano from the residence hall roofs are washed into the ocean and nearby lagoon during rainstorms. This can cause algal blooms that are unsightly and can smother the fish.

CCBER used the excess nutrients in the water to its advantage by creating bioswales — vegetated channels that use plants to purify water runoff before it flows into the nearby lagoon. More than 1,300 feet of bioswales treat some 75 percent of Manzanita’s storm water runoff.

From Gene Flow to Genetic Pollution

Maize field grown in one of the 15 communities known to be contaminated by genetic pollution spread over 3 states of Mexico. From Greenpeace.org

The seemingly innocent concept of gene flow, the movement of alleles from one population to another, has become a bit of a hot topic in environmental circles since the author Jeremy Rifkin used the term 'Genetic Pollution' in 1998 to describe undesirable gene flow into wild populations. Although this often refers to the flow from genetically modified organisms to wild populations, conservation biologists have also used it to describe the undesirable flow of genes from any captive population to wild populations (eg from salmon in fish farms to local salmon populations).

Greenpeace, for example, have a page specifically about genetic pollution. Yet some people question the use of this term

"If you take a term used quite frequently these days, the term “genetic pollution,” otherwise referred to as genetic contamination, it is a propaganda term, not a technical or scientific term. Pollution and contamination are both value judgments. By using the word “genetic” it gives the public the impression that they are talking about something scientific or technical--as if there were such a thing as genes that amount to pollution.

They use it in terms of GM and in their anti-salmon farming and anti-aquaculture campaigns. If, for example, a fish escapes from a farm and interbreeds with a wild fish of the same species, they call that genetic pollution. They don’t realize that what they are saying in terms of science would be the same thing as saying that if a white person married a Chinese person, that would be genetic pollution."

What's Wrong with the Environmental Movement: an interview with Patrick Moore Competitive Enterprise Institute staff, Environment News 2004 published by The Heartland Institute.

It's an interesting discussion that makes you think about the way that words are used and abused.

Bren events next week

I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving. Don't forget tomorrow is Buy Nothing Day:

Now in its 17th year, Buy Nothing Day is celebrated every November by environmentalists, social activists and concerned citizens in over 65 countries around the world. Over the years, Buy Nothing Day (followed by Buy Nothing Christmas) has exploded into a global movement, inspiring the world’s citizens to live more simply and buy a whole lot less.

On a slightly related note, the Bren school of Environmental Science and Management has two environmentally themed seminars next week:

Tuesday, Dec. 2, 200812:30 - 1:30 p.m. in Bren Hall 1414
Professor Ramprasad Sengupta
Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University , New Delhi , India
High Economic Growth, Equity, and Sustainable Energy Development of India.

Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2008 4:00 - 5:00 p.m. in Bren Hall 1424
Miriam Haran, PhD
Former Director General, Israeli Ministry of the Environment Head, MBA Environmental Management Program Ono Academic College Kiryat Ono, Israel
Financial Meltdown Does not Slow Global Warming: The Environment in Israel

Dumb eco-questions you were afraid to ask

Not directly CCS Biology related but since sustainability is the theme du jour I thought I'd post this here in the hope that somebody might learn something. At UC Berkeley I worked with a lot of students on recycling projects as they investigated an interesting variety of topics from the economics of single stream versus mutliple stream recycling to the contribution of the homeless to the recycling industry. The message I came away with is that recycling is a complicated, constantly changing and sometimes counter intuitive industry.

For example single stream recycling (where all recycling is collected in one bin) is becoming increasingly popular because collection costs are lowest and new technology allows some quite efficient sorting of materials at the depot. However recycling agencies discovered that the less restrictive you make the instructions - the more you collect. ie if you say 'All plastics' you collect a lot more (of ALL kinds of plastics) than if you say only 'Plastics #1 and #2' and if you say something like 'Only #1PETE and #2HDPE blow molded plastic jugs and bottles' you collect least of all because people get confused and end up chucking a lot more in the garbage. But the truth is that in many areas there is ONLY a market for the aforementioned #1 and blow molded#2. So they collect everything but then end up chucking away everything else so that they can get more of #1 and #2. Confused? Try persuading your friends that in most cases they are better off throwing away plastics (at least of #3 and greater), even if their recycling company collects them, because putting them in the recycling devalues the value of the recycling.

This does differ a bit from place to place and depends on your local collection agency and what the local market is for recycling products. I was reminded of this because New Scientist had an article this week on 'Dumb eco-questions you were afraid to ask' that covers a few of these recycling issues. Including the popular, and much debated pizza box question. I'm not sure why they call them dumb though, most of these are pretty good questions.

Coincidentally Popular Mechanics had an article on 'Recycling Myths: Popular Mechanics Debunks 5 Half Truths about Recycling' this month which contains some useful ecomomic information about the recycling industry.

Jatropha weed is a possible candidate for jet fuel

This article in the LA Times caught my eye. Jatropha is an ugly weed that grows in warm environments around the world. It can be grown anywhere, doesn't need much water or fertilizer, is not edible (in fact, is poisonous) and it produces half of the carbon emissions of fossil fuels. It costs a third of the price per barrel of standard crude oil (as of Wednesday night...) and is incredibly fast-growing. Basically, it looks like this stuff has the potential to save the dying airline industries. Of course, we've all heard that before...

Agronomists from the Hawaii Agricultural Research Center are working with Boeing engineers to find the most efficient processes to convert this potent oil into jet fuel.

Oh, and an Air New Zealand Boeing 747 will soon take a test flight using this fuel, cross your fingers...

Shipbreaking

I can't remember where I first saw Edward Burtynsky's Shipbreaking photographs but these haunting images have stayed with me. The one reproduced above looks like a scene from the Trojan war but these are in fact some of the world's largest ships being disassembled, largely by hand, in some of the world's poorest countries. The scenes Burtynsky shot were in Chittagong, Bangladesh but similar scenes can be found at Alang, India.

Following the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 there has been increased pressure to phase out the vulnerable single-hulled ships and replace them with safer double-hulled tankers. This might seem like a good idea but the problem comes about when the old ships are broken up. A single oil tanker can contain literally tons of toxic material (eg 7000 kg of asbestos) and in Chittagong and Alang, the workers have virtually no protection from toxic, and other, hazards, and the waste itself often ends up on the beach or in the ocean.

A series of articles on the international shipbreaking industry by Gary Cohn and Will Englund of The Baltimore Sun won a Pulitzer prize in 1998 and you can read the series here. The article on Alang is perhaps the most relevant. More recently in 2006 Foreign Policy magazine had a short photo essay on the ship breaking beaches of Chittagong.

I think the sad moral of this story is that one apparently simple change (a move to safer ships) can create a toxic nightmare in a number of poor countries. Cleaning up this mess (literal and metaphorical) isn't going to be easy. This sort of consequence very much reminds me of the ecological consequences we see when we mess around with food webs by introducing alien species or driving species to extinction. There. I made it relevant right at the end.

Microwaves

Here's some information on the ballast water treatment method that James mentioned. The paper is called Design and Implementation of a Continuous Microwave Heating System for Ballast Water Treatment, and is getting some press coverage as a possible solution to the ballast water spread of invasive species.

Press reports are a little contradictory on the cost although the paper itself says 'implementation of this system by itself would be prohibitively expensive' so it looks like the 'low operating costs' are only when compared to conventional heating methods which are even more expensive.

'Boldor noted that the high heating rates, low operating costs, and effectiveness in hazy water distinguish it from conventional heating methods.' From Science Daily

and

'Given the amount of energy it takes to heat the water, the system’s operating costs are currently impractically high. But it may someday be useful in conjunction with other, cheaper methods, Dr. Boldor said, killing organisms that those technologies cannot.' From the NY Times

But even so, it's good to have options. I'm curious what 'prohibitively expensive' actually means since ship owners have been getting away with doing nothing for, well, ever. I presume any cost seems like a lot. Suck it up ship-owning dudes (or, more likely, pass the cost on).

The problem of the burping cows

As mentioned briefly in class, herbivores’ digestion is impacted by the fact that cellulose is the principle organic compound in their diets BUT most herbivores cannot produce cellulases, the enzymes that hydrolyze cellulose. Cud chewing herbivores (i.e., ruminants) like cows and sheep rely on endosymbiotic microorganisms living within their digestive tracts to digest cellulose for them.

This is a cool arrangement, except for maybe two things. First it’s a bit of a raw deal for some of the individual microorganisms that, in spite of their service to the cow, get digested themselves. I think I mentioned that ruminants can derive more than 100 g of protein per day from digestion of their endosymbiotic microorganisms.

The other problem, from the more global perspective, is the amount of burping, etc. that cows do because of this association. About 17 percent of the methane in the atmosphere comes from cows and other ruminants as they digest food. This greenhouse gas is formed as their stomach microbes metabolize carbon dioxide into methane, which is “vented” to the atmosphere.

There is research underway to try to reduce the amount of methane Bessie produces, including making “burpless grass” and trying to introduce less burpy microbes into cow guts (from kangaroos, which have more microbes with better manners).

You can read about the efforts to create “burpless” grass in this article from Sciencedaily.com

And listen to an NPR interview about the Australian researcher working on transfer of microbes from roos to cows.

It’s a bit older, but there is a nice NPR story on greenhouse gas production from sources (like cows) other than big industry. This was aired on Ira Flatow’s show, “Science Friday”. I recommend tuning into the show when you can; it airs on, well, Fridays - locally on KCLU (102.3) from 1-2pm. It’s also online at http://www.sciencefriday.com/

Only you can prevent forests.

Agent Orange was but one of a whole family of defoliants used during the Vietnam war. There were so many in fact that they are known collectively as the "rainbow herbicides": Agent Orange; Agent Purple; Agent Pink; Agent Blue; Agent White; and Agent Green. (Reservoir Dogs enter the Matrix.) They are named not for the color of the chemical but for the color coded stripe on the barrels they came in.

We now know that although the synthetic auxins might have been highly effective they came contaminated with dioxins - causing cancers and horrendous birth defects (deformities so extreme that photographs of affected individuals are often assumed to be faked). Whilst the action of destroying the environment as an act of war is not without ethical issues itself the more pressing matter is the fate of US soldiers, South Koreans (present as US allies in the Vietnam War) and Vietnamese citizens who suffered from the effects of these chemicals.

Thirty years after the end of the war and thirty five years since the widespread use of defoliants, a number of court cases are still pending. Most recently (end of 2005) a suit by a victim's rights group, the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin (VAVA) had their lawsuit dismissed because Agent Orange was not considered a poison under international law at the time of its use by the US. This, despite accumulating evidence that the companies new about, and kept quiet about, the dioxin impurities:

In March 1965, Dow official V.K. Rowe convened a meeting of executives of Monsanto, Hooker Chemical and others. According to documents uncovered only years later, the purpose of this meeting was "to discuss the toxicological problems caused by the presence of certain highly toxic impurities" in samples of 2,4,5-T. The primary "highly toxic impurity" was 2,3,7,8 TCDD, one of 75 dioxin compounds.

From 'The Story of Agent Orange, from the November 1990 issue of the US Veteran Dispatch Staff Report.'

The US government, is not a party in any of the lawsuits claiming sovereign immunity.

The title of this entry comes from a sign over the door to the ready room for pilots involved in the defoliation operations at Tan Son Nhut Airport near Saigon. It is, as you probably realize, a play on the words of the famous slogan: Only you can prevent forest fires

Preble's jumping mouse

The Preble's meadow jumping mouse (Zapus hudsonius preblei) is a small mouse, about three inches long, but with a six-inch long tail. They get their name from the fact they can use their large hind legs to jump 18 inches into the air. The mouse is not a distinct species but is on the endangered species list because it is recognized as a distinct subspecies.

For some years the mouse, found in Colorado and Wyoming, has been on the federal endangered species list. Its declining numbers are probably due to habitat loss and much of the remaining mouse habitat is also under threat. Its preferred habitat is a narrow band of land along the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains that is being keenly eyed by developers.

A subspecies, by definition, differs morphologically from members of other subspecies of the species. Subspecies may, in some cases, be on their way to forming full species. In other cases they may not ever form separate species but will contain important genetic variation. Although the endangered species act preserves both species and 'subspecies' there is no clear definition of how distinct a 'subspecies' has to be before it deserves separate protection. In the current case opinions are sharply divided over whether the Preble's Jumping Mouse is distinct enough from the more common Bear Lodge meadow mouse. The story was summarized by the Jackson Hole Star Tribune when the US Fish and Wildlife Service convened a panel of scientists to review the evidence. A google search on the mouse will show the history of the debate.

This may sound like a small academic debate but it could have important outcomes for how the endangered species act is interpreted in the future. Genetic data is becoming increasingly important in deciding what is a valid subspecies but there are no guidelines for how much genetic difference is required between two populations for them to be considered different subspecies.

There are a lot of issues here, some of which we touched on and some of which we will touch on in the ecology section. It is important to realize that we may not currently have enough information to make these decisions.