Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening?
Intrusions are what listservs are FOR. Layperson participation fulfills the need for expansion of ecology as a discipline as widely as possible. That expansion is the pleasure and privilege of lists such as this. It needs MORE intrusions, not less. Tamed is another word for kidnapped and enslaved. But tamed is ok too, as long as the detailed truth of the process is not denied in any important way. WT - Original Message - From: vivian newman new...@roadrunner.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Sunday, January 30, 2011 5:40 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? In hopes that you will forgive me for an impudent layperson's intrusion of a favorite quotation: People have forgotten this truth,the fox said. But you mustn't forget it. You become responsible forever for what you've tamed. The Little Prince [from A Guide for Grown-ups; essential wisdom from the collected works of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Harcourt, 2002] - Original Message - From: Warren W. Aney a...@coho.net To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Sunday, January 30, 2011 12:14 AM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? Consider fisheries as a good example of overlap between conservation and gardening: Fish farms are 100% gardening. Rearing fish to adult size in hatcheries so as to provide catchable trout is almost 100% gardening. Using fish hatcheries to provide releasable smolts so as to maintain harvestable runs of salmon is still principally gardening. Using fish hatcheries to re-establish self-maintaining wild populations is partially gardening and partially conservation. Less gardening and more conservation occurs when wild fish are trapped and relocated to re-establish self-maintaining populations. Habitat restoration and fish harvest restriction is partially gardening but mostly conservation. Managing and maintaining a self-sustaining population through habitat protection and harvest controls is conservation. The pros for gardening in the above cases? Plenty of fish for the market and the creel; the fish on your table costs less. Cons? Pollution, disease spread, genetic contamination, competition with conservation efforts. The pros for conservation? Self-sustaining, balanced and healthy aquatic systems that are more stable over time and less expensive to manage. Cons? Fewer fish for the market and the creel; the fish on your table costs more (but can be of higher quality); potentially less funding for conservation because of reduced fishing license and fee collections. I think we're in the process of transitioning to fisheries based on more conservation and less gardening, at least here in the Pacific Northwest. Our markets feature wild-caught salmon coming mostly from self-sustaining Alaska fisheries (although some are also coming from hatchery supported Pacific coast fisheries). Trout anglers are becoming more satisfied with catch and release fisheries and salmon anglers have to release wild-stock fish in many fisheries. But this transitioning must occur more internationally and can probably only occur if we recognize and adjust to limits of growth and consumption. That is probably the looming cloud that could make the gardening vs. conservation discussion futile. Warren W. Aney Senior Wildlife Ecologist Tigard, Oregon -Original Message- From: Wayne Tyson [mailto:landr...@cox.net] Sent: Friday, 28 January, 2011 20:14 To: Warren W. Aney; ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? Ecolog: In many ways, I like Warren's comment better than mine; it's certainly more concise. I'd like to hear more about the overlap, especially with regard to its pros and cons, with tradeoffs, and transitions toward transformations--especially culturally. WT - Original Message - From: Warren W. Aney a...@coho.net To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Friday, January 28, 2011 3:07 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? I've weighed in on this before, but this time let me present what may be an oversimplification -- to me the defining difference between gardening and conservation is based on intent: The intent of conservation is to maintain or attain ecosystem complexity through management protection, enhancement and/or restoration to achieve naturally maintained ecocentric stability, diversity and productivity. The intent of gardening is to simplify ecosystems through intensive and continuous management to achieve human-maintained anthropocentric output and/or attractiveness. And yes, they can and do overlap sometimes. Warren W. Aney Senior Wildlife Ecologist Tigard, Oregon -Original Message- From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [mailto:ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU] On Behalf Of Wayne Tyson Sent: Thursday, 27 January, 2011 17:54 To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening?
Consider fisheries as a good example of overlap between conservation and gardening: Fish farms are 100% gardening. Rearing fish to adult size in hatcheries so as to provide catchable trout is almost 100% gardening. Using fish hatcheries to provide releasable smolts so as to maintain harvestable runs of salmon is still principally gardening. Using fish hatcheries to re-establish self-maintaining wild populations is partially gardening and partially conservation. Less gardening and more conservation occurs when wild fish are trapped and relocated to re-establish self-maintaining populations. Habitat restoration and fish harvest restriction is partially gardening but mostly conservation. Managing and maintaining a self-sustaining population through habitat protection and harvest controls is conservation. The pros for gardening in the above cases? Plenty of fish for the market and the creel; the fish on your table costs less. Cons? Pollution, disease spread, genetic contamination, competition with conservation efforts. The pros for conservation? Self-sustaining, balanced and healthy aquatic systems that are more stable over time and less expensive to manage. Cons? Fewer fish for the market and the creel; the fish on your table costs more (but can be of higher quality); potentially less funding for conservation because of reduced fishing license and fee collections. I think we're in the process of transitioning to fisheries based on more conservation and less gardening, at least here in the Pacific Northwest. Our markets feature wild-caught salmon coming mostly from self-sustaining Alaska fisheries (although some are also coming from hatchery supported Pacific coast fisheries). Trout anglers are becoming more satisfied with catch and release fisheries and salmon anglers have to release wild-stock fish in many fisheries. But this transitioning must occur more internationally and can probably only occur if we recognize and adjust to limits of growth and consumption. That is probably the looming cloud that could make the gardening vs. conservation discussion futile. Warren W. Aney Senior Wildlife Ecologist Tigard, Oregon -Original Message- From: Wayne Tyson [mailto:landr...@cox.net] Sent: Friday, 28 January, 2011 20:14 To: Warren W. Aney; ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? Ecolog: In many ways, I like Warren's comment better than mine; it's certainly more concise. I'd like to hear more about the overlap, especially with regard to its pros and cons, with tradeoffs, and transitions toward transformations--especially culturally. WT - Original Message - From: Warren W. Aney a...@coho.net To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Friday, January 28, 2011 3:07 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? I've weighed in on this before, but this time let me present what may be an oversimplification -- to me the defining difference between gardening and conservation is based on intent: The intent of conservation is to maintain or attain ecosystem complexity through management protection, enhancement and/or restoration to achieve naturally maintained ecocentric stability, diversity and productivity. The intent of gardening is to simplify ecosystems through intensive and continuous management to achieve human-maintained anthropocentric output and/or attractiveness. And yes, they can and do overlap sometimes. Warren W. Aney Senior Wildlife Ecologist Tigard, Oregon -Original Message- From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [mailto:ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU] On Behalf Of Wayne Tyson Sent: Thursday, 27 January, 2011 17:54 To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? Re: [ECOLOG-L] ECOLOG-L Digest - 22 Jan 2011 to 23 Jan 2011 (#2011-23) Each decision about species or habitat intervention is (or should be) context driven. Generalizations don't hack it in science, and it's high time journalists gave them up in the popular press. Over 4,000 words of provocative prose is more than naive in this Age of the Twit, though, and if the authors are serious about investigating the details of this very serious subject, they should engage, not instruct. Forums like Ecolog could, if respondents would stick to the question and the responses to it, make a real contribution to sorting out the facts from the weedy patches of opining. I, and I presume Jason, continue to await an answer to the original question. WT - Original Message - From: austin ritter austin.rit...@gmail.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2011 1:19 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] ECOLOG-L Digest - 22 Jan 2011 to 23 Jan 2011 (#2011-23) A week or so ago Jason asked: Are there any recognized criteria for determining the boundary between conservation and gardening? This article from High Country News seem extremely relevant
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening?
In hopes that you will forgive me for an impudent layperson's intrusion of a favorite quotation: People have forgotten this truth,the fox said. But you mustn't forget it. You become responsible forever for what you've tamed. The Little Prince [from A Guide for Grown-ups; essential wisdom from the collected works of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Harcourt, 2002] - Original Message - From: Warren W. Aney a...@coho.net To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Sunday, January 30, 2011 12:14 AM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? Consider fisheries as a good example of overlap between conservation and gardening: Fish farms are 100% gardening. Rearing fish to adult size in hatcheries so as to provide catchable trout is almost 100% gardening. Using fish hatcheries to provide releasable smolts so as to maintain harvestable runs of salmon is still principally gardening. Using fish hatcheries to re-establish self-maintaining wild populations is partially gardening and partially conservation. Less gardening and more conservation occurs when wild fish are trapped and relocated to re-establish self-maintaining populations. Habitat restoration and fish harvest restriction is partially gardening but mostly conservation. Managing and maintaining a self-sustaining population through habitat protection and harvest controls is conservation. The pros for gardening in the above cases? Plenty of fish for the market and the creel; the fish on your table costs less. Cons? Pollution, disease spread, genetic contamination, competition with conservation efforts. The pros for conservation? Self-sustaining, balanced and healthy aquatic systems that are more stable over time and less expensive to manage. Cons? Fewer fish for the market and the creel; the fish on your table costs more (but can be of higher quality); potentially less funding for conservation because of reduced fishing license and fee collections. I think we're in the process of transitioning to fisheries based on more conservation and less gardening, at least here in the Pacific Northwest. Our markets feature wild-caught salmon coming mostly from self-sustaining Alaska fisheries (although some are also coming from hatchery supported Pacific coast fisheries). Trout anglers are becoming more satisfied with catch and release fisheries and salmon anglers have to release wild-stock fish in many fisheries. But this transitioning must occur more internationally and can probably only occur if we recognize and adjust to limits of growth and consumption. That is probably the looming cloud that could make the gardening vs. conservation discussion futile. Warren W. Aney Senior Wildlife Ecologist Tigard, Oregon -Original Message- From: Wayne Tyson [mailto:landr...@cox.net] Sent: Friday, 28 January, 2011 20:14 To: Warren W. Aney; ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? Ecolog: In many ways, I like Warren's comment better than mine; it's certainly more concise. I'd like to hear more about the overlap, especially with regard to its pros and cons, with tradeoffs, and transitions toward transformations--especially culturally. WT - Original Message - From: Warren W. Aney a...@coho.net To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Friday, January 28, 2011 3:07 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? I've weighed in on this before, but this time let me present what may be an oversimplification -- to me the defining difference between gardening and conservation is based on intent: The intent of conservation is to maintain or attain ecosystem complexity through management protection, enhancement and/or restoration to achieve naturally maintained ecocentric stability, diversity and productivity. The intent of gardening is to simplify ecosystems through intensive and continuous management to achieve human-maintained anthropocentric output and/or attractiveness. And yes, they can and do overlap sometimes. Warren W. Aney Senior Wildlife Ecologist Tigard, Oregon -Original Message- From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [mailto:ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU] On Behalf Of Wayne Tyson Sent: Thursday, 27 January, 2011 17:54 To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? Re: [ECOLOG-L] ECOLOG-L Digest - 22 Jan 2011 to 23 Jan 2011 (#2011-23) Each decision about species or habitat intervention is (or should be) context driven. Generalizations don't hack it in science, and it's high time journalists gave them up in the popular press. Over 4,000 words of provocative prose is more than naive in this Age of the Twit, though, and if the authors are serious about investigating the details of this very serious subject, they should engage, not instruct. Forums like Ecolog could, if respondents would stick to the question and the responses to it, make a real contribution to sorting out
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening?
Per Wayne's request, here are my own thoughts, and some clarifications. First, the clarifications: Wayne asked me to define my terms, so here goes: Conservation -- assisting a species or ecosystem to carry on most of its original life activities and interactions, including reproduction and dispersal. Gardening -- keeping a species or suite of species alive, but dependent on continued human attendance for all reproduction and dispersal (e.g., captive breeding without successful reintroduction; hand-pollination; only those propagules grown or reared by humans successfully establish). Purist -- one whose ideal is the pre-human ecosystem, insofar as we can determine what that was. Fence -- Either a literal fence intended to prevent entry by humans, or a delineated boundary serving the same purpose. Letting nature manage it -- Ceasing human intervention, so that only non-anthropogenic processes occur. Obviously, given these definitions, Building a fence around it and letting nature manage it is not going to happen. Even if this policy was applied to a given area, air and water quality entering the area would still be affected by anthropogenic activity, and if there are populations dependent on migration into and out of the area, or colonization from an outside source population, the cutting off of this migration and/or colonization would itself be anthropogenic activity. Most of the thoughts given in the various replies went with the theme that the current ecological reality is that the human species is an ecological and evolutionary force, that is not going to change so long as we remain at our current numbers/rate of growth and level of technology, so we might as well work with that reality. Ye shall be as gods, the serpent said to Eve, and in a sense, we are -- and therefore Eden is forever lost to us. Not that most of us would want to live in an Eden defined as the pre-civilization ecosystem -- our cultivated plants, domesticated animals, managed forests, and various mining sites provide commodities few if any of us would consider optional. I have never met any human who would desire to return to the life of a wild animal, even though, in the evolutionary past, that is what we were. Thus, it would seem that, rather than strive for a pristine ecosystem, conservation should focus more on a functioning ecosystem, i.e. one that optimizes energy flow in a more or less self-sustaining way. Of course, that definition must be modified somewhat, because optimizing biodiversity may not always coincide with optimizing energy flow, and biodiversity is also an important consideration, not least because it allows for adaptation to unforseen change. It is intersting that bioxenophobia was mentioned. Bioxenophobia naturally follows from the purist position as I defined it above -- a given pre-human ecosystem contained only those species which got there without human intervention. But, from an ecosystem process point of view, are the indiginous species inherently better or more optimal than exotics? For example: a Puget Prairie site, with its suite of indiginous grasses and forbs, is converted into what may be termed a Eurasian Meadow ecosystem, dominated by imported turf grasses and their associated weeds. Is the Eurasian Meadow more or less biodiverse? Does it optimize energy flow to a greater or lesser degree than the original Puget Prairie? If so, how important is that in the larger landscape? Should we expend lots of resources to replace the Eurasian Meadow with a restored Puget Prairie? If we get rid of bioxenophobia, these questions can only be answered after a lot more study. In the end, I am no closer to a definite answer than any of the other respondents. I posed the question mostly as food for thought, which it certainly seems to have been. Jason Hernandez Biological Science Technician, USDA Forest Service -- Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2011 21:52:57 -0800 From: Wayne Tyson landr...@cox.net Subject: Re: Conservation or just gardening? Jason, You have asked such good questions that, even though you have received a plethora of very thoughtful responses, I'm going to take another crack at being more directly responsive and insert some additional thoughts into your text in an attempt to keep myself from wandering off the subject. I'll put my responses into double-brackets with my initials [[like this WT]] to minimize confusion in case others may wish to add their own comments or correct mine. At some point, I hope you will write a summary statement to give us your own answers once you have thought about the questions again. - Original Message - From: Jason Hernandez jason.hernande...@yahoo.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Monday, January 17, 2011 5:08 PM Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? This question is inspired by a conversation with
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening?
Austin, There are most definitely legal definitions of conservation that preclude extensive manipulations which I assume to be a central tenet of gardening. IMHO the goal of conservation and restoration is to preserve a habitat in the sense that the habitat is the manifestation of a suite of natural processes. Habitat conservation requires the continuation of those processes while restoration requires the restoration of those processes. The habitat and suite of natural processes can result in a continuum of natural species assemblages, so I see conservation and restoration resulting in a dynamic system. Gardening, on the other hand, results from control and manipulation of the natural processes and is directed to one outcome or species assemblage, regardless of if I'm trying to make my cursed heirloom tomatoes grow, of eastern woodland indians are burning areas to create pasture. (At least that's my understanding as both a gardening and a wetland scientist working in wetland creation and restoration. As for the premise of the article is *Unnatural Preservations*, I just don't see it happening. We have enough difficulty manipulating a 5 acre mitigation wetland to promote natives and keep out invasive species, so I can't see Yellowstone being managed to preserve the existing communities. I think it is probably impossible to preserve existing habitats if the natural processes that created and support that habitat have changed. Alterations to the hydrology of the Everglades due to ditching and irrigation can conceivably be restored. Preservation of the moisture and temperature regimes of Yellowstone, in the fact of global warming, cannot be preserved or restored. Mike Schening From: austin ritter austin.rit...@gmail.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2011 1:19 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] ECOLOG-L Digest - 22 Jan 2011 to 23 Jan 2011 (#2011-23) A week or so ago Jason asked: Are there any recognized criteria for determining the boundary between conservation and gardening? This article from High Country News seem extremely relevant: http://www.hcn.org/issues/363/17481. The artical is call *Unnatural preservations* and the thesis is: In the age of global warming, public-land managers face a stark choice: They can let national parks and other wildlands lose their most cherished wildlife. Or they can become gardeners and zookeepers. Its a provocative read no matter what you conservation goal is. -Austin Ritter Middlebury College
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening?
I would add that gardening is directed toward different goals than conservation or restoration. The gardener wants to produce beauty, food, or some other harvestable product. Also, gardening is almost invariably based on plant varieties that have been in domestication for a long time, sometimes millennia, and that represent genotypes and phenotypes not seen in nature. While a conservation or restoration project may share some of these goals (e.g., creating beauty) in general the goal is to maintain an environment in the state it was in before human intervention. It may be that similar techniques can be employed to reach these different goals, but the goals themselves let us distinguish between gardening, conservation, and restoration. Martin M. Meiss 2011/1/28 Mike Schening scheni...@yahoo.com Austin, There are most definitely legal definitions of conservation that preclude extensive manipulations which I assume to be a central tenet of gardening. IMHO the goal of conservation and restoration is to preserve a habitat in the sense that the habitat is the manifestation of a suite of natural processes. Habitat conservation requires the continuation of those processes while restoration requires the restoration of those processes. The habitat and suite of natural processes can result in a continuum of natural species assemblages, so I see conservation and restoration resulting in a dynamic system. Gardening, on the other hand, results from control and manipulation of the natural processes and is directed to one outcome or species assemblage, regardless of if I'm trying to make my cursed heirloom tomatoes grow, of eastern woodland indians are burning areas to create pasture. (At least that's my understanding as both a gardening and a wetland scientist working in wetland creation and restoration. As for the premise of the article is *Unnatural Preservations*, I just don't see it happening. We have enough difficulty manipulating a 5 acre mitigation wetland to promote natives and keep out invasive species, so I can't see Yellowstone being managed to preserve the existing communities. I think it is probably impossible to preserve existing habitats if the natural processes that created and support that habitat have changed. Alterations to the hydrology of the Everglades due to ditching and irrigation can conceivably be restored. Preservation of the moisture and temperature regimes of Yellowstone, in the fact of global warming, cannot be preserved or restored. Mike Schening From: austin ritter austin.rit...@gmail.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2011 1:19 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] ECOLOG-L Digest - 22 Jan 2011 to 23 Jan 2011 (#2011-23) A week or so ago Jason asked: Are there any recognized criteria for determining the boundary between conservation and gardening? This article from High Country News seem extremely relevant: http://www.hcn.org/issues/363/17481. The artical is call *Unnatural preservations* and the thesis is: In the age of global warming, public-land managers face a stark choice: They can let national parks and other wildlands lose their most cherished wildlife. Or they can become gardeners and zookeepers. Its a provocative read no matter what you conservation goal is. -Austin Ritter Middlebury College
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening?
I've weighed in on this before, but this time let me present what may be an oversimplification -- to me the defining difference between gardening and conservation is based on intent: The intent of conservation is to maintain or attain ecosystem complexity through management protection, enhancement and/or restoration to achieve naturally maintained ecocentric stability, diversity and productivity. The intent of gardening is to simplify ecosystems through intensive and continuous management to achieve human-maintained anthropocentric output and/or attractiveness. And yes, they can and do overlap sometimes. Warren W. Aney Senior Wildlife Ecologist Tigard, Oregon -Original Message- From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [mailto:ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU] On Behalf Of Wayne Tyson Sent: Thursday, 27 January, 2011 17:54 To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? Re: [ECOLOG-L] ECOLOG-L Digest - 22 Jan 2011 to 23 Jan 2011 (#2011-23) Each decision about species or habitat intervention is (or should be) context driven. Generalizations don't hack it in science, and it's high time journalists gave them up in the popular press. Over 4,000 words of provocative prose is more than naive in this Age of the Twit, though, and if the authors are serious about investigating the details of this very serious subject, they should engage, not instruct. Forums like Ecolog could, if respondents would stick to the question and the responses to it, make a real contribution to sorting out the facts from the weedy patches of opining. I, and I presume Jason, continue to await an answer to the original question. WT - Original Message - From: austin ritter austin.rit...@gmail.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2011 1:19 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] ECOLOG-L Digest - 22 Jan 2011 to 23 Jan 2011 (#2011-23) A week or so ago Jason asked: Are there any recognized criteria for determining the boundary between conservation and gardening? This article from High Country News seem extremely relevant: http://www.hcn.org/issues/363/17481. The artical is call *Unnatural preservations* and the thesis is: In the age of global warming, public-land managers face a stark choice: They can let national parks and other wildlands lose their most cherished wildlife. Or they can become gardeners and zookeepers. Its a provocative read no matter what you conservation goal is. -Austin Ritter Middlebury College Date:Sat, 22 Jan 2011 21:52:57 -0800 From:Wayne Tyson landr...@cox.net Subject: Re: Conservation or just gardening? Jason, You have asked such good questions that, even though you have received a plethora of very thoughtful responses, I'm going to take another crack at being more directly responsive and insert some additional thoughts into your text in an attempt to keep myself from wandering off the subject. I'll put my responses into double-brackets with my initials [[like this WT]] to minimize confusion in case others may wish to add their own comments or correct mine. At some point, I hope you will write a summary statement to give us your own answers once you have thought about the questions again. - Original Message - From: Jason Hernandez jason.hernande...@yahoo.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Monday, January 17, 2011 5:08 PM Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? This question is inspired by a conversation with a former employer. When do our interventions cease to be conservation and become gardening? [[I, and perhaps others, may have jumped to conclusions about what you mean by conservation and gardening. I'd be interested in your own definitions of the terms in the sense of your original intent. WT]] For the sake of argument, I was taking the purist position: that ideally, we want to be able to put a fence around a natural area and walk away, letting nature manage it. [[Again, I think we should consider just what you mean by purist and fence and letting nature manage it. WT]] But as my employer rightly pointed out, that is just not a realistic expectation in the 21st century, what with invasive species, systemic pollution, human pressures on surrounding areas, and countless other factors which will not go away. But of course, she also knew that there is a degree of intervention which crosses the line from conservation to gardening, that is, caring for a population that no longer participates in its ecosystem processes. [[And, of course, I/we might have had some difficulty interpreting the context of intervention and where the line is. WT]] There is, of course, a continuum of interventions. [[This may be a crucial point that requires more attention. WT]] Removal of invasive competitors is a relatively light intervention; growing seedlings in a greenhouse and then planting them out is more intensive
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening?
Honorable Forum on Ecology: Gardening, like farming, is the manipulation of habitat and organisms according to the desire, preference, or whim of the gardener or farmer. This manipulation, this cultivation, is the seat of culture (both derived from the Latin cultivare, if memory serves me correctly), and necessarily displaces the organisms that were previously self-sufficient in the habitat (indigenous to the site) before manipulation. Animal husbandry or pastoralism is similar cultivation with respect to animals. In uncultivated (natural, undisturbed) habitats, energy/nutrients flowed through biological complexes or ecosystems in a highly efficient process such that available nutrients were sequestered almost entirely within the tissues of the living organisms except for very brief residence times in the non-living detritus of dead organisms, but even in that case, uptake of free(d) nutrients by some form of organism is normally rather rapid. Cultivation shifts nutrient allocations from the complex ecosystem's cycle to a concentration of available nutrients in the desired, preferred, or demanded organism. When that shifting is insufficient to fulfill desires, preferences, or demands, nutrients are added from outside the local system to provide the illusion of increased productivity. Other ecosystems pay the price for meeting such demands. For example, islands and other lands are mined for phosphorous or potash, and mineralized remains in the form of oil and coal are transformed into nitrogen and transported to the site of the excised ecosystem to meet the demands of the culture of manipulation/extraction. This procedure requires additional energy inputs as well. Ecosystems do not demand external inputs; organisms that have adapted to the habitat conditions available in any given place exploit or use nutrients directly in the form of minerals present in non-living form as well as through consumption of other organisms, humans included. Relative populations of different organisms fluctuate according to a complex system of feedback loops that can appear to give one organism the advantage, but eventually populations become self-limiting, and the dominance shifts. Non-living factors such as changes in temperature, volcanism, meteoroid impacts, and countless other events in the firmament of time affect systems. Eventually, every Peter (ecosystem) who has been robbed to pay ever Paul (cultivare) will eventually have to be paid. Just a few things off the top of my head for what they're worth--I look forward to corrections. WT PS: Gardening techniques are normally not only ill-suited for ecosystem restoration purposes, they may be all that is left as a last resort when action has been delayed until almost the last minute. I believe that the California condor, for example, was (I hope) snatched from the jaws of extinction by captive breeding, a form of animal gardening, as it were, but only time will tell if unmanaged populations can be maintained, whether the last few birds were added in time to a seriously diminished gene pool. Y'all can chew over whether or not this was worth it, but in my opinion it was a bargain, even if it turns out to have been too little too late, thanks in part to some highly cocksure conservationists who stood in the way while the wild populations plummeted increasingly toward certain extinction, especially from the early 1950's to the mid 1980's. The primary causes of the decline were no doubt due to teenage boys with .22's and other louts, but that factor turned out to be impossible to control, as ignorance almost always is, and stupidity always is. Conservationists had no excuse other than pure pig-headedness and self-righteousness. NOTE: The standard I used for years to determine whether or not a restoration project was successful was whether or not the assemblage of organisms continued to improve (reproduce and diversify) rather than degrade over time (up to the carrying capacity of the site), and that it be self-sufficient without outside inputs (as in gardening). I found that the cultivation paradigms not only were not useful or appropriate for ecosystem restoration, but that they could be counterproductive at best, and fatal at worst. Gardening is rarely the best choice in conservation or restoration, but we should always hold out the possibility that some kinds of artificial preservation might be needed as a gap-filler or space-holder, especially for critical species, until the ecosystem at large and/or a suitable niche can be made ready. To stand by and let a species go extinct that has been driven there by culture seems to be open to question--to put it politely. - Original Message - From: Martin Meiss mme...@gmail.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Friday, January 28, 2011 10:47 AM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? I would add that gardening is directed toward
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening?
Ecolog: In many ways, I like Warren's comment better than mine; it's certainly more concise. I'd like to hear more about the overlap, especially with regard to its pros and cons, with tradeoffs, and transitions toward transformations--especially culturally. WT - Original Message - From: Warren W. Aney a...@coho.net To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Friday, January 28, 2011 3:07 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? I've weighed in on this before, but this time let me present what may be an oversimplification -- to me the defining difference between gardening and conservation is based on intent: The intent of conservation is to maintain or attain ecosystem complexity through management protection, enhancement and/or restoration to achieve naturally maintained ecocentric stability, diversity and productivity. The intent of gardening is to simplify ecosystems through intensive and continuous management to achieve human-maintained anthropocentric output and/or attractiveness. And yes, they can and do overlap sometimes. Warren W. Aney Senior Wildlife Ecologist Tigard, Oregon -Original Message- From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [mailto:ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU] On Behalf Of Wayne Tyson Sent: Thursday, 27 January, 2011 17:54 To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? Re: [ECOLOG-L] ECOLOG-L Digest - 22 Jan 2011 to 23 Jan 2011 (#2011-23) Each decision about species or habitat intervention is (or should be) context driven. Generalizations don't hack it in science, and it's high time journalists gave them up in the popular press. Over 4,000 words of provocative prose is more than naive in this Age of the Twit, though, and if the authors are serious about investigating the details of this very serious subject, they should engage, not instruct. Forums like Ecolog could, if respondents would stick to the question and the responses to it, make a real contribution to sorting out the facts from the weedy patches of opining. I, and I presume Jason, continue to await an answer to the original question. WT - Original Message - From: austin ritter austin.rit...@gmail.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2011 1:19 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] ECOLOG-L Digest - 22 Jan 2011 to 23 Jan 2011 (#2011-23) A week or so ago Jason asked: Are there any recognized criteria for determining the boundary between conservation and gardening? This article from High Country News seem extremely relevant: http://www.hcn.org/issues/363/17481. The artical is call *Unnatural preservations* and the thesis is: In the age of global warming, public-land managers face a stark choice: They can let national parks and other wildlands lose their most cherished wildlife. Or they can become gardeners and zookeepers. Its a provocative read no matter what you conservation goal is. -Austin Ritter Middlebury College Date:Sat, 22 Jan 2011 21:52:57 -0800 From:Wayne Tyson landr...@cox.net Subject: Re: Conservation or just gardening? Jason, You have asked such good questions that, even though you have received a plethora of very thoughtful responses, I'm going to take another crack at being more directly responsive and insert some additional thoughts into your text in an attempt to keep myself from wandering off the subject. I'll put my responses into double-brackets with my initials [[like this WT]] to minimize confusion in case others may wish to add their own comments or correct mine. At some point, I hope you will write a summary statement to give us your own answers once you have thought about the questions again. - Original Message - From: Jason Hernandez jason.hernande...@yahoo.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Monday, January 17, 2011 5:08 PM Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? This question is inspired by a conversation with a former employer. When do our interventions cease to be conservation and become gardening? [[I, and perhaps others, may have jumped to conclusions about what you mean by conservation and gardening. I'd be interested in your own definitions of the terms in the sense of your original intent. WT]] For the sake of argument, I was taking the purist position: that ideally, we want to be able to put a fence around a natural area and walk away, letting nature manage it. [[Again, I think we should consider just what you mean by purist and fence and letting nature manage it. WT]] But as my employer rightly pointed out, that is just not a realistic expectation in the 21st century, what with invasive species, systemic pollution, human pressures on surrounding areas, and countless other factors which will not go away. But of course, she also knew that there is a degree of intervention which crosses the line from conservation to gardening, that is, caring for a population that no longer participates in its ecosystem processes
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening?
Jason, You have asked such good questions that, even though you have received a plethora of very thoughtful responses, I'm going to take another crack at being more directly responsive and insert some additional thoughts into your text in an attempt to keep myself from wandering off the subject. I'll put my responses into double-brackets with my initials [[like this WT]] to minimize confusion in case others may wish to add their own comments or correct mine. At some point, I hope you will write a summary statement to give us your own answers once you have thought about the questions again. - Original Message - From: Jason Hernandez jason.hernande...@yahoo.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Monday, January 17, 2011 5:08 PM Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? This question is inspired by a conversation with a former employer. When do our interventions cease to be conservation and become gardening? [[I, and perhaps others, may have jumped to conclusions about what you mean by conservation and gardening. I'd be interested in your own definitions of the terms in the sense of your original intent. WT]] For the sake of argument, I was taking the purist position: that ideally, we want to be able to put a fence around a natural area and walk away, letting nature manage it. [[Again, I think we should consider just what you mean by purist and fence and letting nature manage it. WT]] But as my employer rightly pointed out, that is just not a realistic expectation in the 21st century, what with invasive species, systemic pollution, human pressures on surrounding areas, and countless other factors which will not go away. But of course, she also knew that there is a degree of intervention which crosses the line from conservation to gardening, that is, caring for a population that no longer participates in its ecosystem processes. [[And, of course, I/we might have had some difficulty interpreting the context of intervention and where the line is. WT]] There is, of course, a continuum of interventions. [[This may be a crucial point that requires more attention. WT]] Removal of invasive competitors is a relatively light intervention; growing seedlings in a greenhouse and then planting them out is more intensive; maintaining an in vitro germplasm collection still more intensive. [[This is a key statement, not so much a question, but its implications may be worth far deeper attention than what first meets the mind. For example, your statement brings to mind the intervention that produced the invasive competitors in the first place. Some (e.g., Ewell, 1987) have suggested that resistance to invasion is one of the tests of ecosystem restoration and ecological theory, so the first intervention to consider might be the event or series of events that caused the invasive competitors in the first place (or the uncounted or uncountable places). [[To keep from spinning on the tip of this point where angels fear to dance, let's say, for example that the pristine conditions was first invaded by a cow brought into, say, California by an invading Spaniard and turned loose in an ecosystem that had not evolved under such a critter. The ecosystem did not evolve under the influence of her shuffling gait, her style of grazing, her fecal matter, the Mediterranean diet of oats and associated weed contaminants therein, and perhaps the strains of bacteria, ad infinitum, that were included as unprecedented change-agents in this particular ecosystem. Oats and their fellow-travelers almost immediately reared their ugly heads and began populating the hoof-ploughed ground, opportunistically spreading and multiplying where conditions where right for their germination, growth, survival, reproduction, and distribution. [[Fast-forward a couple of centuries or so, and the ripple effects of that initial invasion have grown in number, diversity, and extent such that colorful names like rip-gut brome and cheat-grass have come to be accepted as part of the ecosystem, so numerous and widespread they have become. The removal of these invasive competitors has come to be considered impossible, yet a select few of their fellow-travelers have been targeted for removal. Bioxenophobia has become big business, helping to inflate the profits of Big Chem and countless lesser players, and promises of cures to these competitors' influences continue to ring grant cash registers across the land, under the assumption that an infinity of studies and removals will someday remove the menace. Studies of ecosystem recoveries, some spontaneous, some stimulated by well-calculated further interventions, do not get much, if any, funding. Advances and declines over time of weed populations do not get much attention, and the cows are still a-lowin' on the mountain-side. WT]] Are there any recognized criteria for determining the boundary between conservation and gardening?
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening?
Wayne (and others):adaptive management is a strategic process that involves planning, action, monitoring and feedback. Some just call it learning by doing, but it can and should be more sophisticated and deliberate, perhaps something along the line of what I posted to this list in October: Step 1. Assess current ecosystem situation/condition. Step 2. Describe and agree on desired future/restored ecosystem condition. Step 3. Define and agree on actions needed to reach desired condition. Step 4. Take bold but safe-to-fail actions. Step 5. Monitor and evaluate results from desired ecosystem condition perspective. Step 6. Modify actions and/or expectations in light of results. Step 7. Continue with revised actions and monitoring. Step 8. Celebrate success. Defining desired ecosystem condition may be the most challenging step, but the 3 goals and considerations that Juan Alvez lists help us take that step. Warren W. Aney Senior Wildlife Ecologist Tigard, OR _ From: Wayne Tyson [mailto:landr...@cox.net] Sent: Wednesday, 19 January, 2011 17:05 To: Warren W. Aney; ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? Well, yes. But I would suggest even more detail, and hope Aney will expand his outline. Also, when habitats have been degraded or essentially destroyed, as in, say, volcanic eruptions or surface mining, the issue of feasible future state is a question to be squarely addressed, as well as the timing and sequence of events, both artificial and natural that lead to that state, including markers that confirm whether or not progress toward them is occurring. In the gardening approach, for example, propagules may be introduced and monitored and desired states that are arbitrarily determined (e.g. a certain amount of coverage at a certain date) required that may or may not be feasible that could undermine, rather than advance, the three Aney descriptors. In the ecosystem restoration approach, trend lines, including survivorship curves and measures of diversity are less forgiving and more to the point that the urgent cosmetics common to desire-based standards, which may bear little resemblance to ecosystem processes, function, and successional structure. I hope Aney will contribute further on just how adaptive management would be applied. WT - Original Message - From: Warren W. Aney mailto:a...@coho.net a...@coho.net To: mailto:ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2011 10:41 AM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? Juan Alvez is right about having long term goals but leaves out important defining adjectives. Ecosystems structures, functions, processes and services exist regardless of ecosystem condition (even a crack in a paved parking lot is an ecosystem with structure, functions and maybe even some services). So we need to insert adjectives that describes a desired future state -- e.g., 1. Reestablishment of the naturally complex and stable ecosystem structure. 2. Reestablishment of the naturally diverse ecosystem functions and process. 3. Reestablishment of the productive flow of ecosystem services. Of course these modifiers would tend to be site dependent and I'm sure others can come up with better examples. And how about employing principles of adaptive management to make sure our efforts are both effective and informative? Warren W. Aney Senior Wildlife Ecologist Tigard, OR -Original Message- From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [mailto:ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU] On Behalf Of Juan P Alvez Sent: Tuesday, 18 January, 2011 19:53 To: mailto:ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? Ecologers, Building on Prof. W. Tyson's comment... I completely agree. Restoring a degraded ecosystem to its pristine pure stage is almost impossible, not to mention the costs involved in the mitigation process. There were (and still are) successful attempts of regenerating barren and ultra degraded places in Brazil (i.e. mine sites) by Prof. Ademir Reis and others. Prof. Reis also committed several mistakes in his attempts until he figured it out the best ways to achieve some sort of succession and vegetation. From my humble point of view, important long-term goal and considerations to have in mind are: 1. the reestablishment of ecosystem structure (not an easy task!); 2. the reestablishment of ecosystem functions and processes (consider yourself lucky when this is accomplished); 3. Finally, the reestablishment of the flow of ecosystem services. These events take time and resources but are worth doing. Just my 2 cts! Juan P. Alvez On 1/18/2011 4:04 PM, Wayne Tyson wrote: Jason and Ecolog: Many years ago (early 1980's?) I did a paper that I think I called Ecosystem Restoration and Landscaping: A Comparison. I don't remember the name of the conference and I'm
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening?
Warren and Ecolog: You are right about the need for more sophistication and deliberate action and thought. I'll try to build on your steps a bit by inserting a few thoughts [[thus WT]]. I hope others will do the same, and correct any errors as we go along. By applying adaptive management to THIS process, it will theoretically become further refined and realize/exemplify those needs as Aney suggests. WT - Original Message - From: Warren W. Aney To: 'Wayne Tyson' ; ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2011 8:32 PM Subject: RE: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? Wayne (and others):adaptive management is a strategic process that involves planning, action, monitoring and feedback. Some just call it learning by doing, but it can and should be more sophisticated and deliberate, perhaps something along the line of what I posted to this list in October: Step 1. Assess current ecosystem situation/condition. [[The level of sophistication has to vary, because practical, real-world considerations always rear their ugly heads. At root, a glance, a photograph, a map, or other cursory assessment might have to do; certainly the more detailed the better. But perhaps equally important are the qualitative and interpretive dimensions of those needs, and resisting the temptation or enforcement of decorative data, bloated interpretation, and arbitrarily determinations. I have often relied upon a procedural element I call the roughest guess that gets the job done standard of quality; this leaves one wide open for criticism, but that's as it should be. The rub comes in when the challenger determines that he/she is above challenging--power rears her ugly head. WT]] Step 2. Describe and agree on desired future/restored ecosystem condition. [[I believe someone (Warren?) said this might be the toughest one. One can desire all one wants, but one is not going to get one's way if the feasibility isn't there. Desire is arbitrary, someone's (usually the Authority's) whim about what constitutes pure or pristine; yet feasible is subject to manipulation too--there's a temptation to use feasibility to squirm out of all kinds of responsibilities. One could take an assessment literally, such as restore 100 ha of old-growth forest in ninety days. This is clearly arbitrary and infeasible, but I can show you projects where gigantic costs were incurred to transplant mature trees that was an utter failure in conception, design, and execution in an attempt to reproduce some armchair experts idea of pristine based more on a personal aesthetic than ecosystem analysis. Has anyone else had a similar experience? WT]] Step 3. Define and agree on actions needed to reach desired condition. [[There needs to be a basis for the definition, usually from a combination of literature, comparable projects that have reached desired condition, discipline experiments, sound theoretical foundations (e.g. plant-soil-water relations), and other experience. WT]] Step 4. Take bold but safe-to-fail actions. [[Yeah, nice to hope for, but often honored more in the breach than in the execution. Facing up to failures and figuring out why they occurred is often defeated by the prevalence of the cya phenomenon. WT]] Step 5. Monitor and evaluate results from desired ecosystem condition perspective. [[One always hopes for an adequate budget for monitoring and evaluation, but even the most expensive and extensive can fall into the window-dressing pit too. Coverage requirements continue to undermine things like diversity goals, and cause the use of aggressive species and tighter densities to achieve standards that are irrelevant to the, shall we say, unbroken progress toward the pristine as possible goal. I've personally caused some projects to collapse because I didn't have the guts or the power to insist upon less is more. WT]] Step 6. Modify actions and/or expectations in light of results. [[I'm all for modifying actions, but have seen cases where well-intended modifications, did more damage than they repaired. Expectations need to be reduced at Step 2, but if not, better late than never. However, this should not be an easy-out for the practitioner who wants most to cover up mistakes rather than learn from them. WY]] Step 7. Continue with revised actions and monitoring. [[Sounds good, but nothing beats getting it right in the first place. Monitoring is wonderful if actually productive in measurable terms--it should primarily plot trends, including the overall trend, the primary standard for measuring any ecosystem project: Is the project improving or degrading? (Is reproduction/recruitment of indigenous species occurring or not? After an initial phase of weediness, is there resistance to invasion? Are so-called minor components (e.g. cryptogamic soil crust species, indigenous grasses and geophytes, fungi, etc., not to mention indigenous
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening?
Ecologers, Building on Prof. W. Tyson's comment... I completely agree. Restoring a degraded ecosystem to its pristine pure stage is almost impossible, not to mention the costs involved in the mitigation process. There were (and still are) successful attempts of regenerating barren and ultra degraded places in Brazil (i.e. mine sites) by Prof. Ademir Reis and others. Prof. Reis also committed several mistakes in his attempts until he figured it out the best ways to achieve some sort of succession and vegetation. From my humble point of view, important long-term goal and considerations to have in mind are: 1. the reestablishment of ecosystem structure (not an easy task!); 2. the reestablishment of ecosystem functions and processes (consider yourself lucky when this is accomplished); 3. Finally, the reestablishment of the flow of ecosystem services. These events take time and resources but are worth doing. Just my 2 cts! Juan P. Alvez On 1/18/2011 4:04 PM, Wayne Tyson wrote: Jason and Ecolog: Many years ago (early 1980's?) I did a paper that I think I called Ecosystem Restoration and Landscaping: A Comparison. I don't remember the name of the conference and I'm not sure of the place, but it might have been one of the early conferences of the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER), maybe it's less-formal precursor, Native Plant Restoration or something like that, and I believe it was held in Berkeley, at some big old wooden hotel in the Berkeley Hills. I was a pretty young upstart, and I don't recall anyone paying much attention to it. [Note: I looked through some old files and found a folder: Restoration and Landscaping: a Comparison. 2nd Native Plant Revegetation Symposium, 1987, but there was no paper in it. I was close but a bit foggy. Even it might be wrong; a search revealed other papers which said it was 1987 and the location was San Diego. Maybe a better searcher can find it, or maybe someone has the Proceedings--however, I can't even be sure that it was published. I wasn't so young as it turns out, but an upstart nonetheless, I guess.] Anyway, I hope Jason or others can do a better job than I did in communicating what I still think is an important--in fact, crucial point: that landscaping/gardening is a whole different paradigm from ecosystem restoration and management, and recognizing that crucial distinction is fundamental to a real understanding of the interplay between Nature and culture. I spent at least 15 years making the same fundamental mistake over and over again-using gardening/agronomic/landscaping practices in the attempt to restore/manage ecosystems. Failure after failure after failure, even though I had training in ecology and botany-and in gardening/agronomy/landscaping/landscape architecture. My fundamental error was letting the latter paradigm contaminate the former; I probably made the same mistake that remains common-thinking that they were synonymous. I could have not been more wrong-they are in fundamental opposition to each other. Not wanting to blather on and one with this post, I'll stop here for now . . . WT - Original Message - From: Jason Hernandezjason.hernande...@yahoo.com To:ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Monday, January 17, 2011 5:08 PM Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? This question is inspired by a conversation with a former employer. When do our interventions cease to be conservation and become gardening? For the sake of argument, I was taking the purist position: that ideally, we want to be able to put a fence around a natural area and walk away, letting nature manage it. But as my employer rightly pointed out, that is just not a realistic expectation in the 21st century, what with invasive species, systemic pollution, human pressures on surrounding areas, and countless other factors which will not go away. But of course, she also knew that there is a degree of intervention which crosses the line from conservation to gardening, that is, caring for a population that no longer participates in its ecosystem processes. There is, of course, a continuum of interventions. Removal of invasive competitors is a relatively light intervention; growing seedlings in a greenhouse and then planting them out is more intensive; maintaining an in vitro germplasm collection still more intensive. Are there any recognized criteria for determining the boundary between conservation and gardening? And if a species is beyond saving with conservation, how worthwhile is it to save that species with gardening? Can we determine when a species' only hope is gardening? Jason Hernandez Biological Science Technician, USDA Forest Service No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.449 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/3386 - Release Date: 01/17/11 07:34:00 -- Juan P
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening?
The terms conservation and gardening do not cover the full range and intent of human manipulations of natural systems if you consider such terms as preservation, restoration, mitigation, and enhancement. Nevertheless, and to answer Jason's questions, I would consider gardening to be relatively high investment and continuing management with the intent of achieving and maintaining a predefined stable and productive state, measuring production in terms of values such as timber, grazing, botanical displays, an attractively landscaped pond, etc. I would consider conservation to be investing and managing with the goal of achieving the system's self-maintaining natural state, e.g., mature and relatively stable forests, shrub-grassland steppes, wetlands. This may involve intensive first steps such as invasive removal and native replanting, stream diversion and restoration, or woodland thinning. It may also entail subsequent interventions such as invasives control and controlled burns. In my view tree farms, arboretums and game farms are gardening -- but so is the California Condor restoration effort in its present state. Conservation can be anything from its popular definition of wise use to the strict non-interventionist let nature take its course (which may require centuries to achieve any sort of balanced state, if it ever does). Warren W. Aney Senior Wildlife Ecologist Tigard, OR 97223 (503) 539-1009 -Original Message- From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [mailto:ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU] On Behalf Of Jason Hernandez Sent: Monday, 17 January, 2011 17:09 To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? This question is inspired by a conversation with a former employer. When do our interventions cease to be conservation and become gardening? For the sake of argument, I was taking the purist position: that ideally, we want to be able to put a fence around a natural area and walk away, letting nature manage it. But as my employer rightly pointed out, that is just not a realistic expectation in the 21st century, what with invasive species, systemic pollution, human pressures on surrounding areas, and countless other factors which will not go away. But of course, she also knew that there is a degree of intervention which crosses the line from conservation to gardening, that is, caring for a population that no longer participates in its ecosystem processes. There is, of course, a continuum of interventions. Removal of invasive competitors is a relatively light intervention; growing seedlings in a greenhouse and then planting them out is more intensive; maintaining an in vitro germplasm collection still more intensive. Are there any recognized criteria for determining the boundary between conservation and gardening? And if a species is beyond saving with conservation, how worthwhile is it to save that species with gardening? Can we determine when a species' only hope is gardening? Jason Hernandez Biological Science Technician, USDA Forest Service
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening?
Y'all: No habitat, no organism. (Tyson's law) Yeah, I know--there are no laws in ecology. It is written. WT PS: Even so, I ain't always agin' gardening. I got myself in big trouble backing the California condor program back in '86 when my Op-Ed piece in the New York Times hit the street and a lot of other papers picked it up from the wire and gave it different titles. Audubon cancelled my contract, and a lot of people still don't talk to me or answer my emails (probably for any number of egregious offenses). I had written a similarly outrageous piece for the San Francisco Chronicle less than a month before, and I was on a roll, videotaping and generally making a nuisance of myself, interviewing guys like Snyder and Toone, and some others. Just to drive a few more nails in my coffin, I wrote another piece for the Los Angeles Times in '88, gloating about the hatching of the first egg from captive-breeding California condors. So yes, my history is littered with mistakes of all kinds. The California condor program has, I believe, still cost less than one jet, but I have yet to see one built by the aircraft industry. Over to you, Chew. - Original Message - From: Geoffrey Patton gwpatt...@yahoo.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Tuesday, January 18, 2011 1:27 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? I like Colleen's point and would like to add that sometimes there is more to be learned from the hopeless species that might inform saving others. Plus, the educational value... Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry -Original Message- From: Colleen Grant psorotham...@yahoo.com Sender: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2011 08:24:46 To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Reply-To: Colleen Grant psorotham...@yahoo.com Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? Jason, And if a species is beyond saving with conservation, how worthwhile is it to save that species with gardening? At this point, it might be pertinent to ask what other species are dependent (for their life processes) on the gardened species. For example, is there an exclusive mutualism that needs to be preserved? Colleen Grant --- On Mon, 1/17/11, Jason Hernandez jason.hernande...@yahoo.com wrote: From: Jason Hernandez jason.hernande...@yahoo.com Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Date: Monday, January 17, 2011, 5:08 PM This question is inspired by a conversation with a former employer. When do our interventions cease to be conservation and become gardening? For the sake of argument, I was taking the purist position: that ideally, we want to be able to put a fence around a natural area and walk away, letting nature manage it. But as my employer rightly pointed out, that is just not a realistic expectation in the 21st century, what with invasive species, systemic pollution, human pressures on surrounding areas, and countless other factors which will not go away. But of course, she also knew that there is a degree of intervention which crosses the line from conservation to gardening, that is, caring for a population that no longer participates in its ecosystem processes. There is, of course, a continuum of interventions. Removal of invasive competitors is a relatively light intervention; growing seedlings in a greenhouse and then planting them out is more intensive; maintaining an in vitro germplasm collection still more intensive. Are there any recognized criteria for determining the boundary between conservation and gardening? And if a species is beyond saving with conservation, how worthwhile is it to save that species with gardening? Can we determine when a species' only hope is gardening? Jason Hernandez Biological Science Technician, USDA Forest Service No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.449 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/3388 - Release Date: 01/18/11 07:34:00
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening?
Juan and Ecolog: Much as I appreciate compliments, I am not a professor . . . sorry to disappoint you. Like Chew (but unlike Chew) I don't know why anyone would think a degraded ecosystem could be restored to its pristine or pure stage, and I don't even know what that is . . . I have, however, restored self-sufficient complexes of organisms on several highly degraded sites, such as highway cuts and fills, pipeline rights-of-way, disposal fills, sanitary landfills, channelized riparian habitats, etc. None of them were duplicates, and none of them pure I'm sure, but the reintroduced indigenous organisms did not require any gardening or other maintenance to be permanent ecosystems that improved rather than degraded with time. The oldest is almost 39 years old and has not had any outside inputs (maintenance, irrigation, replacement of dead plants, etc.) is all of their years. So this may not be restoration to purists (whatever that means) but there have been ecologists who could not find them because they presumed they were natural. I have found that gardening practices retard the restoration process, not advance it. WT PS: I am happy to hear that someone is taking on the challenge of returning damaged ecosystems to indigenous assemblages/functioning ecosystems in Brazil. - Original Message - From: Juan P Alvez To: Wayne Tyson Cc: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Tuesday, January 18, 2011 7:53 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? Ecologers, Building on Prof. W. Tyson's comment... I completely agree. Restoring a degraded ecosystem to its pristine pure stage is almost impossible, not to mention the costs involved in the mitigation process. There were (and still are) successful attempts of regenerating barren and ultra degraded places in Brazil (i.e. mine sites) by Prof. Ademir Reis and others. Prof. Reis also committed several mistakes in his attempts until he figured it out the best ways to achieve some sort of succession and vegetation. From my humble point of view, important long-term goal and considerations to have in mind are: 1.. the reestablishment of ecosystem structure (not an easy task!); 2.. the reestablishment of ecosystem functions and processes (consider yourself lucky when this is accomplished); 3.. Finally, the reestablishment of the flow of ecosystem services. These events take time and resources but are worth doing. Just my 2 cts! Juan P. Alvez On 1/18/2011 4:04 PM, Wayne Tyson wrote: Jason and Ecolog: Many years ago (early 1980's?) I did a paper that I think I called Ecosystem Restoration and Landscaping: A Comparison. I don't remember the name of the conference and I'm not sure of the place, but it might have been one of the early conferences of the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER), maybe it's less-formal precursor, Native Plant Restoration or something like that, and I believe it was held in Berkeley, at some big old wooden hotel in the Berkeley Hills. I was a pretty young upstart, and I don't recall anyone paying much attention to it. [Note: I looked through some old files and found a folder: Restoration and Landscaping: a Comparison. 2nd Native Plant Revegetation Symposium, 1987, but there was no paper in it. I was close but a bit foggy. Even it might be wrong; a search revealed other papers which said it was 1987 and the location was San Diego. Maybe a better searcher can find it, or maybe someone has the Proceedings--however, I can't even be sure tha t it was published. I wasn't so young as it turns out, but an upstart nonetheless, I guess.] Anyway, I hope Jason or others can do a better job than I did in communicating what I still think is an important--in fact, crucial point: that landscaping/gardening is a whole different paradigm from ecosystem restoration and management, and recognizing that crucial distinction is fundamental to a real understanding of the interplay between Nature and culture. I spent at least 15 years making the same fundamental mistake over and over again-using gardening/agronomic/landscaping practices in the attempt to restore/manage ecosystems. Failure after failure after failure, even though I had training in ecology and botany-and in gardening/agronomy/landscaping/landscape architecture. My fundamental error was letting the latter paradigm contaminate the former; I probably made the same mistake that remains common-thinking that they were synonymous. I could have not been more wrong-they are in fundamental opposition to each other. Not wanting to blather on and one with this post, I'll stop here for now . . . WT - Original Message - From: Jason Hernandez jason.hernande...@yahoo.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Monday, January 17, 2011 5:08 PM Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? This question is inspired by a conversation with a former employer. When do our
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening?
Warren, your list of human interventions in nature leaves out one of the most important: rape. The slaughter of the buffalo, deforestation followed by abandonment, etc. Martin 2011/1/18 Warren W. Aney a...@coho.net The terms conservation and gardening do not cover the full range and intent of human manipulations of natural systems if you consider such terms as preservation, restoration, mitigation, and enhancement. Nevertheless, and to answer Jason's questions, I would consider gardening to be relatively high investment and continuing management with the intent of achieving and maintaining a predefined stable and productive state, measuring production in terms of values such as timber, grazing, botanical displays, an attractively landscaped pond, etc. I would consider conservation to be investing and managing with the goal of achieving the system's self-maintaining natural state, e.g., mature and relatively stable forests, shrub-grassland steppes, wetlands. This may involve intensive first steps such as invasive removal and native replanting, stream diversion and restoration, or woodland thinning. It may also entail subsequent interventions such as invasives control and controlled burns. In my view tree farms, arboretums and game farms are gardening -- but so is the California Condor restoration effort in its present state. Conservation can be anything from its popular definition of wise use to the strict non-interventionist let nature take its course (which may require centuries to achieve any sort of balanced state, if it ever does). Warren W. Aney Senior Wildlife Ecologist Tigard, OR 97223 (503) 539-1009 -Original Message- From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [mailto:ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU] On Behalf Of Jason Hernandez Sent: Monday, 17 January, 2011 17:09 To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? This question is inspired by a conversation with a former employer. When do our interventions cease to be conservation and become gardening? For the sake of argument, I was taking the purist position: that ideally, we want to be able to put a fence around a natural area and walk away, letting nature manage it. But as my employer rightly pointed out, that is just not a realistic expectation in the 21st century, what with invasive species, systemic pollution, human pressures on surrounding areas, and countless other factors which will not go away. But of course, she also knew that there is a degree of intervention which crosses the line from conservation to gardening, that is, caring for a population that no longer participates in its ecosystem processes. There is, of course, a continuum of interventions. Removal of invasive competitors is a relatively light intervention; growing seedlings in a greenhouse and then planting them out is more intensive; maintaining an in vitro germplasm collection still more intensive. Are there any recognized criteria for determining the boundary between conservation and gardening? And if a species is beyond saving with conservation, how worthwhile is it to save that species with gardening? Can we determine when a species' only hope is gardening? Jason Hernandez Biological Science Technician, USDA Forest Service
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening?
I was just going to release Jason's message on the fertile ground of our Society news-list, but can't stand not to weigh in. Dan Janzen's PNAS article, gardenification of tropical conserved wildlands (probably - I only read the abstract), has it right, but his position is appicable to the whole planet. There is certainly no place on earth that our activities of extraction, cultivation, gardening, and attempted restoration do not affect, so I'd call all of what we do gardening. We are applying the human mind and physical capabilities to getting something out of nature, whether it be simply the enjoyment (or sorrow) of the results of a restoration effort, or harvesting shrimp from a rapidly sinking Louisiana coastline (suggested reading, Bayou Farewell by Mike Tidwell), There is no distinction by the satisfaction that we get out of the work: I get at least as much pleasure from attempted restoration of an urban ravine as I believe my neighbor gets from his flower garden, although I might be disheartened by the results. But them I think, What novel communities are we humans creating as we spread Bromus tectorum across the western US landscape and Mahonia nervosa across northern Europe's forests. Shouldn't we study these as fait accompli (don't know the plural) rather than pushing back against them. Change happens, and evolution follows change. Mike Marsh
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening?
Juan Alvez is right about having long term goals but leaves out important defining adjectives. Ecosystems structures, functions, processes and services exist regardless of ecosystem condition (even a crack in a paved parking lot is an ecosystem with structure, functions and maybe even some services). So we need to insert adjectives that describes a desired future state -- e.g., 1. Reestablishment of the naturally complex and stable ecosystem structure. 2. Reestablishment of the naturally diverse ecosystem functions and process. 3. Reestablishment of the productive flow of ecosystem services. Of course these modifiers would tend to be site dependent and I'm sure others can come up with better examples. And how about employing principles of adaptive management to make sure our efforts are both effective and informative? Warren W. Aney Senior Wildlife Ecologist Tigard, OR -Original Message- From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [mailto:ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU] On Behalf Of Juan P Alvez Sent: Tuesday, 18 January, 2011 19:53 To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? Ecologers, Building on Prof. W. Tyson's comment... I completely agree. Restoring a degraded ecosystem to its pristine pure stage is almost impossible, not to mention the costs involved in the mitigation process. There were (and still are) successful attempts of regenerating barren and ultra degraded places in Brazil (i.e. mine sites) by Prof. Ademir Reis and others. Prof. Reis also committed several mistakes in his attempts until he figured it out the best ways to achieve some sort of succession and vegetation. From my humble point of view, important long-term goal and considerations to have in mind are: 1. the reestablishment of ecosystem structure (not an easy task!); 2. the reestablishment of ecosystem functions and processes (consider yourself lucky when this is accomplished); 3. Finally, the reestablishment of the flow of ecosystem services. These events take time and resources but are worth doing. Just my 2 cts! Juan P. Alvez On 1/18/2011 4:04 PM, Wayne Tyson wrote: Jason and Ecolog: Many years ago (early 1980's?) I did a paper that I think I called Ecosystem Restoration and Landscaping: A Comparison. I don't remember the name of the conference and I'm not sure of the place, but it might have been one of the early conferences of the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER), maybe it's less-formal precursor, Native Plant Restoration or something like that, and I believe it was held in Berkeley, at some big old wooden hotel in the Berkeley Hills. I was a pretty young upstart, and I don't recall anyone paying much attention to it. [Note: I looked through some old files and found a folder: Restoration and Landscaping: a Comparison. 2nd Native Plant Revegetation Symposium, 1987, but there was no paper in it. I was close but a bit foggy. Even it might be wrong; a search revealed other papers which said it was 1987 and the location was San Diego. Maybe a better searcher can find it, or maybe someone has the Proceedings--however, I can't even be sure that it was published. I wasn't so young as it turns out, but an upstart nonetheless, I guess.] Anyway, I hope Jason or others can do a better job than I did in communicating what I still think is an important--in fact, crucial point: that landscaping/gardening is a whole different paradigm from ecosystem restoration and management, and recognizing that crucial distinction is fundamental to a real understanding of the interplay between Nature and culture. I spent at least 15 years making the same fundamental mistake over and over again-using gardening/agronomic/landscaping practices in the attempt to restore/manage ecosystems. Failure after failure after failure, even though I had training in ecology and botany-and in gardening/agronomy/landscaping/landscape architecture. My fundamental error was letting the latter paradigm contaminate the former; I probably made the same mistake that remains common-thinking that they were synonymous. I could have not been more wrong-they are in fundamental opposition to each other. Not wanting to blather on and one with this post, I'll stop here for now . . . WT - Original Message - From: Jason Hernandezjason.hernande...@yahoo.com To:ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Monday, January 17, 2011 5:08 PM Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? This question is inspired by a conversation with a former employer. When do our interventions cease to be conservation and become gardening? For the sake of argument, I was taking the purist position: that ideally, we want to be able to put a fence around a natural area and walk away, letting nature manage it. But as my employer rightly pointed out, that is just not a realistic expectation in the 21st century, what with invasive species, systemic pollution, human pressures
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening?
Well, yes. But I would suggest even more detail, and hope Aney will expand his outline. Also, when habitats have been degraded or essentially destroyed, as in, say, volcanic eruptions or surface mining, the issue of feasible future state is a question to be squarely addressed, as well as the timing and sequence of events, both artificial and natural that lead to that state, including markers that confirm whether or not progress toward them is occurring. In the gardening approach, for example, propagules may be introduced and monitored and desired states that are arbitrarily determined (e.g. a certain amount of coverage at a certain date) required that may or may not be feasible that could undermine, rather than advance, the three Aney descriptors. In the ecosystem restoration approach, trend lines, including survivorship curves and measures of diversity are less forgiving and more to the point that the urgent cosmetics common to desire-based standards, which may bear little resemblance to ecosystem processes, function, and successional structure. I hope Aney will contribute further on just how adaptive management would be applied. WT - Original Message - From: Warren W. Aney a...@coho.net To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2011 10:41 AM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? Juan Alvez is right about having long term goals but leaves out important defining adjectives. Ecosystems structures, functions, processes and services exist regardless of ecosystem condition (even a crack in a paved parking lot is an ecosystem with structure, functions and maybe even some services). So we need to insert adjectives that describes a desired future state -- e.g., 1. Reestablishment of the naturally complex and stable ecosystem structure. 2. Reestablishment of the naturally diverse ecosystem functions and process. 3. Reestablishment of the productive flow of ecosystem services. Of course these modifiers would tend to be site dependent and I'm sure others can come up with better examples. And how about employing principles of adaptive management to make sure our efforts are both effective and informative? Warren W. Aney Senior Wildlife Ecologist Tigard, OR -Original Message- From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [mailto:ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU] On Behalf Of Juan P Alvez Sent: Tuesday, 18 January, 2011 19:53 To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? Ecologers, Building on Prof. W. Tyson's comment... I completely agree. Restoring a degraded ecosystem to its pristine pure stage is almost impossible, not to mention the costs involved in the mitigation process. There were (and still are) successful attempts of regenerating barren and ultra degraded places in Brazil (i.e. mine sites) by Prof. Ademir Reis and others. Prof. Reis also committed several mistakes in his attempts until he figured it out the best ways to achieve some sort of succession and vegetation. From my humble point of view, important long-term goal and considerations to have in mind are: 1. the reestablishment of ecosystem structure (not an easy task!); 2. the reestablishment of ecosystem functions and processes (consider yourself lucky when this is accomplished); 3. Finally, the reestablishment of the flow of ecosystem services. These events take time and resources but are worth doing. Just my 2 cts! Juan P. Alvez On 1/18/2011 4:04 PM, Wayne Tyson wrote: Jason and Ecolog: Many years ago (early 1980's?) I did a paper that I think I called Ecosystem Restoration and Landscaping: A Comparison. I don't remember the name of the conference and I'm not sure of the place, but it might have been one of the early conferences of the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER), maybe it's less-formal precursor, Native Plant Restoration or something like that, and I believe it was held in Berkeley, at some big old wooden hotel in the Berkeley Hills. I was a pretty young upstart, and I don't recall anyone paying much attention to it. [Note: I looked through some old files and found a folder: Restoration and Landscaping: a Comparison. 2nd Native Plant Revegetation Symposium, 1987, but there was no paper in it. I was close but a bit foggy. Even it might be wrong; a search revealed other papers which said it was 1987 and the location was San Diego. Maybe a better searcher can find it, or maybe someone has the Proceedings--however, I can't even be sure that it was published. I wasn't so young as it turns out, but an upstart nonetheless, I guess.] Anyway, I hope Jason or others can do a better job than I did in communicating what I still think is an important--in fact, crucial point: that landscaping/gardening is a whole different paradigm from ecosystem restoration and management, and recognizing that crucial distinction is fundamental to a real understanding of the interplay between Nature
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening?
Jason, I'm unaware of any clean line between conservation-oriented land management and gardening with a focus on natives. Honestly, within the context of conservation activities, I don't see the point in drawing that line. The relevant question is, are the results of conservation activities worth the resources they consume? If you think they are, you're more likely to call the activities conservation (implying that you're saving something worth saving), but if you don't, you're more likely to call them gardening (since that term, implying artificiality, contradicts the motivation behind conservation: to conserve the natural world). Conservation organizations usually try to stay as far as they can from anything most people would call gardening. It's not that they're averse to that label (though I think they are), but because they want to accomplish the most they can with their limited resources. If maintaining, restoring, or re-creating an ecosystem takes too much intervention, the money and effort is usually better spent on habitats that are less degraded, all else being equal. (An exception would be demonstration gardens, where the goal is to educate, not to conserve.) I DO see a point in drawing a line between gardening and conservation in the political arena. Conservation agencies would be wise to be sure people recognize their efforts as conservation and not gardening. If they don't want to dirty their hands by branding their activities as conservation in the political sphere, there are others who will gladly brand the same activities as gardening. Jim Crants -- James Crants, PhD Scientist, University of Minnesota Agronomy and Plant Genetics Cell: (612) 718-4883
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening?
Jason, And if a species is beyond saving with conservation, how worthwhile is it to save that species with gardening? At this point, it might be pertinent to ask what other species are dependent (for their life processes) on the gardened species. For example, is there an exclusive mutualism that needs to be preserved? Colleen Grant --- On Mon, 1/17/11, Jason Hernandez jason.hernande...@yahoo.com wrote: From: Jason Hernandez jason.hernande...@yahoo.com Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Date: Monday, January 17, 2011, 5:08 PM This question is inspired by a conversation with a former employer. When do our interventions cease to be conservation and become gardening? For the sake of argument, I was taking the purist position: that ideally, we want to be able to put a fence around a natural area and walk away, letting nature manage it. But as my employer rightly pointed out, that is just not a realistic expectation in the 21st century, what with invasive species, systemic pollution, human pressures on surrounding areas, and countless other factors which will not go away. But of course, she also knew that there is a degree of intervention which crosses the line from conservation to gardening, that is, caring for a population that no longer participates in its ecosystem processes. There is, of course, a continuum of interventions. Removal of invasive competitors is a relatively light intervention; growing seedlings in a greenhouse and then planting them out is more intensive; maintaining an in vitro germplasm collection still more intensive. Are there any recognized criteria for determining the boundary between conservation and gardening? And if a species is beyond saving with conservation, how worthwhile is it to save that species with gardening? Can we determine when a species' only hope is gardening? Jason Hernandez Biological Science Technician, USDA Forest Service
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening?
Jason, You may be interested in Dan Janzen's concept of the wildland garden. See: Janzen, D. 1998. Gardenification of wildland nature and the human footprint. Science 279:1312-1313 and Janzen, D. 1999. Gardenification of tropical conserved wildlands: multitasking, multicropping, and multiusers. PNAS 96: 5987-5994. - Jim ~ Jim Armacost, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Biology Department Lamar University Beaumont, TX 77710 409-880-1756 jim.armac...@lamar.edu ~ - Original Message - From: Jason Hernandez jason.hernande...@yahoo.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Monday, January 17, 2011 7:08:59 PM Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? This question is inspired by a conversation with a former employer. When do our interventions cease to be conservation and become gardening? For the sake of argument, I was taking the purist position: that ideally, we want to be able to put a fence around a natural area and walk away, letting nature manage it. But as my employer rightly pointed out, that is just not a realistic expectation in the 21st century, what with invasive species, systemic pollution, human pressures on surrounding areas, and countless other factors which will not go away. But of course, she also knew that there is a degree of intervention which crosses the line from conservation to gardening, that is, caring for a population that no longer participates in its ecosystem processes. There is, of course, a continuum of interventions. Removal of invasive competitors is a relatively light intervention; growing seedlings in a greenhouse and then planting them out is more intensive; maintaining an in vitro germplasm collection still more intensive. Are there any recognized criteria for determining the boundary between conservation and gardening? And if a species is beyond saving with conservation, how worthwhile is it to save that species with gardening? Can we determine when a species' only hope is gardening? Jason Hernandez Biological Science Technician, USDA Forest Service CONFIDENTIALITY: Any information contained in this e-mail (including attachments) is the property of The State of Texas and unauthorized disclosure or use is prohibited. Sending, receiving or forwarding of confidential, proprietary and privileged information is prohibited under Lamar Policy. If you received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender and delete this e-mail from your system.
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening?
IN an economy like that of the US where we spend more on the military than the next 10 nations combined, and the budget for putting out one fighter jet exceeds the entire budget of all the environmental and natural resource agencies combined, one must ask are resources really that limited? Do we really have to ask whether it is worth it to devote resources to preserve a species that is extinct in the wild? Would it not be nice if we could begin incorporating wildlife/natural areas into urban planning? There comes a point where you must admit that some things that SHOULD are not going to happen, and you need to take a course that is necessary. No point, just thoughts after reading your post. Malcolm McCallum On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 7:08 PM, Jason Hernandez jason.hernande...@yahoo.com wrote: This question is inspired by a conversation with a former employer. When do our interventions cease to be conservation and become gardening? For the sake of argument, I was taking the purist position: that ideally, we want to be able to put a fence around a natural area and walk away, letting nature manage it. But as my employer rightly pointed out, that is just not a realistic expectation in the 21st century, what with invasive species, systemic pollution, human pressures on surrounding areas, and countless other factors which will not go away. But of course, she also knew that there is a degree of intervention which crosses the line from conservation to gardening, that is, caring for a population that no longer participates in its ecosystem processes. There is, of course, a continuum of interventions. Removal of invasive competitors is a relatively light intervention; growing seedlings in a greenhouse and then planting them out is more intensive; maintaining an in vitro germplasm collection still more intensive. Are there any recognized criteria for determining the boundary between conservation and gardening? And if a species is beyond saving with conservation, how worthwhile is it to save that species with gardening? Can we determine when a species' only hope is gardening? Jason Hernandez Biological Science Technician, USDA Forest Service -- Malcolm L. McCallum Managing Editor, Herpetological Conservation and Biology Peer pressure is designed to contain anyone with a sense of drive - Allan Nation 1880's: There's lots of good fish in the sea W.S. Gilbert 1990's: Many fish stocks depleted due to overfishing, habitat loss, and pollution. 2000: Marine reserves, ecosystem restoration, and pollution reduction MAY help restore populations. 2022: Soylent Green is People! Confidentiality Notice: This e-mail message, including any attachments, is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original message.
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening?
Jason, et al- The purist position is untenable. If human agency marks the difference between wild and managed, as soon as we take any action to change (+/-) the fitness of any population or species we move it from the roster of wild biota to the roster of managed biota. Even dividing wild from managed along the lines of intentionally vs unintentionally affected becomes problematic; that puts unintentionally subsidized fitness (e.g., weeds) into the wild category. Attempts to parse all this began in the 1830s. Natural historians then were distinguishing natural history from human history based on evidence of human agency. Absence of such evidence was all that made natives native or wild things wild. This remains the case. In short, ecologists need to 'get over' such distinctions. They aren't ecological. They're cultural. Human agency, intentional or otherwise, now affects everything, and will for the foreseeable future. Matthew K Chew Assistant Research Professor Arizona State University School of Life Sciences ASU Center for Biology Society PO Box 873301 Tempe, AZ 85287-3301 USA Tel 480.965.8422 Fax 480.965.8330 mc...@asu.edu or anek...@gmail.com http://cbs.asu.edu/people/profiles/chew.php http://asu.academia.edu/MattChew
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening?
Jason and Ecolog: Many years ago (early 1980's?) I did a paper that I think I called Ecosystem Restoration and Landscaping: A Comparison. I don't remember the name of the conference and I'm not sure of the place, but it might have been one of the early conferences of the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER), maybe it's less-formal precursor, Native Plant Restoration or something like that, and I believe it was held in Berkeley, at some big old wooden hotel in the Berkeley Hills. I was a pretty young upstart, and I don't recall anyone paying much attention to it. [Note: I looked through some old files and found a folder: Restoration and Landscaping: a Comparison. 2nd Native Plant Revegetation Symposium, 1987, but there was no paper in it. I was close but a bit foggy. Even it might be wrong; a search revealed other papers which said it was 1987 and the location was San Diego. Maybe a better searcher can find it, or maybe someone has the Proceedings--however, I can't even be sure that it was published. I wasn't so young as it turns out, but an upstart nonetheless, I guess.] Anyway, I hope Jason or others can do a better job than I did in communicating what I still think is an important--in fact, crucial point: that landscaping/gardening is a whole different paradigm from ecosystem restoration and management, and recognizing that crucial distinction is fundamental to a real understanding of the interplay between Nature and culture. I spent at least 15 years making the same fundamental mistake over and over again-using gardening/agronomic/landscaping practices in the attempt to restore/manage ecosystems. Failure after failure after failure, even though I had training in ecology and botany-and in gardening/agronomy/landscaping/landscape architecture. My fundamental error was letting the latter paradigm contaminate the former; I probably made the same mistake that remains common-thinking that they were synonymous. I could have not been more wrong-they are in fundamental opposition to each other. Not wanting to blather on and one with this post, I'll stop here for now . . . WT - Original Message - From: Jason Hernandez jason.hernande...@yahoo.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Monday, January 17, 2011 5:08 PM Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? This question is inspired by a conversation with a former employer. When do our interventions cease to be conservation and become gardening? For the sake of argument, I was taking the purist position: that ideally, we want to be able to put a fence around a natural area and walk away, letting nature manage it. But as my employer rightly pointed out, that is just not a realistic expectation in the 21st century, what with invasive species, systemic pollution, human pressures on surrounding areas, and countless other factors which will not go away. But of course, she also knew that there is a degree of intervention which crosses the line from conservation to gardening, that is, caring for a population that no longer participates in its ecosystem processes. There is, of course, a continuum of interventions. Removal of invasive competitors is a relatively light intervention; growing seedlings in a greenhouse and then planting them out is more intensive; maintaining an in vitro germplasm collection still more intensive. Are there any recognized criteria for determining the boundary between conservation and gardening? And if a species is beyond saving with conservation, how worthwhile is it to save that species with gardening? Can we determine when a species' only hope is gardening? Jason Hernandez Biological Science Technician, USDA Forest Service No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.449 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/3386 - Release Date: 01/17/11 07:34:00
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening?
I like Colleen's point and would like to add that sometimes there is more to be learned from the hopeless species that might inform saving others. Plus, the educational value... Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry -Original Message- From: Colleen Grant psorotham...@yahoo.com Sender: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2011 08:24:46 To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Reply-To: Colleen Grant psorotham...@yahoo.com Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? Jason, And if a species is beyond saving with conservation, how worthwhile is it to save that species with gardening? At this point, it might be pertinent to ask what other species are dependent (for their life processes) on the gardened species. For example, is there an exclusive mutualism that needs to be preserved? Colleen Grant --- On Mon, 1/17/11, Jason Hernandez jason.hernande...@yahoo.com wrote: From: Jason Hernandez jason.hernande...@yahoo.com Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation or just gardening? To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Date: Monday, January 17, 2011, 5:08 PM This question is inspired by a conversation with a former employer. When do our interventions cease to be conservation and become gardening? For the sake of argument, I was taking the purist position: that ideally, we want to be able to put a fence around a natural area and walk away, letting nature manage it. But as my employer rightly pointed out, that is just not a realistic expectation in the 21st century, what with invasive species, systemic pollution, human pressures on surrounding areas, and countless other factors which will not go away. But of course, she also knew that there is a degree of intervention which crosses the line from conservation to gardening, that is, caring for a population that no longer participates in its ecosystem processes. There is, of course, a continuum of interventions. Removal of invasive competitors is a relatively light intervention; growing seedlings in a greenhouse and then planting them out is more intensive; maintaining an in vitro germplasm collection still more intensive. Are there any recognized criteria for determining the boundary between conservation and gardening? And if a species is beyond saving with conservation, how worthwhile is it to save that species with gardening? Can we determine when a species' only hope is gardening? Jason Hernandez Biological Science Technician, USDA Forest Service
