We came across this interesting article the other day, and were very captivated by it.
Author Mary Ellen Hannibal wrote a book, Spine of the Continent [which we have yet to obtain, but shall a.s.a.p., eds.], which the following review describes:
As climate change encroaches, animals and plants around the globe are
having their habitats pulled out from under them. At the same time, human
development has made islands out of even our largest nature reserves, stranding
the biodiversity that lives within them. The Spine of the
Continent introduces readers to the most ambitious conservation effort ever
undertaken: to create linked protected areas extending from the Yukon to
Mexico, the entire length of North America. This movement is the brainchild of
Michael Soule, the founder of conservation biology and the peer of E.O. Wilson
and Paul Ehrlich, who endorse his effort as necessary to saving nature on our
continent. With blue-ribbon scientific foundations, the Spine is yet a
grassroots, cooperative effort among conservation activists – NGOs large and
small -- and regular citizens. The Spine of the Continent is not
only about making physical connections so that nature will persist; it is about
making connections between people and the land we call home. In this
fascinating, exciting, and important book, Mary Ellen Hannibal travels the
length of the Spine, sharing stories and anecdotes about the passionate,
idiosyncratic people she meets along the way – and the critters they
love.
With that as a background, give this article a read, it's really fascinating, and frankly, it moved us greatly, as it illustrates so many principles we believe in, and try to live by, here in our little sub-Arctic corner of this vast North American continent. Nice also to see that it appeared in the New York Times, so that hopefully, millions of people read it.
Published on Saturday, September 29, 2012 by The New York Times
Why the Beaver Should Thank the Wolf
This month, a group of
environmental nonprofits said they would challenge the federal
government’s removal of Endangered Species Act
protections for wolves in Wyoming. Since there are only about 328 wolves in a
state with a historic blood thirst for the hides of these top predators, the
nonprofits are probably right that lacking protection, Wyoming wolves are
toast.
(Image: Jungyeon Roh/NYT)
(Image: Jungyeon Roh/NYT)
Many Americans, even as they view the extermination of
a species as morally anathema, struggle to grasp the tangible effects of the
loss of wolves. It turns out that, far from being freeloaders on the top of the
food chain, wolves have a powerful effect on the well-being of the ecosystems
around them — from the survival of trees and riverbank vegetation to, perhaps
surprisingly, the health of the populations of their prey.
An example of this can be
found in Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park, where wolves were virtually wiped
out in the 1920s and reintroduced in the
’90s. Since the wolves have come back, scientists
have noted an unexpected improvement in many of the park’s degraded stream
areas.
Stands of aspen and other native vegetation, once
decimated by overgrazing, are now growing up along the banks. This may have
something to do with changing fire patterns, but it is also probably because elk
and other browsing animals behave differently when wolves are around. Instead of
eating greenery down to the soil, they take a bite or two, look up to check for
threats, and keep moving. The greenery can grow tall enough to reproduce.
[no, this is not a wolf chasing the majestic bull moose just 10 km walk from the CFRC here in the Chugach last month, it's our research assistant Kluane trying to herd him, but you get the idea.. :), eds.]
Beavers, despite being on the wolf’s menu, also benefit when their predators are around. The healthy vegetation encouraged by the presence of wolves provides food and shelter to beavers. Beavers in turn go on to create dams that help keep rivers clean and lessen the effects of drought. Beaver activity also spreads a welcome mat for thronging biodiversity. Bugs, amphibians, fish, birds and small mammals find the water around dams to be an ideal habitat.
So the beavers keep the rivers from drying up while,
at the same time, healthy vegetation keeps the rivers from flooding, and all
this biological interaction helps maintain rich soil that better sequesters
carbon — that stuff we want to get out of the atmosphere and back into the
ground. In other words, by helping to maintain a healthy ecosystem, wolves are
connected to climate change: without them, these landscapes would be more
vulnerable to the effects of those big weather events we will increasingly
experience as the planet warms.
Scientists call this sequence
of impacts down the food chain a “trophic
cascade.” The wolf is connected to the elk is connected to the aspen is
connected to the beaver. Keeping these connections going ensures healthy,
functioning ecosystems, which in turn support human life.
Another example is the effect
of sea otters on kelp, which provides food and shelter for a host of species.
Like the aspen for the elk, kelp is a favorite food of sea urchins. By hunting
sea urchins, otters protect the vitality of
the kelp and actually boost overall biodiversity. Without them, the
ecosystem tends to collapse; the coastal reefs become barren, and soon not much
lives there.
Unfortunately, sea otters are in the cross hairs of a
conflict equivalent to the “wolf wars.” Some communities in southeast Alaska
want to allow the hunting of sea otters in order to decrease their numbers and
protect fisheries. But the rationale that eliminating the predator increases the
prey is shortsighted and ignores larger food-web dynamics. A degraded ecosystem
will be far less productive over all.
Having fewer fish wouldn’t just hurt fishermen: it
would also endanger the other end of the trophic scale — the phytoplankton that
turn sunshine into plant material, and as every student of photosynthesis knows,
create oxygen and sequester carbon. In lakes, predator fish keep the smaller
fish from eating all the phytoplankton, thus sustaining the lake’s rate of
carbon uptake.
Around the planet, large predators are becoming
extinct at faster rates than other species. And losing top predators has an
outsize effect on the rate of loss of many other species below them on the food
chain as well as on the plant life that is so important to the balance of our
ecosystems.
So what can be done? For one thing, we have begun to
realize that parks like Yellowstone are not the most effective means of
conservation. Putting a boundary around an expanse of wilderness is an intuitive
idea not borne out by the science. Many top predators must travel enormous
distances to find mates and keep populations from becoming inbred. No national
park is big enough for wolves, for example. Instead, conservation must be done
on a continental scale. We can still erect our human boundaries — around cities
and towns, mines and oil fields — but in order to sustain a healthy ecosystem,
we need to build in connections so that top predators can move from one wild
place to another.
Many biologists have warned that we are approaching
another mass extinction. The wolf is still endangered and should be protected in
its own right. But we should also recognize that bringing all the planet’s
threatened and endangered species back to healthy numbers — as well as
mitigating the effects of climate change — means keeping top predators
around.
© 2012 Mary Ellen Hannibal
Mary Ellen Hannibal is the author of The
Spine of the Continent
It's nice to see what we have long known and understood, that all our species rely on each other to maintain the health of the ecosystems we are in, just by the way in which they live. And that the removal of one or more, has far-reaching and potentially very harmful effects.
Yet because of the European-based cultures that over-ran this continent's view that human beings (and specifically, white, male Christian human beings) must subjugate and control the natural world, as they are "superior" to it, as written in the Christian Bible, we are faced with the result. Species extinction, environmental destruction, and eventual collapse, unless new cultural views incorporating a more holistic view of humanity's place on the Earth are incorporated.
Having grown up in California, I always liked the state flag, with it's large grizzly bear prominently displayed.
Although the article about this flag, above, states that it was based on one developed during a brief revolt by "white" settlers in northern California, declaring independence from Mexico in 1846, shortly before the U.S.-driven war began against that country, it was formalised as a design much later. In 1911, and again, in 1953. And in fact, the very last wild grizzly bear in California was killed in 1936. So why is a grizzly bear, which no longer exists in the wild in California, still on their flag? And not something more iconic and representative of the man-made wealth and power of that state, such as the Golden Gate Bridge? We like to think it's because deep down, it's part of our instinctive drive to be in and a part of the natural world, notwithstanding any religious dogmas to the contrary.
My maternal grandmother was born in Oregon in 1910, and grew up in a logging camp in the northern coast range. She told me when I was much younger (she passed away in 1996), that when she was a child, say around 1920, that they still had grizzly bears and wolves there, in addition to all the other large animals still present, elk, deer, black bears, and mountain lions, for example. Whenever I am back in Oregon visiting, I love to think about how it would have been in those days, in the vast forests of huge old-growth douglas fir, western red-cedar, hemlocks, and other conifers, to know that their ecosystem was complete, and healthy.
That's why we live here in Alaska, because we love knowing that our ecosystems here are complete, and relatively healthy, in comparison to those in most of the rest of the U.S. And that we can have access to real wilderness in very short order, with all it's physical and spiritual benefits.
And that is also why we fervently hope that the idea of having linked protected areas extending along our continent's rocky spine from Alaska/Yukon, south to Mexico, can become a reality. Which we will do our best to support, and aid in efforts to establish, here at the Alaska Progressive Review.
After all, we love all our other neighbouring species, here at the Chugach Front, and hope that they will always be able to live and thrive with us, in our little corner of the continent, with it's amazing and still relatively unspoiled natural environment. May we always remain 90 years behind the rest of the U.S.!
Cheers.
