Greenberg's Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food

I stopped eating red meat circa 1992 when a woman made an impression on me with her statement that you could not be an environmentalist and eat meat.  I stopped eating all meat circa 1995 when I started graduate school—part economic incentive, part moral dilemma, part conservation.  And then a few years ago, I *started* eating Alaskan salmon periodically because it was alleged to be sustainable and because it seemed like there were a few health benefits.  But, ho hum, here is Paul Greenberg taking out one fish at a time, starting with the one I eat twice a month or so: Salmon.  Greenberg does point out what in my heart of hearts I’ve always known:  How can trucking a food across the world from one ecosystem to another really be sustainable—and shouldn’t the fact that you can buy a “family pack” at the Kroger for relatively little have been a red flag?  They are not priced in a way that reflects their rarity, as Greenberg suggests.  Even though one may have perfected the perfect recipe. 

I wonder as I read this if we can really expect to go back to eating locally—we can certainly aim for prioritizing local food to minimize our ecological footprint—but can we give up the panoply of entrees that can adorn our dinner tables: the quinoa, the oranges & bananas, year round strawberries & blueberries, the chocolate, THE TEA?  It is difficult to see the energy costs that go into our dinner, but our meals have connections around the world.  Each and every meal, for most of us.  And what does it do to the people who live in the places where the salmon run if we stop eating salmon (or significantly cut back if we want to be less radical in our approach)?  Do they lose their livelihood and, if so, in the long-run, how devastating, is it?

My grandparents grew their own food, largely, and though poor, there was typically enough to eat.  In that respect, those who can collect their own food or grow it are never completely destitute.  When people move into the cities, they can lose their jobs and then lose everything including their ability to feed themselves—a fate they might avoid if they have land on which to hunt or plant.  In a world of 7. 7 billion people (good heavens), can we feed ourselves locally?  Give a person a fish and they have a meal for a day; teach a person to fish and you will empty the oceans?    

   

Quammen’s The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions

After finishing this book last night, I returned to the beginning:  “Let’s start indoors.  Let’s start by imagining a fine Persian carpet and a hunting knife.”  So David Quammen begin this story of how we have arrived from a time of a sprawling natural world of forest and field, whole and if not perfect then full of splendor, to a world today that is scattered, pieced, and degraded, though still yet stunning in places.  This book begins with the names of people that every educated citizen knows—Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace—as they began to unravel the mystery of mysteries: the diversity of life.  We followed the story of their trials and exploration into a world still rich in diversity but already unravelling so that whole portions are lost.  We can feel the sore and blistered feet, and the risk and inconvenience of getting to the far reaches of the world 160+ years earlier to see what has rarely been seen outside of a small populace of human inhabitants. 

This has been a long telling of the story of the sixth extinction.  Could Quammen have simply said: Alas, when the world is cut up into pieces, extinction is the inevitable consequence for many species, especially those that are rare and vulnerable in the first place?  Perhaps.  However, what a journey he has taken us on and how compelling he made the argument about vulnerability.  That “we have entered the era of metapopulations” as the fine Persian carpet has been sliced into fractions, again and again from the Concho water snake, the indri, the muriqui, the original Tasmanians, the thylacine…the list goes on. And, Quammen loves his lists, of course.  While the whole world has become a series of isolated patches, in not-quite-islands, so many species are ill equipped to survive this isolation after evolving for millennia unabridged.  So many are doomed, we are told, because these small isolated populations have lost the genetic diversity that would permit them to evolve.  Speciation halted.

Quammen takes us to a curious place in the end, back to Aru—one of the far-reaching destinations of Wallace’s where he saw the greater bird of paradise, a bird most of us only know in a tacky country song.  Quammen leaves us there in Aru with a species that still exists, miraculously, with him staring up at them in a tree calling out with a “chorus of squawking”—a song, that unlike the dodo, we can know.  Perhaps this is meant to be a hopeful ending, but I’m not feeling like a hopeful person today: It feels like a last glimpse at what will soon disappear, although we can watch it on YouTube and will not have to guess at least at what it sounded like or looked like.  As the book ends, it feels like an ending we have not yet reached, but it is an ending that we can guess.  Quammen has laid out the writing on the wall, like a shaman with a compelling vocabulary.  The story of extinction will not be a happy conclusion: How can it be? 

The Song of the Dodo: What Does It Mean to Be Human?

One of the lasting questions that Elizabeth Kolbert’s book The Sixth Extinction left me with was this: Was the evolutionary tree marked to be significantly pruned with the evolution of the large brained (shortsighted) human primates some 200,000 years ago?  As I read Quammen’s The Song of the Dodo that is the subject I most ponder.  Humans traveling the world in energy efficient wind-powered boats were doing what they could to ensure they would survive by inserting themselves into the food webs of the places they traveled.  Food must have dominated their thoughts, traveling across the world with limited provisions, with the prospect of potentially getting stranded out at sea by lack of wind or some other calamity.  Many of these food webs lacked large mammalian predators, so were painfully vulnerable to the odd sailor with a club and a growling stomach.  Their actions were largely out of ignorance of biogeography and endemism of island species.  And who could blame a hungry person for feeding her or himself? Certainly, they had no idea of the evolutionary tree or that they were in fact changing evolutionary history by their actions. 

As news was reported of the extinction of the northern white rhino this spring, I could feel it in my gut, despite realizing these slow-reproducing, large mammals with small populations were likely doomed in a world with humans, just as the mammoths and mastodons may have been when human population was small, but effective.  Just as the species of so many of the islands containing rare endemics are ill fated in a world of humans.  Death and destruction—“Rarity unto Death” as Quammen puts it.  Moreover, we know that the coming months and years will bring similar stories with many species facing the low population sizes and low genetic diversity, which precede extinction.

The 21^st century is a test of the human brain’s aptitude to show some foresight.  Five-hundred years ago, (or even 100-150 years ago, really), we didn’t have the knowledge base to fully understand patterns of diversity and extinction, and the extent of the role we were playing or could play.  The knowledge base has changed, but will our actions?  Given the actions we’ve seen so many of our politicians take in the presence of abundant data, I wouldn’t bet on it; they so often *choose* ignorance (and they are not alone, since they are serving as the will of the voters).  How can any species willingly choose ignorance?  We have more data than we’ve ever had—enough information to know at least generally what actions to take. But what will we do?  Is it the nature of humans, like other animals, to serve only the needs of the here and now, or do we have a greater capacity? 

The Song of the Dodo: Wallace (and Darwin) and Puzzles

I remember a scientist saying that many of the amphibians around the world are going to go extinct and that it would be better to stop extreme conservation efforts and, rather, study these species so that we will know what we have lost.  What we are losing.  I think this scientist was speaking from a dark place in the face of unprecedented declines.  In other words, he wasn’t in his happy place.  For those of us who love the natural world, it is sometimes hard to find *that* place where we can be filled enough with curiosity and wonder to prevent our knowledge of biodiversity loss trespass into the moment.  

I just started reading The Song of the Dodo (1996) by David Quammen with some other folks in the department—I predict we are going to a dark place eventually, but we are not there yet.  What has struck me most is the journey of Alfred Russel Wallace into the Amazon then onto the Malayan Archipelago.  Or maybe it is simply Wallace who strikes my fancy.  In modern times he would be a first-generation college student.  He does not profit from family wealth or connections, but rather from sheer skill, determination, and tenacity—and a little luck, both bad and good.  It was enough.  As he struggled to figure out how to explain the relationships between species on islands and the mainland, he reached out to his more privileged mentors who sometimes helped him, but who also may have taken advantage of his professional naïveté.  By all rights, Wallace could have scooped Darwin and had he been a little more competitive, perhaps Darwin would be the parenthetical scientist.   Wallace clearly had a more focused vision of what he was looking for when he headed out to study islands than Darwin had when he was collecting his mockingbirds and finches willy-nilly, it turns out, in the Galapagos, failing even to label the islands his specimens came from.  (Given that Captain Fitz-Roy and Darwin’s manservant had labeled *their* collections, one does wonder how young Darwin could have been so lackadaisical. Those of us who have made mistakes in science, however, should sympathize and forgive—I suspect we have all kicked ourselves more than once…and the heat of the field season can cause a poor decision or two.)

Wallace’s (and Darwin’s) world was already missing pieces of the biological puzzle, although they had not fully grasped that extinction was a grim reality as they bagged animal after animal to sell and to study.  They were already part of the beginning of the sixth extinction even if their world was much less trampled then. Even if we could travel back in time to whisper in Wallace’s ear of what is to come—to offer warnings of caution and restraint—should we?  If biodiversity was doomed with the evolution of humans, as Elizabeth Kolbert suggests in The Sixth Extinction and as a good look around would bolster, then perhaps my gloomy colleague was right: best to study these species now to know what we have lost.  In which case, we forgo the challenge of time travel, except for what we find in these pages of history and in the natural history museums that proffer a glimpse back into a world we will never put quite back together.  A glimpse offered by the likes of Wallace and others who better recorded what was found, and seen, and heard, than any who glimpsed a dodo.       

Enjoying the magic of David Quammen’s writing and wondering to what point of despair we are now headed as we read into “The Rarity Unto Death.”    

Conservation in the News: Some Like It Hot

It's another exciting semester in Conservation Biology and I am helping my students find an excuse to read the newspapers with a little newsy assignment.  The assignment even distracted me briefly from obsessively reading about politics (notice my very neutral tone, achieved with the restraint of every saintly virtue I possess [which is remarkable given how very few saintly virtues I actually possess]). And there's more than climate change out there in the news...there's also vertebrates and climate change!

I came across an interesting report by Chelsea Harvey in Scientific American on a new study that examined the niche evolution and the distribution of vertebrate diversity of endotherms (birds & mammals) relative to ectotherms (amphibians & reptiles) by Rolland and colleagues, and it looks like bad news for our beloved ectotherms.  Those of us who have been obsessed with amphibian population declines since the 1990s will not be terribly surprised, but this study does make one ponder. Rolland et al.’s  data set had over 18 million occurrences of over 11,000 extant birds, mammals, reptiles, & amphibians combined with occurrence documented with fossils.  They found that endothermy was associated with faster niche evolution than ectotherms (see their figure below), which may result from a wider distribution across latitudes, greater dispersal abilities, and greater warming and feeding of their offspring compared with ectotherms.  

So basically, the ectotherms do not appear to be as flexible to responding to environmental change, while endotherms have be able to expand their distribution to a greater extent and evolve at faster rates, all of which Rolland et al. argues has serious repercussions in the midst of global climate change.  All organisms have thermal limits, but because reptiles and amphibians often use behavioral thermoregulation to maintain their body temperature at optimal levels, rapid environmental changes may leave them outside of the optimal temperatures more often, which may negatively impact population persistence and result in range contractions or extinction. 

I wonder how life history traits, like longevity and generation time, may also contribute to a species ability to respond to climatic change.  Many argue the furry megafauna have been doomed since the arrival of humans, and surely they are not able to respond to environmental changes as quickly.  In the end, it may be the furry and feathered underdogs who have the advantage.  With world enough and time, and political leaders with no willingness to deal curb the effects of climate change, I suppose we will find out.  [That is reality, so no saintly restraint appeared to be needed.]

P.S. I hope the journalist realizes that amphibians are not reptiles—they appeared to be equally doomed, yet she seemed to forget them.  Don’t get me wrong, I love reptiles more than the next person, but amphibians put the C in cool.  Given the unprecedented declines in amphibians, limits to climatic niche evolution may be yet another factor that could contribute and one that we have not be explicitly considering.

P.P.S. Birds are reptiles. I know, it's crazy. It's not what we learned back in the olden days, but in the 21st century, birds are reptiles. 

Refs:

Harvey, C.  2018. Warming threatens reptiles more than birds and mammals.  Scientific American, January 30, 2018.  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/warming-threatens-reptiles-more-than-birds-and-mammals/

Rolland, J., D. Silvestro, D. Schluter, A. Guisan, O. Broennimann, and N. Salamin. 2018. The impact of endothermy of the climatic niche evolution and the distribution of vertebrate diversity.  Nature Ecology & Evolution doi:10.1038/s41559-017-0451-9.

The Science March, Oxford, OH: Tell Me What Democracy Looks Like

It was DATA that led Rachel Carson to write these words in Silent Spring (1962): 

"We urgently need an end to these false assurances, to the sugar coating of unpalatable facts. It is the public that is being asked to assume the risks that the insect controllers calculate. The public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can do so only when in full possession of the facts."

Her words helped start the environmental movement and led to legislation that would require scientific evidence to evaluate the risks of pesticides on living organisms.

Science does not tell us what to do or what is sacred, but it allows us to act or not to act based on the things we value in our society, informed with the available information. We can decide that a widespread pesticide that increases the risk of cancer or that interferes with reproduction should continue to be used (there may be societal reasons to justify it)—or we could decide to closely regulate or ban it.  But a society that fails to fund the research & collect the data or that ignores the data in its decision making, is a society accepting a witless fate, rather than a determined destiny.

I grew up in neighborhood built on a drained swamp, and I think of that every time I hear a politician say s/he is going to “drain the swamp.”  The natural world is slowly being emptied as a perceived necessity and by human-domination of land. Nature is pushed to the periphery. A few trees from the swamp persisted. The green anoles could climb on the balusters of my porch and flash their surprising red dewlap like a warning; but ecologically, the drained swamp is a poor substitute for the swamp—a rock in lieu of a gem.  From science, we know that the swamp had provided ecosystem services to humans by absorbing waters from storm surges, which reduces flooding; through filtering and purifying water; by providing food resources like fish.

The former cypress swamp was a Wonderland: home to the shocking yellow of the prothonotary warbler; a refuge to more than 140 species of birds, 50 reptiles, 44 mammals, 40 amphibians, 39 fish, and even more invertebrates. Nearly all were lost once the swamp was gone. 

  

A drained swamp was not a bad place to grow up, despite the frequent flooding. But still, there has to be another way where humans can find their place in the ecological community. It doesn’t have to be humans vs. biodiversity, and science is helping us get there.

Today, my child, is carrying a sign that says “Nature Rules!” Thanks to science, we can study nature’s rules through surveys to evaluate patterns and associations of factors; through mathematical models to make predictions about expected outcomes now or into the future; or through experimental studies that allow us to determine cause and effect relationships.  There is no better way that humans have ever developed to understand the natural world than science—it is our brightest hope. Science has allowed us to venture beyond our atmosphere and to the oceans’ depths; it has allowed us to discover and then reverse the damage in the ozone layer; it helped us to restore populations of bald eagles and other birds exposed to organochlorine insecticides. It is science that informs us of human-induced climate change and it is science that could allow us to remedy the impacts.

There are children here today who will grow up to be scientists—girls & boys of every sort—we need each of you. There is a place for you at the science table. I, maybe like you, never expected to be a scientist. But, I was worried about the plight of, first whales, later amphibians, in a world of so many humans constantly expanding their residence and reach; I wanted to understand how we could fix some of these problems and science is one road to that solution. There are reasons that I have cast my lot with science. Reasons all of us can put our confidence (even our faith) in this field of study:

First, science is a field of skepticism. That skepticism allows us to evaluate data from multiple angles for flaws and short-comings. We collaborate with skeptical people and then our work is peer reviewed by different and anonymous skeptical people—which, I will admit, can be kind of irritating—but it leads to a body of research that has undergone reasonable vetting that results in the best interpretation and analysis of the data.

Second, science uncovers “Truth” through repeated and independent tests. We do not prove things in science; rather, we collect data that either supports or rejects a hypothesis.  One study is never enough. But through accumulation of data, with many studies by many independent scientists, a theory can emerge. It is an important reason why we can feel confident in scientific consensus. When and only when you have sufficient data – and if your work is corroborated – you can change the mind of the (fairly conservative) scientific community.  A scientist’s views are always pliable in light of a new body of data. 

I remember keenly a morning as a teenager when I was up early sitting on the steps of our porch and a blue heron surprised me as it flew over the house.  It was large and low and close on a misty foggy morning, moving as if surveying, looking for a place it thought was there, but finding little besides rows of small houses and paved roads—its world, slowly transforming.  The fate of so many species is in peril.

I marched for science today, in part, because I know science can provide the data that allows for evidence-based decision making that can help humans live in ways that reduces the risks to the rest of biodiversity—and that data CAN lead to informed policy.

At the end of the day, nature does rule: ideally, we try to understand how nature responds to what we do and how we can minimize the consequences for ourselves and the rest of biodiversity.  We must hold our public officials accountable for making decisions based on data and informed by a scientific consensus of experts. We have put the power of policy in the hands of politicians and if they do not use it sensibly, they must be removed from office. It is the only way to protect our planet, our resources, and ourselves. 

Reading Leopold in a Time of Trump

“An ethic, ecologically, is a limitation on freedom of action in the struggle for existence. An ethic, philosophically, is a differentiation of social from anti-social conduct.”  

--Aldo Leopold from "The Land Ethic"

Reading, again, A Sand County Almanac with the Conservation Biology class feels especially poignant given that my heart despairs more than a little for the fate of the natural world in 2017. The country has managed to elect a Congress and a President who does not embrace and sometimes denies science-derived evidence. And if you will not use evidence as a starting point, then one is surely lost. Dealing with climate change was finally on our table with the Paris Accord—we were late to the table, but finally there. Yet now, we are poised to abruptly depart. Environmental protections are already beginning to be removed (such as blocking of the Stream Protection Rule) and with all regulations appearing to be viewed as harmful and evidence viewed as irrelevant by the administration, where will this leave biodiversity and humanity?

It is some 68 years after Leopold’s book was published, and in so many ways, we have come a long way. All the major environmental laws and regulations that have been enacted since A Sand County—the Wilderness Act, the Clean Air Act, National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act—have put us on firmer ground, drinking cleaner water, and breathing less polluted air. Yet still, we Homo sapiens remain “conqueror of the land-community” rather than “plain member and citizen of it.” We continue to “abuse the land because we see it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect” (p. vii).

In 1949, Leopold noted “There is as yet no ethic dealing with man’s relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it. Land, like Odysseus’ slave-girls, is still property. The land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations” (p. 203). Leopold’s comparison always shocks me because it demands that we view abusing or owning the land to be on par with the iniquity of people as property. Yet, perhaps to find our proper place in the community, we must value the land and its inhabitants as dearly as we would another of our own species. A challenge for the best of us, but anathema to those in charge who value our country—both land and inhabitants—solely in terms of economics and power.

What gives me hope is Leopold himself. In Part I, the actual almanac part of A Sand County Almanac, Leopold follows the year on his farm through each month, along each skunk trail, through each season, restoring a worn out old farm with shovel and ax. Things were not good for the environment when he was writing, although there were billions fewer humans. But, does he despair? I imagine he does. However, he also puts hands to work and he does what he can. He buys his 120 acres and he watches every winged visitor and furry resident. He gets both food and if not shelter then warmth from his acreage and he restores what is tattered to something better. He uses his lifetime of knowledge in a way that sows both wisdom as well as pines. At the end of the day, the patches of earth around us, that is something within our sphere of control. We must keep our eyes open and restore what can be returned to life, even while our voices rise up in dissent.