A Crabby Christmas

In the Indian Ocean, just west of Australia, there is a tiny island that is literally called Christmas Island. Admittedly, Christmas Island was simply named after the date it was discovered in 1643, and it is anything but a winter wonderland--indeed, it is covered in tropical rainforest (though, to be fair, there is plenty of mistletoe. . .). It serves as an important habitat for various species of birds, reptiles, and a few mammals. And crabs.
Every year, Christmas Island red crabs swarm to the shore of the island in their millions to release their eggs into the water. Interestingly, these swarms which are now threatened by human development on the island, may also be a result of human activity. In 1903, the MacLear's rat, one of the few mammals native to the island and a major predator of the crab, was killed off by introduced cats. With the rat gone, the crabs' population exploded. Yet today, a new invasive species is threatening the crabs--and much of the rest of the island as well.
This newcomer is the yellow crazy ant, an insect from Africa. These omnivorous ants will feed on anything they can overpower, and often kill and eat the small animals on Christmas Island. Crazy ants form what are known as "supercolonies": colonies with multiple queens that can coordinate with one another and effectively control a large area of forest. Because of this, they are notoriously hard to exterminate.
 However, progress has been made. In 2002, a poison-baiting program killed 99% of the crazy ant population in a test area, while leaving all of the red crabs alive.

Christmas Island red crabs like this one travel to the sea in gigantic swarms to lay their eggs. However, these migrations may be a thing of the past unless invasive ants are kept from devastating the island.

Mistletoe--The Praises of a Parasite

In some cases, it's easy to see how an animal or plant became associated with the holidays. Reindeer pull Santa's sleigh, conifer trees get made into wreaths and used as Christmas trees, and so on and so forth. But mistletoe? It's a rather unassuming plant, one that grows on other plants and gets nutrients from them--a parasite, in other words. And parasites, as we've seen before, usually don't have the best press. But mistletoes is more than just a parasite, and more than just a Christmas decoration. It is, in fact, a keystone plant in many forest ecosystems.

Although mistletoe fruit is inedible to humans, it is eaten by a vast array of other animals, and actually forms a large part of the winter diet of many fruit-eating birds, such as waxwings. Incidentally, mistletoe also indirectly contributes to the spread of other fruit-bearing plants: juniper trees reproduce more successfully if they have mistletoes, because this attracts fruit-eaters that may eat their berries. In Australia, out of the 240 species of birds that nest in the branches of trees, 75% have been recorded nesting in mistletoe.
In southeast Asia and Australia, mistletoe fruit are eaten by small birds called flowerpeckers. These birds, which have specially evolved digestive systems for dealing with mistletoe fruit, are the primary means by which mistletoe plants have spread through the Asian and Australian rain forests. 

The lesson to be learned from this is that there is no single description of an organism's ecological relationships. A mistletoes plant may be a parasite, but at the same time it is also a part of many other interactions in its environment, all of which would fall apart if it were removed. This is why, as environmentalists, we should take into account all living things, even parasites, in our ecological plans.

A cluster of mistletoe grows on a tree, green against the white and brown of winter. Although it is a parasite, mistletoe has a surprisingly important role in many ecosystems.

The Vanishing Vaquita

At only about four feet long, the Vaquita is the world's smallest whale. It is found only in the Gulf of California, which is why its name is in Spanish (it means "calf"). And there are only 97 of them left in the world. Of the remaining Vaquitas, around 35 die each year, mostly from becoming entangled in gill nets set to catch fish. If this rate continues, the whole specie could be extinct by 2018.

Yet little is being done. Gill net fishing is closely monitored, but it is still done in many parts of the world, including much of the area where the Vaquita lives. It is worth mentioning that these gill nets are often set up to catch totoaba, a fish that is itself endangered. It was not until 2008 that the US, Canada, and Mexico formally launched the North American Conservation Action Plan for the Vaquita, and by then it may have been too late. The Action Plan provided fishermen with compensation for switching to  "Vaquita-safe" gear; unfortunately only about a third of fishermen offered have taken up the option.

Curiously, despite the demonstrated popularity of whales and dolphins in public aquaria, the Vaquita has never been kept in captivity. Keeping and perhaps even breeding Vaquitas would be an excellent opportunity for marine parks like SeaWorld--which often come under fire from environmentalists for their supposedly unethical practices--to show that they can indeed make a contribution to conserving the animals they display. 

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: You Know the Drill.

Well, I sort of slipped up on my promise to continue posting again. But THIS TIME I mean it!
In other news, today's article is about something that's thematically appropriate for this time of year--the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and the debate over whether it should be opened for oil drilling. Here's some background: The refuge sits atop one of the largest single deposits of untapped oil in the United States, and with supplies of oil dwindling it has been proposed by many that these deposits should be used to their fullest extent. After all, the argument goes, doing so would have the further benefit of reducing American dependence of foreign oil.
The downside, of course, is that the infrastructure for the drilling, as well as the waste it creates, is an environmental hazard. As the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of four years ago proves, an oil well can create devastating runoff if it is destroyed or damaged somehow.
The area that has been proposed to be opened for drilling encompasses much of the range of the Porcupine herd of caribou, or reindeer. Numbering over 169,000 animals, this is one of the largest herds of caribou in the world, and development of the area would block their access to their traditional breeding grounds.

 I personally believe that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge should remain just that--a refuge. Making allowances for any sort of development in protected areas will simply open the door for them to be exploited in other ways in the future. And then what would happen to them?

A herd of caribou grazes near an oil derrick. Right now, oil drilling and wildlife lead an uneasy coexistence--but that may not be the case for much longer.

Never Smile At A Crocodile?

It's been a long time since I posted here, and I've been pondering whether or not to simply let this blog go. But today, in one of my classes, we discussed a subject that made me affirm my decision to resume posting regularly.
We (at least, those of us who read thous sort of blog) all love apex predators. Big cats, bears, wolves, eagles, they all inspire a sense of awe and wonder in us. Even the less well-liked ones like sharks and crocodilians have their role in our society as emblems of ferocity and power. They are the celebrities of the animal kingdom. But like any celebrities, they are something most people in the developed world are only familiar with from a distance.
There are parts of the world where crocodile attacks are a deadly reality for people living along rivers, and where lions and leopards regularly kill livestock--and humans too.  A strong argument could be made, then, that to destroy these "dangerous" animals is only a natural action of humanity, and the people who oppose it are hypocrites who have never truly experienced the wilderness that they claim to value.
Is there a way to make these ends meet?  Potentially. One idea that has been tried out with some success is to use these large dangerous animals as a renewable resource, be it for tourism or for their products. This idea has found particular success with the crocodilians, with crocodile and alligator "farms" now existing in many parts of the world. In addition to ensuring the continued existence of crocodiles and alligators, these farms generate profit from hides and meat, which are sold at high prices as luxury goods.

Being Cruel to Be Kind

Yesterday, I returned from a two-week-long trip to Namibia, a country in southern Africa that still has a relatively large amount of intact natural ecosystems. My first few days there were spent at the headquarters of the Cheetah Conservation Fund, where a learned about the efforts under way to conserve these unique cats. While, as I mentioned before, conservation programs focused on single species are not always a good idea from an ecological standpoint, that is not what I am going to talk about this time.
Cheetahs are, of course, predators, and the ones at CCF were fed meat provided by local farmers. At least, this was true of the ones that lived their entire lived at headquarters and could not be returned to the wild. The majority of cheetahs living there were only kept there temporarily and would be released eventually. What were they eating?
As it turned out, they were eating exactly what they would be eating in the wild--gemsbok, impala, and other antelope. Certain members of the CCF staff would occasionally shoot these animals to feed them to the cheetahs. Most of the tourists who came to CCF were not told about this, but there was a very good reason (from an ecological perspective) why it had to be done.
A cheetah--or any predator--raised in captivity will not automatically know how to prey on wild animals. If the cheetahs intended to be released are fed the meat of farm animals, they will believe this is what they are "meant" to eat, and attack them out of habit. And predators that attack farm animals are usually shot or poisoned. The cheetahs that are destined to return to the wild, therefore, must know what prey will not bring them into conflict with humans.

Of Horses and Humans

The end of the Ice Age saw the extinction of the majority of large mammals native to North America. Mammoths, ground sloths, saber-toothed cats, giant armadillos called glyptodonts, and short-faced bears were among the species that were killed off, most likely by humans. So were horses. The horses of prehistoric North America, admittedly, were of a different species than today's domestic horse, but resembled them in many respects.
After this, North America would be without horses until European settlers brought domestic horses--which are descended from the Przewalski's horse of central Asia--in the 1500s. The feral descendants of these horses are the "wild" horses that now populate the North American continent.
This has caused a considerable debate on both sides of the ecological spectrum. There are people who believe that feral horses, such as the Chincoteague Ponies of Virginia and Maryland the mustangs of the southwest, essentially fill the niche of the extinct North American horses and should therefore be considered native. Then there are people who claim that any non-native animal, no matter how closely related it is to a formerly native one, should be considered invasive.
The problem, of course, is that horses are immensely popular animals. Other feral livestock, such as pigs, are much more readily assumed to be dangerous and invasive, but few people see horses as an ecological hazard.

The War on the Sparrows

Perhaps the crowning example of general ignorance to ecology is the "Four Pests Campaign" initiated by Mao Zedong in 1958. An explanation of this requires some political background, however. Mao, having recently established his Communist government in China, had set about creating a series of reforms known as the Great Leap Forward. One of the chief goals of these was to increase Chinese farmers' grain production. To that end, he declared that sparrows, which ate grain, were to be exterminated.
Farmers took this very seriously--they banged pots and pans to scare sparrows away, destroyed their nests, and shot them on sight. On the surface, this seemed to work; it was not uncommon for crops to become quite successful once the birds were disposed of. However, it did not take long for the flaws to begin to show.
Most Chinese peasants, after all, were not well-versed in ornithology. To them, any small brown songbird was a "sparrow," and the techniques used to get rid of the sparrows affected other birds too. With the number of birds decreased, grain-eating insects experienced a population boom, thus contributing to the famine that would end up killing millions of starving Chinese. Mao's War on the Sparrows had backfired spectacularly.

Salt Marsh Cascades

Previously I discussed the importance of protecting species "low on the food chain" in order to maintain the high numbers of top predators and large herbivores from an ecological standpoint. However, ecosystem protection can work from other directions as well. In the salt marshes of Cape Cod, for example, overfishing of striped bass and blue crabs has led to a population explosion of herbivorous crabs and snails, which devour the marsh grass. With no predators to keep their numbers down, the herbivores' population increases beyond its natural limit. This has gotten to the point that scientists are considering artificially stocking the salt marshes with blue crabs and striped bass.
Removing predators can be just as problematic to an ecosystem as removing prey species, but unfortunately people such as fishermen who make a living by taking animals from the wild do not usually see the full ecological implications of what they do. In fact, many of the most popular food fish today--including tuna, salmon, seabass and swordfish--are top predators.

 In salt marshes like this one, ecosystems are in danger of collapsing due to the decline of top predators.

Umbrella Species

Earlier, I talked about how I consider it unproductive to protect single species instead of the entire ecosystems they inhabit. However, there may be a catch. Most of the creatures we think of when we think of endangered wildlife--the mega-mammals, large birds, and certain reptiles such as tortoises-- require very specific environments to survive. Any environmental preserve set aside for these creatures would, by default, also protect all other organisms living within it. For example, the Sundarban Tiger Reserve in India was created with the primary intent of protecting tigers. However, many other endangered species--some of which are even more threatened than tigers--also live in these reserves, and indirectly owe their continued existence to the efforts to preserve tigers.

This is why, rather than speaking of animals such as tigers as "charismatic megafauna", some ecologists prefer to call them "umbrella species." Like an umbrella, their presence provides a shield for all other species that occupy the same land they do. In my opinion it is acceptable to fund conservation efforts dedicated to these umbrella species, but only if the goal is to preserve them in the wild and thus maintain the ecosystem they live in. For there to be wild tigers, after all, there must first be Indian forests for them to live in, and the complete ecosystem that entails.

Where to draw the line?

As I mentioned before, ecosystems, not species, are the ideal scale at which environmental concern should be focused. However, this is not as easy as it sounds. While the idea of ecological preservation is to preserve all species in a given ecosystem, is there ever a point where this is impossible, or when a species should be allowed to go extinct for the greater good?
Consider the case of the Rocky Mountain Locust. The Rocky Mountain locust was once one of the most abundant insects in the world. They descended upon the crops of the pioneers in the American West in swarms of billions, devouring all vegetation in their path. Laura Ingalls Wilder, of Little House on The Prairie fame, described such an infestation in her book On The Banks Of Plum Creek. Yet by the beginning of the 20th century, the locusts had all but vanished. They were not intentionally exterminated--pesticides had not been invented yet--but rather their breeding grounds were destroyed when farmers plowed under them.
The loss of the Rocky Mountain Locust was not lamented. No one mourned for it, not the way they mourned for the herds of bison that once inhabited the Great Plains. Except for insect experts--of which there were few at the time-- no one remembered it as anything other than a pest.
Yet the demise of the locust had far-reaching consequences. The Eskimo Curlew, a migratory shorebird, depended on the locusts for food during its northward migrations. Deprived of their main prey and mercilessly pursued by hunters, the curlews declined heavily, and by 1963 they, too, were extinct.
The story of the Rocky Mountain Locust shows that no species is exempt from the attention of conservation. The extinction of anything will affect the ecosystem around it.

Hi, and welcome to Environmental Esotericism. I suppose I should introduce myself first, as well as why I am writing this blog in the first place. I did not originally intend to; I was required to perform an environmental project for college in which I was to state my preferred values in environmental ethics. With that out of the way, here goes:
Environmental esotericism is named that for a reason--its focus is on an area of environmentalism that, to me, gets far too little mainstream attention. Plenty of people are aware that species are endangered, and that by doing certain things (like not littering or using less electricity) they can reduce the damage they cause to the natural world. But that's not what this blog is here to talk about. It's going to talk about the idea of environmentalism from an ecological perspective.

Well, what is ecology?
Ecology is the relationship between organisms and non-living things in a given environment and, ultimately, on the Earth as a whole. As an example, on the African plain, the elephant, the zebra, the wildebeest, the gazelle, the lion, the giraffe, the plains grass, and the acacia tree all form what is known as an ecosystem. Ecosystems change over time--natural disasters happen, species evolve and go extinct--but the impact humans have on entire ecosystems is unlike anything else.

Why ecology?
It is important to realize that species never exist in a vacuum. Saving one endangered species is of little use if the ecosystem it once inhabited is already destroyed. Likewise, it may be impossible to preserve an ecosystem if some vital component, even something as seemingly insignificant as a plant or an invertebrate, is missing. Unfortunately, the role of ecology in environmentalism is often downplayed by the popular press in favor of the idea of preserving single charismatic species.

The rainforest of the Hawaiian Islands, an ecosystem at risk of destruction.