There is no question that conservationists need to have clear goals and know whether and how well they are reaching them. “Auditing Conservation” in the Summer 2003 issue of Conservation In Practice makes this point well but it is naïve on a number of other counts, leading to bad advice.

The author seems poorly informed about the conservation community. Of the dozens of large and small NGOs I have worked with over the years, I’ve seen much thoughtful goal setting, strategizing, monitoring, and adjustments based on monitoring. (I find it difficult to believe that an organization as sophisticated as The Nature Conservancy would actually count success only by dollars and acres.)

Business is not a model to emulate. Leaving Enron, Arthur Anderson, and their many cohorts aside, GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) and the auditing industry leave much to be desired. The industry produces little of value to outsiders because its tools are unreliable and formulaic. Some products can be useful to inside managers, but this is more dependent on good people than on methodology. The biggest problem with GAAP and the auditing industry as a model is that they consume enormous resources far out of proportion to useful products — resources that conservationists don’t have. Auditing bureaucracies are another tail trying to wag the dog, always demanding more resources.

Conservationists have alternatives. In 1998, Margolius and Salafsky (1) published an excellent book on monitoring and managing for conservation success. Nonprofit organizations like TREC (Training Resources for the Environmental Community) exist to help conservation NGOs make well considered use of management tools.

Contributors have a right to know where their money is going and that it is being well spent. But if the price of support is adopting expensive business tools that work poorly, we should ask whether that support is worth it. There’s one set of books every conservationist should keep an eye on. At the peak of foundation giving a couple of years ago, over $23 billion was disbursed to charity, about 4 percent going to conservation. The same year, the U.S. GDP was in excess of $10 trillion, much of that generated at the expense of nature. That’s a gap that must be remedied, and GAAP won’t help.

DAVID JOHNS

Division of Political Science, Portland State University, Portland, Oregon

Literature Cited:

1. Margoluis, R. and N. Salafsky. 1998. Measures of Success, Designing, Managing and Monitoring Conservation and Development Projects. Island Press, Washington DC.

The author responds:

Many of the conservationists I interviewed while reporting on “Auditing Conservation” believe that one way to increase the percentage of charitable giving that goes to conservation is to publicly report reliable results. NGOs around the world are devoting increasing attention and resources to rigorously evaluating their strategies by trying to measure the outcomes of their work. Much like the Conservation Measures Partnership, they are developing ways to publicly report their results so that they can be reliably evaluated by anyone interested in their work. They see this as essential for increasing the market share of GDP that goes to the growing and increasingly important work carried out by NGOs worldwide. I interviewed a wide cross-section of players in the conservation field and asked each of them what percentage of a project’s budget should be spent on measuring and evaluating performance. The answers ranged from around 5 to 15 percent. The lower range might be adequate for an after-the-fact evaluation. A well designed performance measurement system that was built in from the beginning to ensure ongoing learning could justifiably take even more of the budget. Around 10 percent was the ballpark entry-level figure for a project to seriously learn from rigorously examining its work. Think of it this way, one scientist told me: If you spent $100,000 of a $1 million conservation project on measuring performance and learned that one of your strategies was 10 times more effective than another, would it change how you spent the next $1 million on conservation? Would the return on investment for the $100,000 spent measuring your performance and auditing the results be worth it?

JON CHRISTENSEN

GIS Conservation Planning

Several important issues have recently been raised regarding the use of GIS in conservation planning, first in an article by Stokes and Morrison (Winter 2003) and second in a response to that article by Hartley and Strittholt (Spring 2003). Although the parties disputed some of the details of the redwood ecosystem model, they seemed to agree on the fundamental point that GIS is a valuable tool when used as part of a larger conservation planning process. We feel that the very existence of this debate speaks to the larger issue of the appropriate use and distribution of GIS model results.

All of the pitfalls raised by Stokes and Morrison, such as bad data, arbitrary scoring cutoffs, scale issues, lack of ground truthing, etc., can be appropriately addressed by the team conducting the model analysis and the stakeholders working directly with that team. The modeling team spends endless hours carefully compiling data, developing scoring and weighting systems, modeling alternative scenarios, discovering flaws, updating information, and using model outputs to inform decision-making. Such intimacy with the entire modeling process allows the team to make educated and intuitive decisions about the appropriate modifications and uses of the model. This seemed to be the case in the redwood ecosystem project as described by Hartley and Strittholt and has certainly been our experience in the extensive GIS modeling we have conducted for the Florida Forever environmental land acquisition program.

The problem arises when the results of careful GIS analysis show up as maps or reports seen by the public at large. Inevitably, these products generate requests for access to the underlying GIS data. Modelers should encourage access to their data for independent evaluation, but more often these requests come from casual users who are attracted to the model as an instant data resource. Unfortunately, no amount of metadata or technical documentation can communicate to secondary users the level of experience and understanding gained by the modeling team. As a result, it is often such unintended uses that lead to the worst breaches of modeling etiquette: interpreting the model results as unquestionable fact and failing to examine the model assumptions. However, in this era when free access to information is considered an entitlement, restricting access to GIS data may give the modeling team a reputation of being uncooperative or lead outsiders to view the model itself as suspect.

In addition to focusing on common weaknesses of GIS modeling, we suggest that more attention be paid to educating the broader audience of GIS users on the need for informed use of data. Ease of electronic file transfer does not grant license to circumvent the most important phases of the modeling process. If model results are to be used for purposes other than those originally intended, users should be as familiar as possible with the model’s construction and be prepared to address shortcomings that arise when the model is taken out of context.

JON OETTING

AMY KNIGHT

GARY KNIGHT

Florida Natural Areas Inventory

Wildlife Compensation

We read with interest “Taking the Bite out of Wildlife Damage” by Nyhus et al., (Spring 2003). Through a two-year assessment of how conservation addresses conflicts with local communities in Africa and North America (1), The Jane Goodall Institute made similar discoveries. We noted that relationships between communities and neighboring protected areas are often the most problematic. In addition, however, we sought to understand the underlying and deep-rooted issues that cause disputes such as control of public and private lands, personal property rights, government interference, and social identity.

Our analysis highlights the need to pay attention to psychological transitions and relationship building between the conservation project or agency and the communities and stakeholders. Conservation groups often present opportunities for community engagement that are rejected. This occurs because the community members have not accepted, for example, the permanency of the national park or new policy. For instance, disputes over crop raiding by conservation flagship species such as gorillas and elephants (contrasted to the majority of crop raiding damage done by monkeys and bush-pigs) often cause resentment in local communities. These deep-rooted identity issues cannot be adequately resolved through negotiation or monetary compensation; so disputes continue, and compensation programs are often abused and dissolved. This was the case in all six of the Africa case studies in our study.

However, when conservationists are open to adopting principles from “community reconciliation” and to focusing more attention on relationship building, communities can assist in biodiversity conservation goals. In these instances, compensation schemes may adequately address the dispute-level needs, only because the underlying and deep-rooted issues have been valued through other mechanisms.

CHRISTINA ELLIS

The Jane Goodall Institute

JULIE STEIN

The Andrus Family Fund

Literature Cited:

1. Conciatore, J., C. Ellis, and I. Koziell eds. 2003. Approaching the Table: A Framework for Transforming Conservation-Based Conflict into Opportunity. The Jane Goodall Institute, Silver Spring, MD, & the International Institute for Environment and Development, U.K.

“What will we have achieved by putting wolves and grizzly bears in the Yellowstone Ecosystem if their ecological roles are not complete?” ask Sanjay Pyare, who did this work at the Wildlife Conservation Society, and who is now at the Denver Zoological Foundation in Missoula, Montana, and Joel Berger of the Wildlife Conservation Society in Moose, Wyoming, in the September 2003 issue of Biological Conservation.

Delisting thresholds may be adequate for the survival of wolves (Canis lupus) and grizzly bears (Ursus arctos) in the Yellowstone Ecosystem. But there is more at stake because these carnivores affect their ecosystems at many levels. For instance, wolves and bears decrease the densities of some hooved mammals, which decrease browsing on willow communities, which in turn increase the diversity and nesting densities of migratory songbirds.

Pyare and Berger investigated a potential measure of “ecosystem recovery” for carnivores: whether their prey respond to them appropriately. The researchers used snowballs soaked in wolf urine or grizzly bear feces to compare the anti-predator responses of moose (Alces alces) in two areas: 1) those where there are so many wolves and grizzly bears that they commonly prey on young moose (Alaska’s Talkeetna Mountains and Denali National Park and Preserve) and 2) those where wolves and grizzly bears are recolonizing (Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park, which is part of the Yellowstone Ecosystem).

Moose responses to predators range from vigilance (such as putting their ears forward) to aggression (such as erecting their nape fur, which makes them look bigger and more menacing) to leaving the area.

The researchers found that the Alaskan moose were three times more likely to respond aggressively to the carnivore odors than were the Wyoming moose (about 15 percent vs. 5 percent). In addition, Alaskan moose exposed to grizzly bear odor were five times more likely to leave the area than were Wyoming moose (about 35 percent vs. 7 percent). Whereas about 15 percent of the Alaskan moose exposed to wolf odor left the area, hardly any Wyoming moose did.

These findings suggest that for large carnivores, populations that are big enough for delisting may not yet be big enough for ecosystem recovery. “Efforts should be directed to determining not just at what level a population is viable, but what additional population increases may restore ecological functionality,” say Pyare and Berger.

For more Information

Note: This research made Rush Limbaugh’s May 2003 newsletter. The piece was called “Yellow Snow” and featured a cartoon of men in lab coats pelting a moose with snowballs. Berger comments, “I just can’t figure out where some people come from when they ridicule applied science steeped in conservation. It seems that nothing could be more wholesome than wanting a good healthy environment.”

Pyare, S. and J. Berger. 2003. Beyond demography and delisting: Ecological recovery for Yellowstone’s grizzly bears and wolves. Biological Conservation 113:63-73.

“Increasing evidence is revealing the counterproductivity of such practices,” say Jiri Benes, Pavel Kepka, and Martin Konvicka, all of the University of South Bohemia in Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic, in the August 2003 issue of Conservation Biology.

Throughout Europe, butterflies that depend on warm, dry areas have declined because many of the steppe-like grasslands that provide this habitat have been lost to intensified agriculture, conifer plantations, and urbanization. Two of the researchers (Benes and Konvicka) have been butterfly enthusiasts since childhood and noticed as high school students that many steppe grassland species were essentially found only in quarries in the Czech Republic’s Moravian Gate, one of Europe’s most important north-south migration corridors. Thus, the researchers were concerned that these butterflies would be further threatened by the Czech Republic’s policy of reclaiming old quarries, which usually means covering them with topsoil and planting trees.

To see if quarries can help compensate for the loss of steppe habitat in Europe, Benes and his colleagues surveyed the diversity and abundance of butterflies in 21 limestone quarries in the Moravian lowlands. The researchers surveyed the butterflies in four habitat types: recently excavated rock, sparsely vegetated, herbaceous plants, and trees and shrubs.

The researchers found that quarries serve as refuges for two groups of butterflies that depend on steppe-like habitats. The first group comprises 20 species, nine of which are threatened in the Czech Republic, that thrive in active quarries because they prefer habitats such as rocks and stony terraces. Although managing reserves to maintain such habitats would be an ongoing and costly task, “the service is provided for free in the quarries as a side-effect of the excavation,” say Benes and his colleagues.

The second group comprises 19 species, 10 of which are threatened in the Czech Republic, that thrive in old quarries because they prefer habitats that grow on previously excavated surfaces, notably scrubby forest-steppes. These habitats are virtually gone elsewhere in Central Europe because managers of steppe reserves there typically remove scrub in favor of orchids and other charismatic plants.

More than half of the quarries studied are in areas that no longer have any natural steppe grasslands. “The quarries are thus the only chance for preserving steppe butterflies there,” note Benes and his colleagues. They recommend operating active quarries and managing old ones to maintain the bare rock and scrubby habitats that the two groups of steppe butterflies require. “Conservationists should pragmatically exploit these opportunities by cooperating with quarry operators,” they say.

Further Information:
Benes, J., P. Kepka, and M .Konvicka. 2003. Limestone quarries as refuges for European xerophilious butterflies. Conservation Biology 17(4):1058-1069.

“An understanding of boaters’ beliefs and attitudes towards manatees (Trichechus manatus latirostris) can shed light on their boating behaviors and can help identify potential interventions for encouraging behaviors that contribute to manatee conservation,” say Sampreethi Aipanjiguly, who did this work at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Susan Jacobson of the University of Florida in Gainesville, and Richard Flamm of the Florida Marine Research Institute in St. Petersburg in the August 2003 issue of Conservation Biology.

Although managers and outreach organizations provide factual information about manatees, this has not been enough to encourage most boaters to comply with speed zones. In many parts of Florida, only about half of boaters follow speed limits mandated to protect manatees from boat collisions.

To figure out how to encourage more boaters to follow speed limits, Aipanjiguly and his colleagues surveyed more than 500 boaters in Tampa Bay, Florida, where manatees live year-round. The researchers determined the relative strength of a variety of factors that might shape boaters’ intentions towards following speed limits, such as the desire to reach their destination sooner, the fear of being fined, and pressure from groups such as family, friends, and law enforcers. The researchers also assessed the boaters’ knowledge of manatee conservation.

The results showed that the most important component of boaters’ intentions to follow speed limits is their perception of social pressure to do it. Moreover, boaters were more motivated to comply with law enforcers than with family and friends who were on their boats. In addition, although boaters who knew more about manatees were more likely to support conserving them, only half of boaters knew that any activity that changes a manatee’s behavior is harassment, including touching, feeding, and swimming with manatees. Finally, more than a third of boaters said that manatee speed zones were not marked adequately.

On the basis of these findings, the researchers recommend three ways to increase compliance with regulations to protect manatees from boats. First, managers can strengthen boaters’ intentions to follow speed and no-entry zone regulations by developing media campaigns that feature law enforcers’ opinions on obeying speed limits and by reporting recent incidents of enforcement to local newspapers and radio stations. News conferences and press releases should highlight the negative consequences of violating speed limits and no-entry zones, such as the risks of penalty, arrest, boat damage, and hitting manatees. Second, managers should use the media to inform boaters about boat-related manatee deaths and inappropriate boating behavior. Finally, regulated areas should be clearly marked on navigational guides, which are carried by more than two-thirds of boaters.

Further Information:
Aipanijiguly, S., S.K. Jacobson, and R. Flamm. 2003. Conserving manatees: Knowledge, attitudes, and intentions of boaters in Tampa Bay, Florida. Conservation Biology 17(4):1098-1105.

It wouldn’t take much. “Introduced species can spread throughout entire ecosystems and across biogeographical regions from a few individuals released at single sites,” say John Chapman and Todd Miller of Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, and Eugene Coan of the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco in the October 2003 issue of Conservation Biology.

While some of the nonnative species sold in Pacific Northwest markets are already established or cultured in local waters, many are not. “Their unplanned, unsanctioned introductions should be controlled or avoided,” say the researchers. The live seafood trade is already implicated in a number of devastating introductions of nonnative marine species, including green crabs and Chinese mitten crabs into northeast Pacific waters.

Chapman and his colleagues focused on trade in clams, mussels, and oysters. These bivalves can survive out of water for more than two weeks when refrigerated and are usually mature when sold. This means that “fresh” bivalves sold at markets might be able to spawn if returned to marine waters.

To test whether the live seafood trade could indeed spread nonnative bivalves, the researchers assessed whether three nonnative species sold in Pacific Northwest markets were still alive enough to feed a day after being returned to seawater. Spawning can be triggered by eating, stress, or sudden temperature changes. Two of the species, Manila clams (Tapes philip-pinarum) and Pacific oysters (Crassostrea gigas), are already established in Pacific Northwest waters but one, the ocean quahog (Arctica islandica) is not.

The researchers found that nearly as many ocean quahogs survived in the short-term as the two species already established in Pacific Northwest waters (89 percent vs. 90 percent and 100 percent, for ocean quahogs, Manila clams, and Pacific oysters, respectively). “If released, [ocean quahogs] could potentially spawn and become a threat somewhere in the northeast Pacific Ocean,” caution Chapman and his colleagues.

Without regulation, the trade will almost certainly lead to even more species invasions.

Further Information:
Chapman, J.W., T.W. Miller, and E.V. Coan. 2003. Live seafood species as recipes for invasion. Conservation Biology 17(5):1386-1395.

“Landowners who hunt with hounds are more likely to conserve woodland habitat and plant more woodland and hedgerows, suggesting that… this controversial activity can produce conservation benefits,” say Thomasina Oldfield, Robert Smith, Stuart Harrop, and Nigel Leader-Williams of the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent in Canterbury, United Kingdom, in the May 29, 2003 issue of Nature.

Private landowners are critical to conserving biodiversity in Britain because more than three-quarters of the country is farmland. As agricultural efficiency has increased, the woodlands and hedgerows that provide wildlife habitat have declined. Voluntary conservation is important because government subsidies for conserving woodlands and hedgerows are limited, and conservation legislation is unpopular.

To see if landowners who engage in field sports are also more likely to conserve wildlife habitat, Oldfield and her colleagues used aerial photographs to measure the extent of woodlands and hedgerows in 65 farms in central England, where there are few formally protected areas.

They found that field sports are linked to increased habitat conservation. Landowners who both hunt foxes and shoot game birds conserve 12 times more woodland than those who do neither (about 7 percent vs. 0.6 percent). Landowners who hunt and shoot were more than twice as likely to have planted new woodland than those who do neither (nearly 100 percent vs. less than 40 percent). Similarly, about three-quarters of landowners who hunt had planted new hedgerows, which are jumped during fox hunts.

These findings suggest that banning field sports could have the unwanted side effect of decreasing wildlife habitat in Britain’s countryside. However, this impact is not being considered in the current debate over fox hunting in Britain, which focuses on animal welfare and on whether hunting helps control fox populations.

The researchers recommend widening the debate to include the impact of field sports on conservation. “Should hunting, or indeed, game-bird shooting, be banned on welfare grounds,…then additional funds may be needed to increase subsidies for habitat conservation, together with the strengthened capacity to enforce legislation,” say Oldfield and her colleagues.

Further Information:
Oldfield, T.E. et al. 2003. Field sports and conservation in the United Kingdom. Nature 423:531-533.

“As baseline sea surface temperatures continue to rise, climate change may represent the single greatest threat to coral reefs worldwide,” say Jordan West of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and Rodney Salm of The Nature Conservancy in Honolulu, Hawaii, in the August 2003 issue of Conservation Biology.

Coral reefs have among the greatest biodiversity of any ecosystem worldwide and provide key services to people, from food to coastal protection to tourism. Reef-building corals depend on symbiotic algae to photosynthesize much of their food, and surface waters that are warmer than normal can “bleach” corals by depleting their photosynthetic pigments or even make them expel their algae.

To help conserve coral reefs during climate change, West and Salm assessed factors that may have protected the coral patches that survived the 1997-98 bleaching. Factors fell into two categories: those that make corals resistant to climate change by, for instance, reducing local sea surface temperatures, and those that make reefs resilient to climate change by helping them recover from bleaching.

The researchers found that the factors that confer resistance to bleaching include local upwellings of cold water and natural exposure to heat stress. For instance, in an area of Binh Thuan, Vietnam, upwelling of cold water brought surface temperatures down from 39 degrees C to 29 degrees C within days, and corals there recovered better than elsewhere in the country.

In addition, corals that emerge at low tide may be more tolerant of heat stress. For instance, in Palau’s Rock Islands, the reef flats that emerge during low tides were bleached less than the parts of the reef that are in deeper waters.

The factors that confer resilience to bleaching include having diverse populations of corals that produce lots of larvae, surface currents that spread the larvae, herbivorous fish that graze the algae that otherwise grow on top of damaged reefs and prevent the establishment of new corals, and management that decreases stresses such as pollution and fishing methods that destroy reefs.

West and Salm recommend that reef managers use this work to identify and protect patches of coral reef that are most likely to persist during continuing climate change. Establishing reserves that protect networks of these patches will help ensure that the corals that survive a major bleaching event will be able to replenish those that do not. The Nature Conservancy is currently using this research to help coral reefs recover from bleaching in the Republic of Palau, which is developing a national network of marine protected areas.

Further Information:
West, J.M. and R.V. Salm. 2003. Resistance and resilience to coral bleaching: Implications for coral reef conservation and management. Conservation Biology 17(4):956-967.

A new analysis shows how restoring a habitat’s diversity can increase phenotype diversity, which in turn can increase a population’s chances of surviving rapid environmental change.

“Phenotype management is essentially a bet-hedging strategy that ensures the persistence of a population in the face of environmental uncertainty,” say Jason Watters, Sean Lema, and Gabrielle Nevitt of the University of California at Davis in the August 2003 issue of Biological Conservation.

Because environmental changes such as cutting forest canopies or damming rivers can occur within a single generation, phenotype diversity can be just as critical as genetic diversity. “Phenotypic diversity is really important to the population’s immediate survival,” says Watters.

To show how restoration can be geared toward increasing phenotype diversity, Watters and his colleagues present case-studies of two of North America’s endangered taxa: coho salmon (Onchorhynchus kisutch), which live in the Pacific Northwest, and desert pupfishes (Cyprinodon spp.), which live in the Southwest.

Male coho salmon can develop into one of two phenotypes: hooknoses, which are large and mature at about three years, or jacks, which are small and mature at about two years. Having both types is important because they spawn in different years, making the population as a whole less susceptible to unfavorable ocean conditions.

Hooknoses are more likely to develop from juveniles that live in deep pools, whereas jacks are more likely to develop in riffles. However, habitat restoration for coho salmon often focuses on deep pools, which have a higher density of juveniles, and so inadvertently favors hooknoses. “It is rather typical for restoration efforts to be unintentionally tailored to only a subset of the population,” say Watters and his colleagues.

The researchers suggest that managers could increase the proportion of jacks by creating riffles in streams. In support of this, laboratory experiments indicate that juvenile coho salmon reared in riffles are about five times more likely to mature as jacks than those reared in pools (about 17 percent vs. 3 percent).

Like salmon, male desert pupfish can develop into more than one phenotype: one that is territorial and two that spawn furtively (floaters and sneakers). The biggest males get the best territories, which have the exposed rock surfaces where females prefer to deposit their eggs. Floaters and sneakers lack territories and so have less breeding success.

However, unlike salmon, male desert pupfish can switch phenotypes when their habitat changes. Laboratory experiments show that when large rocks are added to bare, sandy areas to increase the number of good breeding sites, floaters and sneakers can switch to the territorial phenotype. Because territorial males have more breeding success, increasing the number of territorial males should increase the breeding success of the population as a whole.

“Restoration efforts that are limited to constructing only a few types of habitat may be less effective at restoring species over the long-term,” caution Watters and his colleagues. “We suggest that planners consider manipulating resources to explicitly manage the expression of phenotypes.”

Further Information:
Watters, J.V., S.C. Lema, and G.A. Nevitt. 2003. Phenotype management: A new approach to habitat restoration. Biological Conservation 112:435-445.

Two hours ago the last scratchy FM radio signal sputtered out. One hour ago, the pavement gave way to a dirt road that now alternates between washboard stutter and smooth dusty dunes as it weaves through an unending maze of spider-branched mallee trees. Driving with me are two volunteer rangers, Marilyn and Brian.

The place we’re touring is Gluepot Reserve, located in the parched red interior of South Australia and home to the world’s last remaining viable population of black-eared miner birds (Manorina melanotis).

Like any old-growth mallee forest, Gluepot is an untidy place, with dry leaves and tattered bark strewn across the ground. That messiness is exactly what makes it uptown for black-eared miners because it harbors a metropolis of insects just waiting to be plucked and devoured by an enterprising bird.

But this paradise could vanish at any time. Australia is nothing if not a land of wildfires and old growth mallee, with wood-shaving ground litter and dangling bark that rate just behind rocket fuel in terms of combustibility.

“If a fire went through here,” says Marilyn, throwing me a glance from the steering wheel, “it could wipe out every black-eared miner.”

And it’s not just the black-eared miner that’s playing extinction roulette: this is a common dilemma, faced by conservation managers whenever the endangered species they’re trying to protect is limited to a single location. Just one chance event—a fire, flood, hurricane, or epidemic—can erase such a species from existence.

And so it is that here in Australia, a team of ecologists decided to hedge the black-eared miner’s bets. They undertook the immodest step of capturing some of these precious feathered few and moving them to other locations in hopes of distributing the risk by building viable populations elsewhere that would survive even if Gluepot went up in smoke.

But accomplishing that is no small task, and compelling these birds to set up shop in a new neighborhood is no mere matter of releasing a few individuals and hoping for the best. It’s true that conservation biologists have successfully captured and released species such as the eastern wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris), which aren’t terribly social. But the black-eared miner is an unwieldy candidate for translocation. It’s one of the most socially complex bird species known. In the wild, several breeding pairs cooperate as a coterie. Each coterie also includes a dedicated corps of helper birds that constantly gather food for the young. Several of these coteries, in turn, cooperate as a colony.

The helpers in particular are so attuned to the young they’re feeding that they choose each one’s food according to its age. For the first few days, it’s a high-protein mix of spiders, flies, and nectar. But once a youngster ventures from the nest, the helpers work extra hard to bring them lerps, tiny sugar-igloos built by psyllid bugs—high-octane lollipops to meet the adolescent’s growing energy demands.

In other words, to raise young and repel predators, the entire colony must function as a seamless unit. So, if you want black-eared miners to thrive after you release them, then somehow you’ve got to reconstitute an entire bird society.

This is the task that was undertaken, and the results were stellar: five colonies were translocated in 2000 and 2001, all of them staying together at the release site, with some of them breeding again within as little as 15 days after release. The observations coming out of this effort could provide a framework for using translocation to spread the risk of extinction for other socially complex species.

The black-eared miner was pushed into its current crisis by human factors. After World War II, much of the land where old-growth mallee thrived was cleared for agriculture and sheep grazing. That brought a second threat to the miners’ doorstep: the yellow-throated miner (Manorina flavigula), which readily interbreeds with black-eared miners and is hybridizing them out of existence. Unlike their black-eared brothers, yellow-throateds need standing water to survive—and artificial ponds found on sheep lands provided that aplenty. So yellow-throated miners expanded, encroaching on black-eared miner colonies, diluting them away. By the mid-1990s, the only known surviving population of black-eared miners was a ragtag group of ten or so colonies scattered in and around Murray-Sunset National Park in Northwest Victoria.

Then in late 1996, a substantial black-eared miner population was discovered on the Gluepot Sheep Station. Gluepot was purchased by the nonprofit group Birds Australia, which is now restoring Gluepot to its natural state, including filling in ponds.

What makes Gluepot attractive for black-eared miners is that it harbors old-growth mallee that hasn’t burned in at least 50 years. But the fire drought won’t last forever. During recent decades, several wildfires—some bigger than Gluepot—have charred large swaths of mallee lands nearby.

This ticking time bomb spurred a team to begin moving intact black-eared miner colonies from Gluepot to Murray-Sunset, 110 miles away. Gluepot and its surroundings contained 200 colonies—more than enough for a viable meta-population—and so the near-term plan was to move up to eight of those colonies to Murray-Sunset in hopes of boosting its flagging population of ten colonies back toward viability (no formal calculations have been done, but minimum viable population size for black-eared miners probably lies in the range of 50-100 colonies). The long-term goal was to have two geographically separate, ecologically viable populations of black-eared miners to safeguard against chance calamities at one location.

The appointed morning of capture was September 24, 2000. When the first glow appeared on the eastern horizon, 20 mist nets were already deployed around the nests and across the oft-used flight paths of the chosen colony.

In the gray half-light, a bleary-eyed black-eared miner stirred from its perch, flitted toward a neighboring tree, and flumped into a net. It dropped silently into the net’s pocket and with nary a neep, was snatched into a gunnysack.

The team easily kept pace with the early birds, but then came the first breeding female. She tumbled into the net with a scathing squawk that electrified the entire colony. Almost instantly, five more well meaning birds arrived to investigate and careered into the same net. From then on, it was chaos for birds and humans alike.

After two hours of running around, the team had captured most of the colony, and by the end of the day, all but two of the noisy little neepers were bagged, gagged, and ready to go on the truck ride of their life—the three-hour rattle-bump to Murray-Sunset.

During September, October, and November 2000 and 2001, five colonies (as many as conditions permitted) were captured and moved. The biggest concern was keeping the social fabric of the colonies intact, and for this the dependent young were enlisted. Nestlings and fledglings are particularly vulnerable—especially in new environments—and so translocation programs generally steer clear of them. But in the case of the black-eared miner, the risk of moving fragile young seemed to be worth it. “Helping at the nest is one of their most social activities,” says Mike Clarke, the La Trobe University ecologist who oversaw the project. “We hoped the stimulus of feeding young would be the glue that held colonies together.”

As a result, only colonies with dependent young (either nestlings or fledglings) were moved. In addition to providing a social center of gravity, the team hoped that the nonflying and poorly flying young would anchor the colony close to its site of release.

This, at least, was the plan.

The moment of truth came on a lazy Monday afternoon in the Murray-Sunset mallee—the day the first colony was released: September 25, 2000.

Beneath a drifting herd of cumulonimbus, the colony’s four fledglings perched in the tree where they’d been released; in a circle around that tree sat seven cages, each containing several pent-up adults.

And then, with the team watching through binoculars, those cages were opened.

As though following some plan, the adults gathered in a nearby tree and called to one another. Through human eyes, they seemed to be taking roll call, seeing who had survived. And then as a single squawking mass they took to the air, wheeled in the sky and headed north.

They left the fledglings behind. “We could hear them, nee nee nee, just getting softer and softer until they were out of hearing range,” recalls Rohan Clarke (no relation to Mike Clarke), one of two La Trobe University PhD students spearheading the project. “We were pretty dejected because we thought that might be it.” And so in the deepening quiet, all thoughts turned to the fledglings: recapturing them and packing them back into the truck for the six-hour ride to a captive breeding center.

But 15 minutes later, the gallows talk was interrupted by the cries of black-eared miners. The birds reappeared, every single one of them, from over a far dune. They alighted at the release sight and began feeding the fledglings.

In total, five colonies were moved from Gluepot to Murray-Sunset during 2000 and 2001 with excellent results. Three of the five colonies resumed breeding within eight weeks of their release at Murray-Sunset, and one colony bred within 15 days. A fourth colony bred 12 months after release. The colonies also stayed intact and generally remained within a kilometer of their release site for at least two months.

Everyone understood the inherent risk involved in moving entire black-eared miner colonies—the translocation specialists who reviewed the project proposal even made the unusual gesture of wishing the team lots of luck.

And so it should come as no surprise that the plan included a clear exit strategy in case the capture of a colony went awry. The team decided ahead of time that if an entire colony wasn’t captured (with the possible exception of a few very peripheral helpers), then at the end of the day, the capture would be aborted and caged birds would be released. To keep this option open, nests and nestlings weren’t disturbed until all grown birds were captured and the explicit decision was made to proceed beyond the point of no return. A second exit strategy was available for the release phase: if a colony stopped cooperating after its release, then any dependent young were moved to a captive breeding program that was on standby.

But keeping individual colonies together was just one piece of a larger puzzle. “On a broader level, you’re not just moving one colony,” says Mike Clarke. “You’re trying to establish a meta-population.” Planning for this began by choosing release sites that considered the birds’ social structure. Black-eared miners are a female-dispersing species: young females won’t breed until they’ve left their natal colony and joined another. So, colonies need to be spaced closely enough that dispersing females can find new homes. At Murray-Sunset, the team situated release sites about 2 kilometers from existing local colonies and from each other, duplicating the natural spacing that’s seen in Gluepot.

Any translocation should take the meta-population into account, but it’s especially important for species whose young disperse to mate with other groups. For the black-eared miners, the planning succeeded: as little as five days after release, new birds (dispersed from local colonies) began hitching up with translocated colonies, and after a year, one of the translocated colonies had adopted five local birds.

What’s more, the entire translocation was one huge experiment. “In this case,” points out Rohan Clarke, “the overall translocation was a trial. That tends to get forgotten because it was so successful.” In fact, the project compared two release protocols: one in which colonies were released directly into the wild at Murray-Sunset, and the other in which colonies were first released into an outdoor, tree-enclosing aviary for three to seven days and then gradually released into the wild.

The team found that the direct release into the wild worked just as well as gradual release—and at a fraction of the cost.

The project also provided more general ways for gauging success. The team tagged five adults in each colony with radio transmitters. This way, they could locate colonies that tried to give them the slip, or track individuals if a colony simply dispersed and vanished overnight. In addition, every bird was banded with a nontransmitting bracelet, allowing the team to detect when individual birds dispersed from one colony to another.

Because translocation projects are infrequently published in the peer reviewed literature, wildlife managers often find themselves flying in the dark. So, incorporating experimental design can ensure that the process is gradually honed and that optimal results are achieved over time.

Back in Gluepot, the fire gamble continues. In 2002, the reserve experienced two near misses—lightning-strike fires on adjacent properties that were extinguished by rain. But at least the black-eared miner’s odds are improving: five colonies have been moved.

About the Author:

Douglas Fox is a freelance science writer who splits his time between Australia and California.

For More Information:

Clarke, R.H, R.L. Boulton, and M.F. Clarke. 2002. Translocation of the socially complex black-eared miner (Manorina melanotis): a trial using hard and soft release techniques. Pacific Conservation Biology 8(4):223-234.

Clarke, R.H., I.R. Gordon, and M.F. Clarke. 2001. Intraspecific phenotypic variability in the black-eared miner (Manorina melanotis); human-facilitated introgression and the consequences for an endangered taxon. Biological Conservation. 99:145-155.

Fall 2003 (Vol. 4, No. 4)

One hundred miles from their rock-bound Nova Scotia homeport, Franklyn d’Entremont and his crew gaze with satisfaction upon their biggest fish of the day—a 147-kilogram (325-pound) swordfish (Xiphias gladius) just hoisted aboard. It’s been an unusually productive day for these harpoon fishermen; five sword-bearing giants lie on deck. Nowadays, one or two fish is the norm. But d’Entremont’s satisfaction ebbs as he describes past times when two dozen fish was a common day’s catch and, on the best days, decks were crowded with upwards of 40 swordfish.

A recent study in the journal Nature (1) estimated that large predatory fish have declined by 90 percent worldwide since the 1950s, and other studies have documented similar trends (2, 3, 4). In the Atlantic, these declines occurred in large part because the international fishery commission responsible for management was in the thrall of industry interests, and its managers were insulated from conservation concerns. Although the public was increasingly aware of problems with fisheries and was expressing their concerns, conservation groups lacked a vehicle for harnessing such concerns or giving the public a way to participate in helping fisheries improve.

That all changed in 1998. Seaweb and the Natural Resources Defense Council (both nonprofit conservation groups) recruited top east coast chefs like Rick Moonen, now of RM Restaurant (New York), and Nora Pouillon, from Restaurant Nora (Washington, DC) to help launch a campaign called “Give Swordfish a Break.” Over 700 chefs boycotted swordfish until the commission cut catch quotas. Concurrently, we published the first general consumer guide showing which seafoods are ocean-friendly and which aren’t (5). And it worked. Swordfish became unfashionable, the wholesale price fell, and longline fishermen got worried enough to allow the fishery commission to reduce catch quotas. Simultaneously, a lawsuit brought by us and a coalition of other conservation groups forced the U.S. to close important juvenile nursery grounds. The boycott was called off in 2000, and with regulations in place, the number of juvenile swordfish noticeably increased. Swordfish are still struggling, and whether those juveniles will be allowed to grow remains to be seen. But the lessons here lead to an important conclusion—consumers have the power to affect fishery decisions.

A Transparent Ranking System

People who want to vote at the cash register require accessible information. Before you buy a car, you might get a copy of Consumer Reports to see how different models are ranked according to reliability, satisfaction, and depreciation. Yet for seafood consumers, navigating options on a menu or at a seafood market can be tricky. Many fish are misnamed to enhance their palatability (e.g., spiny dogfish [Squalus acanthias] has reportedly been sold as “cape shark” or even “rock salmon”). And even for those with accurate names, information is often lacking on origin, capture method, population status, or whether endangered species were caught in the same gear.

In response, we developed a method that translates information about fisheries and aquaculture into ranked lists of seafoods. Since publishing our first seafood guide (5), we’ve produced wallet-sized guides and more detailed evaluations in our book Seafood Lover’s Almanac (6) and on our website www.blueoceaninstitute.org. Consumers have shown surprising interest and willingness to act. Consumers who understand, for example, that Chilean seabass is a market pseudonym for Patagonian toothfish (Dissostichus eleginoides) and that rampant illegal fishing is depleting toothfish and killing endangered albatrosses, are more likely to make another choice.

Our ranking process is standardized, transparent, and updateable. We evaluate wild species and farmed seafood to account for the different conservation concerns associated with wild-capture fisheries and aquaculture. Our analysis is based on five criteria: for wild species, life history characteristics, current level of abundance, habitat quality, management effectiveness, and bycatch. Farming systems are evaluated for their on-site operations (e.g., open net pens versus closed re-circulating tank systems), feed composition, water quality, biological effects (e.g., species is native versus nonnative), and ecological effects (e.g., sensitivity of surrounding habitat). By answering a suite of questions within these categories, we create a comprehensive profile for each species, probing and citing published government reports, scientific journal articles, and industry and trade reports. We use information in the profile to score each species and then for clarity, convert the score into a color-coded seafood recommendation.

Typically, species having biological characteristics allowing greater resilience to fishing pressure, that are relatively abundant, and that are caught with fishing/farming methods causing little damage to habitat and other wildlife score highest and earn a “green” rating. Species with more problems and lower scores earn, in descending order, a green/yellow, yellow, yellow/red, or red ranking. A “red” species is subject to problems such as overfishing, high bycatch, and poor management; or farming methods have serious environmental impacts such as water pollution and heavy use of wild fish for feed.

In recent years, our seafood guides have become more expansive. In addition to listing the most popular seafoods (as determined by industry trade reports and surveys from restaurants and grocery stores), we also include less well known but exceptional alternatives. For example our New York eafood guide, produced in partnership with the Wildlife Conservation Society, featured “green” species such as U.S.-caught Spanish mackerel (Scomberomorus maculates) and farmed Arctic char (Salvelinus alpinus). And to underscore the differential effects of fishing methods on marine communities, we separately evaluate fisheries targeting the same species with different gear types. For instance, pole- and troll-caught tuna rate green/yellow, whereas longline-caught tuna rate yellow/red.

Our success hinges on transparency. Transparency generates trust with the public, the scientific community, the fishing industry, and resource managers. Because we can share research and scoring documentation over the Internet, we can respond immediately to inquiries about our rankings. For example, when a biologist expressed skepticism about our American lobster (Homarus americanus) evaluation, we quickly emailed the profile and score sheet and within hours were able to engage in a dialogue about the status of the lobster population and the fishery. Less transparent systems risk creating perceptions of gross subjectivity, lack of thoroughness, or secrecy.

Marketplace Conservation

From ranked lists to consumer boycotts to teaming up with celebrity chefs, conservation groups have tried many different approaches to link seafood consumption to conservation. Seaweb’s Seafood Choices Alliance now coordinates and publicizes some of these efforts, functioning as a conservation-oriented seafood trade association. When Seaweb convened the first annual Seafood Summit in the year 2000, the participants fit around one conference table. Now, the Alliance includes close to 2,000 seafood professionals (chefs, retailers, wholesalers, and fishermen) and over 30 nongovernmental organizations all working from different angles to redefine how the U.S.—and eventually other countries—think about seafood.

The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), a nonprofit organization first established as a green-business partnership between the World Wildlife Fund and Unilever, has an eco-labeling program for seafood that is also gaining visibility. Working with independent certifying agencies, the MSC considers fisheries that volunteer for evaluation and certifies and labels those that satisfy their principles and criteria. To date, seven fisheries have been MSC-certified. A difference between certifications and ranking systems is that consumers see the results of certifications as an on-pack label for only those products that have passed evaluation, whereas ranking systems arm consumers with the information they need to choose among an array of products in the marketplace. We see these two approaches as different and complementary.

For a movement that is five years old, the successes are substantial: a niche market for sustainable seafood has emerged, millions of seafood guides are in circulation, and the topic has been covered in publications ranging from Saveur to The New York Times.

The seafood guides have already created incentives for some fisheries to improve practices. For example, when Alaska adopted regulations in 1997-1998 mandating that longliners use albatross-deterrent techniques, Alaska halibut rose high enough in our evaluation process for us to rank it in the green. British Columbia halibut fishers complained to us, and we explained that Alaska was addressing the bird-kill problem that was still dragging down the score for the B.C. halibut. This prompted B.C. fishers to close the competitive gap by asking their government for regulations similar to Alaska’s. Consequently, Pacific halibut (Hippoglossus stenolepis)—from either Alaska or British Columbia—now scores highly enough in our system to earn a green rating. Thus, our guide created a market incentive that moved the fishing industry to reduce albatross mortality. Further evidence of newly felt market incentives is that fisheries once critical of certification schemes now see market advantages and are increasingly applying for MSC evaluation.

The biggest challenge now is to get more seafood suppliers on board. Although demand is growing, few distributors specialize in eco-friendly seafood. EcoFish, Inc. is one of only a few exceptions; they buy species like troll-caught albacore tuna, Pacific halibut, and Alaskan wild salmon—all ranked high on our list—directly from fishers and ship to restaurants, caterers, and grocery stores. Organic food specialty chains recently have shown interest in creating ecologically conscious seafood inventories, and if this takes hold, it might help shift some large distributors, wholesalers, and retailers.

Everybody eats. People’s most direct effect on the ocean is the fish they consume. Demonstrating that not all seafood is equal has proven an excellent way to start a discussion with audiences who do not identify themselves as conservationists. By giving people options they can act on, we’ve helped build a wider constituency for ocean conservation.

Literature Cited:

1. Myers, R.A. and B. Worm. 2003. Rapid worldwide depletion of predatory fish communities. Nature 423:280-283.

2. Pauly, D. et al. 2002. Towards sustainability in world fisheries. Nature 418:689-695.

3. Safina, C. 1998. Song for the Blue Ocean. Henry Holt, New York.

4. Safina, C. 1995. The world’s imperiled fish. Scientific American 273:46-53.

5. Safina, C. 1998. What’s a fish lover to eat? The Audubon guide to seafood. Audubon 100:63-66.

6. Lee, M. (ed.). 2000. Seafood Lover’s Almanac. National Audubon Society. New York.

Acknowledgments:

We wish to thank Rebecca Goldberg and staff from Environmental Defense for helping to develop our criteria for evaluating farmed species. We also thank Environmental Defense and the Monterey Bay Aquarium for sharing research on some species included in our seafood guides. And thanks to Suzanne Ludicello for her early contributions to our methodology.

Jared Hardner felt more than slightly anxious as he followed the skinny man beckoning to him from a hut along a dangling catwalk. The Palo Alto, California, consultant had traveled two days by fishing boat to this village on Indonesia’s Togean islands, where “sea-gypsies” build homes on stilts above the water, and where outlaw fishermen dynamite the extraordinary local reefs to boost their catch. Hardner didn’t speak the language, and he knew he stood out—maybe dangerously so—as a 6’2” American with a buzz-cut in the world’s largest predominantly Muslim nation.

Not wanting to seem unfriendly, however, Hardner ducked into the dark hut, as his host, to his increasing unease, bolted the door behind him. The man then turned to pull up a floorboard, unveiling a netted holding pen where dozens of groupers and Napolean wrasse, swam in crystal blue water. Hardner’s host had naturally assumed his guest wanted to check out his black-market ware.

In fact, Hardner had another sort of business deal in mind, so odd and ambitious that the sea gypsy quite reasonably might never have imagined it. His goal on the picturesque islands was to rent land—not to exploit it, but to save it—with a radical and increasingly popular new tool known as a “conservation concession.”

The 33-year-old Yale-trained economist represents a new breed of environmentalist: a tropical real estate broker, shuttling from the Sulawesi Sea to Peru’s Andes peaks in his efforts to close deals between philanthropic donors and the owners of biologically rich land. He and Dick Rice, a senior economist with Conservation International (CI), are working to create a global market in direct payments for conservation—a kind of market in biodiversity—by leasing development rights, or concessions, from governments and other landowners.

Conservation concessions are management contracts between a government or community landowner and a conservation-minded buyer. They offer a novel way for green activists to compete directly with timber firms seeking to lease rights to land. Unlike a park, a concession reaps revenues, making it much more appealing to host governments. And unlike a park, or an easement, which can lock up land forever, a concession is temporary, albeit renewable.

The tactic of buying such concessions represents a stark departure from past practices in tropical lands, where rich-country NGOs first tried to persuade poor-country landowners to protect nature on moral grounds and then engineered “sustainable” development projects, most of which have yet to produce profits. Hardner and Rice dub these efforts “indirect,” compared to their strategy’s blunt linkage of payments and environmental protection. At a time of growing impatience with the slower methods’ failure to stall an alarming rate of environmental degradation, their “warp-speed” approach, as Rice describes it, has won some powerful advocates. The noted biologist E.O. Wilson, in a column titled “The Solution” in this magazine last year, called conservation concessions part of a “true revolution in global conservation.”

Like many revolutions, however, this one to date looks better on paper than it does in the real world. Concessions, as Rice and Hardner envision them, “are still kind of a virtual thing,” Rice concedes. The fruit of their efforts over the past four years amounts to two major projects just getting off the ground in Peru and Guyana and two significant nonstarters, in Guatemala and Cameroon. There are also two similar experiments by other conservation groups in Mexico with a mixed record of success.

Undeterred by the bumps in their short track record, the concessions champions maintain there’s huge potential to move forward—and potentially enough money available to protect the world’s most endangered areas with a combination of parks and concessions. It’s just this ambition, however, that stirs the most concern among critics who worry the approach is being oversold.

The Conservation Profit Margin

The idea of making a concerted effort to protect biodiversity by leasing concessions was born in a conversation between Hardner, Rice, and a Guyanese forest commissioner, circa 1999. In the midst of discussing how to protect a half-million hectare forest, either Hardner or Rice—each claims they were both thinking it, but can’t remember who actually said it—suggested, jokingly, that they buy the timber rights to the land, just as a logging company might do. The commissioner, to their surprise, welcomed the offer, and negotiations began.

Hardner and Rice were already known as critics of the notion that forests can be saved by “sustainable” management. They’d grown convinced that market-based projects, in which residents of threatened lands try simultaneously to care for nature and profitably produce timber, coffee, and other products, had neither saved much biodiversity nor provided reasonable local incomes. “With all the money we spend trying to make conservation pay for itself, we could pay for conservation,” argues Hardner.

There is indeed no doubt that conservation financiers in recent years have evolved into a powerful force—a US$2-billion annual force, according to Hardner. He calculates that governments and development banks alone spend half a billion dollars yearly to protect land, with private foundations and environmental groups throughout the world contributing an additional US$1.5 billion. (The Nature Conservancy alone spends close to US$1 billion a year on buying and managing land to conserve, making this estimate most likely conservative.) U.S. tax laws require philanthropies, including the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, both of which have a strong interest in conservation, to give away 5 percent of their assets every year. Even despite its recent stock-market losses, the Packard Foundation budgeted US$46 million for conservation and science last year. The Moore Foundation, meanwhile, has created a US$100-million Global Conservation Fund, dedicated exclusively to the creation of new protected areas and expansion of existing protected areas. Its budget is US$5 million a year for five years, plus US$75 million to the extent it can be matched. In this context, Hardner says, most concessions go for “chicken feed.”

One reason for this is that as conservation funders have acquired more clout, their competitors, chiefly the logging industry, have suffered a decline. The price of timber, together with other commodities, has stayed mostly flat over the past couple of decades, with little hope for improvement, as supplies have increased from plantations and newly exploited forests. Meanwhile, increasing government regulations in tropical countries have made the business more costly. The result is that well funded NGOs can often outbid cash-strapped timber firms for resource rights.

Hardner calculates the cost of protecting land in the tropics at between US$10 and US$100 per hectare. Given his US$2-billion estimate of available conservation funds, he says, “it would be possible to create endowments that could permanently protect 20-200 million additional hectares per year,” eventually covering the “hot spots,” the 1.4 percent of the Earth’s land that Conservation International has pinpointed as the most biologically rich and most threatened.

Buying land outright in developing countries isn’t a sound option, what with nationalists having long decried foreign efforts to turn their homes into “tree museums.” Yet Hardner and Rice say they’ve found many governments willing to consider long-term, renewable leases. A built-in advantage is that such deals can be structured to include regular monitoring for conservation progress, with lease payments potentially withheld if conservation efforts cease. This is the logic behind the two projects underway in the deep forests of Peru and Guyana. “It’s quid pro quo,” says Rice, adding, “The rest of the world’s economy rests on this model, so there’s no reason it can’t be used for conservation.”

Test-Driving Concessions

Peru was the first nation to sell a conservation concession, beating the Guyanese to the punch in July of 2001. While the Guyanese were still negotiating, Peru’s government was so willing that it specifically allowed conservation concessions in its new Forestry and Wildlife Law, passed in 2000. In a departure from Latin America’s tradition of nationalist wariness, Peru’s officials even worked with U.S. conservation experts, including Hardner, who helped craft the legislation.

The concessions established in Peru and, one year later, Guyana, were both “turn-key” arrangements. Designed by Hardner and his consulting partner, Canadian ecologist Ted Gullison (in the case of Peru) and Hardner and Rice (in Guyana), the concessions were then handed over to the new owners: the Amazon Conservation Association, a nonprofit NGO incorporated in the United States and Peru, and Conservation International’s office in Guyana. These two groups have since then been in charge of both management and monitoring.

Hardner and Rice picked the two sites to “test-drive” their model for several reasons, but the common bottom line was that both offered exceptional odds for success. Both are in remote and all but unpopulated areas, and in neither case did the conservationists face competitors for their bids.

In Peru, the land in question is a 135,000-hectare forest in the Los Amigos watershed, in Madre de Dios province, adjacent to a national park. It is all but unpopulated, except for the reported presence of itinerant indigenous groups, and although it has been logged in recent years, it still provides some nearly pristine habitat for an unusual diversity of bird and monkey species, according to Cristian Vallejos, executive director of the Amazon Conservation Association.

The NGO lobbied strongly for a conservation concession on the Los Amigos site because it was already developing a research facility on property it owns outside the concession boundaries. It has since agreed to invest US$5 million in infrastructure, salaries, and conservation management expenses over the first five years. Of that, Vallejos said, the Moore Foundation has contributed US$3.5 million, and the rest has yet to be raised. The sum will include wages for Peruvian employees of the research facility and scholarships for Peruvian students, in addition to costs of managing the conservation area. It will also create a US$1-million endowment to pay salaries for 11 rangers over the term of the contract.

Vallejos says it’s still too soon to say whether the concession strategy is working, yet he acknowledges there’ve been some unexpected problems. Loggers, having already removed the most valuable timber, are no longer cutting trees yet are still entering the area to illegally hunt tapirs and peccaries. The rangers hired under the terms of the concession have no power to arrest them, and local police haven’t responded as promptly as the concession owners had hoped. Thus, in a small change of plans, the NGO has recently begun using some of its concession investment funds to hold special workshops for local police to train them for their jobs.

In southern Guyana, a second conservation concession got off the ground in July of 2002, when Conservation International signed an agreement with the Guyanese government to lease timber rights to 80,000 hectares of pristine rainforest alongside the Essequibo River.

Retired Major Gen. Joe Singh, executive director of CI’s Guyana office, says the site wasn’t facing any immediate threats from loggers but that such threats were bound to increase as neighboring Brazil, 50 km away as the crow flies, continued to build roads improving access to the region.

The project has cost US$200,000 in its first year, including startup costs such as a US$46,000 timber inventory and US$30,000 for training of rangers. It also includes a US$10,000/year renewable “voluntary fund” to pay for assistance, such as sustainable farming technology and instruction and possible ecotourist projects, to people living outside the concession, according to Singh. Clearly, however, local job-creation isn’t a high point of the Guyanese concession. Just six residents in local communities have gotten fulltime jobs, as rangers and boat men. Finally, CI will pay US$41,000 in government fees. This is what a timber company would have had to pay to lease the management rights, Rice says, even though no firm had bid for that purpose. He says this money will go to the government’s normally underfunded forestry department and be used to help monitor “real” timber concessions.

In both Guyana and Peru, the conservation concessions have added immediate value to land that was virtually unproductive and not immediately desirable. The situation was quite different in Guatemala, however, where CI attempted to buy annual logging production from local communities on 75,000 hectares in the Maya Biosphere of the northern Petén—on the agreement that they leave the trees standing. Their efforts were defeated amid intense opposition last year.

There, for the first time, Hardner and Rice were trying to operate a concession in the face of well organized competition for the resources. They were dealing with two local communities, which held timber concessions granted to them by the government. The communities were willing to lease the concessions to a local NGO, funded by Conservation International, that would pay salaries for conservation managers, invest in tourism projects, and provide community services as compensation for lost logging revenues. But then local logging firms joined with NGOs committed to “sustainable” timber harvests to protest the deal.

“Selective logging has been working well in that area,” says Ohio State University environmental economist Doug Southgate, who co-wrote an editorial for Knight-Ridder Newspapers protesting CI’s effort. “Over the past three to five years, I’ve seen incomes go up, while deforestation and fires have decreased.”

Amidst the complaints, the head of the government’s forestry regulatory agency withheld his approval until CI lost interest in funding the project. Today, Hardner says, both the government and the communities are willing to proceed with the concession. But CI won’t be putting up the money.

Rice says he now believes the technical assistance “lavished on the region” over the past few years by groups including the U.S. Agency for International Development created “organized supporters of the status quo, which became an effective lobby to keep us out. We lost a lot of momentum, and I’m not convinced the opposition has gone away.”

Although discouraged in Guatemala, Hardner and Rice have been buoyed by new interest in their businesslike approach from none other than big business, specifically mining and oil firms enticed into the conservation market with hopes of improving community relations. In recent months, they have been designing a concession-type project for Antamina, one of the world’s largest copper and zinc mining operations, now in its second year of business in Peru. The company, under Canadian, Australian, and Japanese ownership, has already faced scattered protests by residents fearing pollution. The concessions plan would aim to win support by restoring an Andes mountain forest corridor and improving bird habitat while also providing erosion control and a source of wood for fuel.

To be sure, it’s unclear how much good will Antamina or any other firm can gain with such projects. “It’s still greenwashing to say we’ll set aside one piece of land and destroy another,” says Diana Ruiz of Project Underground, a U.S. NGO that tracks the mining industry. Hardner remains hopeful, however. Multinationals, as he notes, represent a huge amount of potential support for conservation projects and operate in many of the world’s “hot spots.”

As news of the proposed Antamina deal has spread, Hardner says he has recently received inquiries from three other big firms in Peru, two in mining and one in oil, and has also begun talks with a major law firm in Houston representing several of the world’s largest energy firms. He has been on the road in pursuit of these deals about two weeks of every month, remaining zealous despite some personal toll. On returning from Indonesia last spring, for instance, he came down with what his doctors say was SARS. On his recovery, the ever-entrepreneurial Hardner joked that now that he’s immune, he can start outsourcing trips to Asia.

Something Slower than Warp Speed

When Hardner and Rice are asked what they’ve learned from their four years of dealing with concessions, the theme seems to be: Full speed ahead!

“We’re awash in opportunities that only need to be taken advantage of,” says Rice, who cites in particular a potential partnership with The Nature Conservancy to protect a watershed above Quito, Ecuador. Undeterred by their experience in Guatemala, he and Hardner say they intend to continue to try out their mechanism in more diverse circumstances, in the faith that their eventual success will tame critics. “I haven’t seen any situation where the local community is not excited by this approach,” says Hardner.

Others are less sanguine. In critics’ eyes, the failure in Guatemala was less of a sui generis case than Rice and Hardner portray it and more a harbinger of potential problems with broad application of the concessions tactic.

“Concessions work well in places like Guyana, where the opportunity cost of land is low, and you’re not trying to push away anything else,” warns Stefano Pagiola, a senior environmental economist for the World Bank. “But in many places, competition from other uses is likely to be quite high. So basically you could get a large amount of not-threatened land or a small amount of threatened land. How do you define success?”

Rice calls that line of reasoning “silly.” “It’s like saying markets only operate where values are low,” he says. “Markets work for low-value commodities and extremely high-value commodities. All we’re talking about here are agreements between willing buyers and willing sellers. . .The fact is that resource destroyers are able to do it with no apparent problem at all. And if they remain the only ones competing for the resource, they’re the ones that are going to win, hands down.”

The logic seems persuasive. It’s worth noting, however, that although Rice and Hardner suggest there are fortunes available for concessions, the only money that has materialized so far has all come from the Moore Foundation, raising some questions about the tactic’s sustainability.

Furthermore, despite their dogged efforts, Rice and Hardner have yet to launch a concession in an area where they faced competition for environmental resources, a situation that applies to the Earth’s “hot spots” by definition. In addition to the nonstarter in Guatemala is the case in Cameroon, where Conservation International spent two years and US$25,000 from the Global Conservation Fund to put together a concession project for a biologically rich and threatened forest. Following that investment of money and time, which included legal and biological research, a site visit, and discussions with stakeholders, Rice said the Fund last spring “indicated informally that they would probably not approve funds for additional planning in the absence of more specifics.” Rice concluded the project was “just too expensive for us to fund without additional support” and that it was time to move on to more promising opportunities.

There are also questions concerning the fate of people living in the concession areas such as what if the deals create foreign-funded welfare states? To be sure, as Rice and Hardner note, this problem isn’t worryingly relevant in the up-and-running sites in remote Peru and Guyana, where not much economic activity was taking place before the concessions were established. There, the concessions payments have been adding net, if minimal, economic activity. Yet it would seem that in areas with more serious economic competition, concessions would have to offer more attractive packages of benefits, such as higher payments and social programs.

And that leads to another question: wouldn’t such benefits attract new immigrants? Hardner says if migrants were drawn to concessions areas, the legal owners would keep them out. Yet this begs the questions of how difficult that might be and what kinds of conflicts might ensue. “You could get a kind of Murphy’s law effect,” notes Randy Curtis, a conservation finance expert at The Nature Conservancy who basically supports the concessions idea.

The most serious outstanding question is how the conservation investments will be monitored. So far, in Peru, Guyana, and the two projects in Mexico, the people in charge of reporting on the effectiveness of the investments are the people with the greatest stake in the project’s success: the concessions owners and the governments receiving their payments. This raises an obvious credibility problem, one compounded by the fact that governing institutions are generally so weak in the countries hosting the concessions. The question becomes much more serious if for-profit firms buy concessions and seek to monitor their own henhouses.

To address that dilemma, Rice says he has been in talks with the Forest Stewardship Council to try to arrange third party certification of future conservation concessions. Yet in the meantime, any reported results from the Guyana and Peru projects are open to question, in the midst of critics’ charges that the concessions approach is being oversold.

In reality so far, and whatever their intentions, Hardner and Rice have something very different from conservation at “warp speed.” If anything, the concessions in Peru and Guyana, plus the projects in Mexico and the attempt in Guatemala, show that each site has offered its own set of complications. At every site, the plan that has ultimately been offered has also included some “sustainable development” component, such as the ecotourism plan in Guyana and the scholarships in Peru. Although cash payments certainly would seem to inspire cooperation, there’s still no evidence that cash alone can do the trick.

In the next few years, the concessions process may well speed up, especially if Hardner and Rice, as they say they plan to do, manage to convince other governments to follow Peru’s course and specifically allow concessions in their laws. But even then, the devil will be in the details. And many more devils are certain to pop up as concessions are more widely attempted.

BUTTERFLIES, SOIL & PARROTS: A SAMPLING OF OTHER CONSERVATION PAYMENT PROGRAMS

When you focus on the broad idea of paying people to conserve land, it’s clear that the oldest effort to do so is the U.S. government’s multibillion dollar payments to farmers to set aside cropland. These funds have been disbursed off and on since the Dust Bowl years but were increased and made continuous with the Crop Reserve Program, a part of the 1985 Farm Bill. Throughout its existence, the program’s main goal has been to prevent surpluses of certain crops. Yet since 1990, more funds have been directed toward environmental goals, such as preserving soil quality, wetlands, habitats, and floodplains.

Although these efforts are increasing, they’re still a small part of the program, according to Tim Searchinger, codirector of the Center for Conservation Incentives at Environmental Defense, who calculates that only 2 million acres of the 33 million acres set aside are considered truly environmentally significant. “There’s still a kind of welfare ethos that permeates the program,” he says. “The key questions for the future are how much more land will be targeted to restore ecosystems, and how good the monitoring will be for results.” To date, several experts said, there has been very little significant monitoring of environmental achievements.

Turning to the Tropics, two recent much smaller but landmark projects in Mexico have more in common with the model that Hardner and Rice want to replicate on a grand scale.

One is a 15-year contract, signed in early 2000, between the Wildlands Project, based in Richmond, Vermont, five Mexican NGOs, and a land cooperative whose members pledged to protect old-growth forest in the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains of northern Chihuahua. The forests provide nesting sites for half of the world’s remaining Thick-billed parrots (Rhynchopsitta pachyrhyncha). The agreement is unprecedented as the first contract between NGOs and a land cooperative, or ejido. There is no government involvement.

The ejido agreed to surrender its rights to log the area in return for cash and benefits amounting to about half of what it might have earned from timber. Prior to the agreement, some 2,400 hectares of forest had been scheduled for logging by 2002.

Leanne Klyza Linck, executive director of the Wildlands Project, says the program has been an “absolute success” since local logging has stopped, and the parrots appear to be thriving. In mid-May, one of the green and red parrots was sighted in New Mexico for the first time in many years. The only unfortunate news is that one ejido member who had been paid US$1,000 to build cabanas for ecotourists disappeared with the money, leaving the job incomplete. “We’re learning a lot about trust and taking a chance,” said Manuel Bujanda, Wildlands’ Chihuahua representative.

The second Mexican project, just as novel and even more ambitious, is focused on protecting pine, oak, and fir forests in the central states of Mexico and Michoacan, where Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) that migrate from Canada and the United States spend the winters.

The strategy is to offer conservation incentives to residents of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, a 56,259-hectare area protected by law in 1986 and expanded in 2000. The residents never received compensation for lost logging income when the reserve was created, but since December of 2000, landowners have been paid to retire logging permits, while community members agreeing to protect forest in the core zone of the protected area have been receiving US$12/hectare per year. The payments come from a US$6.5-million Monarch Butterfly Conservation Trust Fund, whose main contributor is the Packard Foundation, together with Mexican government donors. World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Mexico manages the program, and the government has reportedly strengthened enforcement of the logging ban.

Despite these measures, some logging is continuing even in the core area of the reserve, where it is totally forbidden, with additional heavy cutting in the buffer zones, where it is restricted, according to a WWF report issued last February. WWF officials were unable to provide specific answers about the extent of the logging or why it was continuing, saying both questions were still under study. But they stressed that they believed that resident community members were cooperating with the agreement and that the logging was being done by “outsiders.”

Editor’s Note:

As this article goes to press, CI informs us that new developments are taking place that may reopen negotiations between CI, the communities, and the Guatemalan government to implement conservation incentive agreements there.

Further Information:

The Peruvian Concession managed by Amazon Conservation Association:

Area Covered: 135,000 hectares

Cost: US$5 million (first five years)

Term: 40 years, with a renewable lease

Concession Owner: Amazon Conservation Association

Location: Madre de Dios Province, Peruvian Amazon

Date Launched: July 2001

Goals: Protect a biodiversity-rich area near Manu National Park

The Guyanese Concession managed by Conservation International:

Area Covered: 80,000 hectares

Cost: US$200,000 for the first year, including startup costs

Term of Agreement: 30 years

Concession Owner: Conservation International

Location: Alongside the Essequibo River, southern Guyana

Date launched: July 2002

Goals: To form a key part of the Guianas Tropical Wilderness Corridor

About the Author:

Katherine Ellison is a freelance writer based in San Anselmo, California. She is co-author of The New Economy of Nature: The Quest to Make Conservation Profitable (Island Press/Shearwater Books, 2002) Recently, she has been specializing in writing about how human beings are managing and mismanaging environ-mental resources.

Conservation biology is an endless struggle with complexity. Most people try to focus their work sharply enough that they can ignore the myriad external factors beyond the scope of their project or theory. But a few step back, survey the larger landscape, and try to envision an underlying code, a simple set of rules that creates complex phenomena by mere iteration and interaction—much like the rules that build millions of species from just four bases of DNA and 22 amino acids. Such theorists dream of having a massively complex matrix of empirical data. If their programs can generate patterns that are indistinguishable from those in the matrix, then they might just describe the real system well enough to control it.

It would be a great boon to conservation biologists, for example, to be able to model how the extinction of a threatened species or the addition of an invasive species will alter an ecosystem. Such changes ripple through the food web, changing who eats whom in ways that are sometimes profound, yet are rarely obvious. Any ecosystem worth preserving typically has hundreds or thousands of plant and animal species, and nearly all the animal species are both predator and prey. (Even an eagle is prey to its parasites, for example.) A graph of these interrelationships—a food web—is intimidating in its complexity.

Food webs, in other words, are just the sort of matrices that appeal to mathematically minded theorists such as Neo D. Martinez, Visiting Professor of Nonlinear Systems at Cornell University’s Center for Applied Mathematics, who is based at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL). Undeterred by the earlier failure of famous ecologists to devise accurate theories of food webs, Martinez has spent the past dozen years both adding to the matrix of data and, more significantly, peering through the fog of complexity to the simple, invariant rules underneath. Using statistics and computer simulations, Martinez and his current and former RMBL postdoctoral researchers1 seem to have uncovered some fundamental properties shared by most—perhaps even all—natural ecosystems.

The virtual food webs that Martinez’s models generate on supercomputers look remarkably similar in their structure to those documented by field biologists. He and his collaborators are already expanding the simulations so that they can also explore the dynamics of the webs. What happens when human activity removes or adds species to these virtual worlds? Which species are most important to sustainability: the predators at the top or the primary producers at the bottom? Are highly connected food webs more or less vulnerable to extinctions?

The answers that emerge from the supercomputer studies are often counter-intuitive, although they await verification by fieldwork. And it is still far from clear what the basic mathematical rules mean in biological terms. It does seem clear, however, that ecological computer models are approaching the level of sophistication that will thrust them into the public eye, ready or not. Even as he hopes to apply them to solve real problems in conservation management, Martinez worries about how others may misuse the technology.

Simple Rules

Ecology was ripe for the new theory of food webs that Martinez published in 2000. Until the 1990s, the dominant theory held that food webs of all sizes and sorts share eight or so characteristics—some scientists in the field even referred to them as laws of nature. But these “scale invariant properties” turned out to vary quite a bit in large, high-quality food web data that was collected (some of it by Martinez) in the early and mid-1990s (see sidebar: A Brief History of Food Webology).

Williams and Martinez claimed in Nature that a disarmingly simple model could generate the wide variety of trophic structures seen in real-life ecosystems (1). By plugging two simple parameters—the number of species and the “connectance” of the web (links divided by the square of the species number)—into the model, they were able to reproduce the structure of seven large, well studied food webs with tenfold greater accuracy than previous theories.

Martinez calls their theory the “niche model” because at its core lies the idea that species eat and are eaten by other species within a certain niche. Models are simplifications of nature, and the “niche” here is not a conventional ecological niche but rather a mathematical abstraction. Imagine a number line stretching from zero to one. Each species is assigned a random spot on that line and is allowed to eat only those species that fall within a certain (randomly chosen) distance from that spot. Cannibalism is allowed, as are food “loops,” in which A eats B, B eats C, and C eats A.

Martinez and Williams wrote a computer simulation based on the model. They tell the machine how many species to include and the desired connectance value; the program then turns out thousands of randomly generated food webs based on those two basic criteria. The interesting, almost magical result came when they compared the simulated, one-dimensional food webs to the matrix of experimental data carefully collected from real ecosystems: Skipwith Pond, the Coachella desert, the Ythan estuary, the Chesapeake Bay, and so on. By any of a dozen different statistical measures, the computer-generated webs look amazingly similar to real food webs that have the same number of species and the same level of connectance.

Further tests have confirmed that the niche model does seem to really mimic or tap into some fundamental property of ecosystems. But neither Martinez nor anyone else has yet worked out what “niche distance” means in the real world. The model is anonymous: species are tossed onto the line at random. Before the model can be directly applied to conservation, biologists will have to work out where each particular species in an ecosystem under study should go on the number line.

So far, Martinez says, he only knows what “niche distance” isn’t. It is not a simple body size relationship, although body size seems to be one factor. Nor is it just trophic level, although that too seems to figure in somehow. Rather, the position and breadth of each niche is a complex combination of many ecological and physiological factors.

Although the model is not yet able to serve as an oracle that predicts the future of particular food webs, it has led to the discovery that these networks operate in strikingly similar ways to other kinds of networks—but not the “small worlds” that many had assumed.

Not a Small World After All

You have no doubt heard of the notion that each person is no more than “six degrees of separation” from every other person on Earth. There are many such examples of highly connected networks: Hollywood movie co-stars, U.S. airline routes, chain letters, Internet web sites. All of these collections share two properties. They are “small worlds,” meaning that the elements (actors, airports, web sites, etc.) tend to connect in multiple clusters of various sizes. And these networks are also “scale-free,” which is a technical way of saying that the system is dominated by hubs that have a huge number of links (Kevin Bacon, Chicago O’Hare, Google, etc.).

Scale-free networks tend to be more resistant to widespread collapse than are systems in which elements are linked at random. Because food webs seem stable, many theorists natur-ally assumed that they shared these properties as well.

In fact, food webs usually exhibit neither characteristic, according to recent studies by Martinez and his collaborators including Albert-László Barabási, a leading network theorist. “People wanted to see food webs as scale-free and small world,” Martinez says. “But they just aren’t.”

That is not to say that species aren’t tightly connected. In large communities, both terrestrial and aquatic, more than 95 percent of species are within three links of each other. It is just that they don’t seem to group into clusters the way that social networks typically do.

Rather, food webs tend to take on shapes more reminiscent of the branching patterns seen in river systems and blood vessels. In an intriguing paper this past May, Diego Garlaschelli of the University of Rome and coworkers analyzed the same seven food webs Martinez had studied and found that the exponent in a simple statistical equation was very nearly constant in all seven communities (2). That equation holds for many kinds of natural transportation networks, and Garlaschelli speculates that perhaps food webs are optimized to distribute energy through the ecosystem as efficiently as possible. But as with the niche model, no one yet knows just how to interpret the statistical equation in biological terms.

Inflection Points

It may inhabit the realm of the abstract, but the niche model can still make predictions about the real world. One important prediction of Martinez’s simulations is that ecosystems can react to external pressures in nonlinear ways—in other words, a small push at the wrong place or time can have disproportionately large effects. “It’s a prevalent hypothesis in ecology,” Martinez notes. The idea was popularized decades ago by Paul Ehrlich’s “rivet hypothesis,” which states that removing species from an ecosystem is like extracting rivets from an airplane in midair. The plane can lose a few rivets without failure, but at some point, a wing falls off. “There hasn’t been much data to support the idea, though,” Martinez points out.

That is still true, and yet the niche models clearly predict that large ecosystems, almost regardless of their initial structure, will exhibit such thresholds. The position of the critical points varies quite a bit from one ecosystem to another. But cross that line—remove one species more—and the system takes a much bigger hit than was inflicted by the previous extinction. Small food webs, or those with low connectivity, are already very fragile and can tolerate few or no removals.

Testing these predictions will not be easy. Field biologists would have to reconstruct the order and relationship of extinctions in a community so that they could separate primary extinctions caused directly by human activity from secondary extinctions that occur as the effects ripple through the food web. As an intermediate step, Martinez, Williams, Brose, and Dunne have been working to add another dimension—time—to their ecosystem simulations.

Animating Virtual Life

Adding time means adding a huge amount of biological complexity to the model. A snapshot-like model can ignore many ecological processes that a movie-like simulation must capture. But Martinez knows that if simulation is ever to find use as a predictive tool for improving conservation decisions, it will have to incorporate the many dynamic forces that pull food webs into their distinctive shapes and that drive their responses to outside perturbation.

At Cornell’s supercomputer center, Martinez and his colleagues have been running programs that modify the niche model to include competition for plant nutrients and fighting among predators, avoidance behavior among prey, and the saturation and frustration effects that occur when prey is superabundant or terribly scarce. The programs now track biomass, accounting for metabolic rates and carrying capacities. “This makes for very dynamic models that are much more like what we see in nature,” Martinez says.

Many of these underlying phenomena are themselves nonlinear, which translates into a great deal of prey-switching among predators and counterintuitive results. Because people—even mathematicians—are not good at reasoning about nonlinear systems, computer models such as these could be a big help in understanding the potentially dramatic effects of what may seem minor environmental changes. But nonlinear problems also tend to be exceedingly sensitive to small errors in input data, so it can be dangerous to rely on them until they have been thoroughly tested by field experiments.

When one adds time and all its consequent ecological dynamics to previous food web models, the ecosystems quickly crash, Martinez reports. “But with the niche model, very few species disappear.” That fact in itself, he argues, suggests that the niche model has tapped into some kind of natural law that gives rise to sustainable ecosystems. “The more biology we add into the model, the more stable the food web appears.” The remarkable robustness of food webs governed by these rules, he says, “explains why nature works this way.”

A Silicon Crystal Ball?

Clearly, the next challenge is to move from description toward prediction. “We won’t be able to say: stop fishing this species at this rate and its population will double,” Martinez cautions. “But we might be able to get qualitative predictions that work.”

Martinez has already begun collaborating with Eric Berlow and Sarah Harper-Smith of the University of California White Mountain Research Station and Roland Knapp at the Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Laboratory. Knapp has spent years collecting data on thousands of lakes in the Sierra Nevada to understand the ecological consequences of fish stocking by the California Department of Fish and Game. Knapp was able to show that the nonnative fish were decimating mountain yellow-legged frog (Rana muscosa) populations, among other species. (The state has already begun removing fish from some lakes.)

Berlow, Martinez, and Harper-Smith fed Knapp’s matrix of data into the computer simulation software and were able to visualize how the addition of fish had dramatically changed these aquatic communities. “When we looked at the webs, we realized the community was getting simplified to a much greater extent than we expected just from looking at the lists of species,” Berlow reports. Taxonomic species dropped by 30 percent in the stocked lakes—but the number of distinct trophic actors fell by 40 percent. And whereas in nonstocked lakes the food webs typically broke into several clusters, fish often reduced that structure to a single large group of links.

“Our next step is to incorporate dynamics and use the model to generate predictions of how virgin lakes would change when fish are added,” then to compare those predictions to the actual experience in the Sierra Nevada, Berlow says. If the model proves accurate, it should be able to help managers calculate how many fish, or which species, need to be removed from a lake to avoid damaging the food web.

This year, the National Science Foundation awarded a group of researchers including Martinez $3.8 million to develop ecoinformatic tools for putting together an Internet database of food webs. The “Webs on the web” project will also refine software (which will soon be publicly available at www.foodwebs.org) for analyzing and visualizing ecological networks. That kind of funding tends to make a science more credible and more visible—ready or not.

A Sword with Two Edges

For all the potential usefulness of ecosystem models, there is a potential for misuse as well. The debate over climate change exemplifies how nonlinear models can confuse rather than clarify the understanding of an issue in the minds of the public and political leaders. The day may not be far off when a lobby group or Congressional representative trots out the results of a food web simulation to support some controversial policy decision. What if the models predict that the extinction of a snail darter will not affect the stability of its ecosystem or that only the habitat-wide protection of a spotted owl will prevent a catastrophic collapse of a forest food web?

“I am hyperaware of this potential problem,” Martinez says. “In ecology we tend to brush off the possibility that people could use our good science for bad purposes. But it happens all the time. I think we need to have a lot more discussion about social ethics in ecology. It should be a focus of study.”

A BRIEF HISTORY OF FOOD WEBOLOGY

As he looks back at the dissertation he filed on food web structure in 1991, Martinez seems to take a guilty pleasure at his role in grounding the dominant theories of the time. “Throughout the 1980s,” he recalls, “the idea of scale invariance was rising.” Theorists thought they had identified the equivalent of pi for food webs, mathematical properties that remained constant regardless of the size of an ecosystem.

In a widely cited 1991 review of “Food web patterns and their consequences” in Nature, the noted ecologists John H. Lawton, Stuart L. Pimm, and Joel E. Cohen identified more than half a dozen such scale-invariant patterns. At least in small communities, the ratio of links among species to the number of species seemed roughly constant, for example. The same was thought to be true for the fraction of top (predator-only) species, bottom (prey-only, primary producer) species, and intermediate (both predator and prey) species.

Some empiricists pointed out that the food web surveys on which the theories of fundamental constants had been “proved” were, at best, small and incomplete—in fact, the largest food web cited in the Nature review contained just 33 trophic species. (One trophic species includes all taxa that share the same predators and prey.)

In conjunction with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s project to alter the pH of Little Rock Lake in Wisconsin, Martinez had assembled an unusually comprehensive food web for the lake, comprising 92 species. “My data and another web of 44 species on the Caribbean island of St. Martin came out around the same time,” Martinez recalls. “Both were collected specifically for food web analysis.”

The new and improved data showed that, contrary to the predictions of scale invariance theory, “there is almost nothing out there that doesn’t get eaten, either in juvenile stage or by parasites,” Martinez observes. Omnivory was thought to be rare; the new webs found it to be common. And whereas conventional wisdom held that every species should have about two links to predators and prey, the average number was ten in the Little Rock Lake and about five in the St. Martin Island food web. Exit the “laws” of scale invariance.

Footnote:

1 Richard J. Williams at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, Ulrich Brose at San Francisco State University, and Jennifer A. Dunne at the Santa Fe Institute.

Literature Cited

1. Williams, R.J. and N.D. Martinez. 2000. Simple rules yield complex food webs. Nature 404:180-183.

2. Garlaschelli, D., G. Caldarelli, and L. Pietronero. 2003. Universal scaling relations in food webs. Nature 423:165-168.

Suggested Reading

Williams, R.J. et al. 2002. Two degrees of separation in complex food webs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 99:12913-12916.

Dunne, J.A., R.J. Williams, and N.D. Martinez. 2002. Network structure and biodiversity loss in food webs: Robustness increases with connectance. Ecology Letters 5:558-567.

Brose, U., R.J. Williams, and N.D. Martinez. 2003. A comment on “Foraging adaptation and the relationship between food-web complexity and stability”. Science 301:918.

Dunne, J.A., R.J. Williams, and N.D. Martinez. 2003. Network structure and robustness of marine food webs. Santa Fe Institute Working Paper 03-04-024 and in press at Marine Ecology Progress Series.

About the Author:

W. Wayt Gibbs is senior writer at Scientific American magazine, where he has worked as an editor and reporter since 1992.