Energy Poll

[Wong & Owens]

When I walk to the bus stop there are effects on animal life.

 

We, as members of the world should take steps to reduce the proverbial footstep we leave on the earth.

 

There will be effects on wildlife, everything is interconnected.

 

 

Zero population growth. Catch the fever!

[FlaSoxxJim]

Zero population growth.  Catch the fever!

And cut the vasa!

[Rex Kickass]

On issues like these, I for one am REALLY glad you're around here, Flaxx.  It's great to see someone who knows what they are really talking about and is not spewing political BS (at least on this issue... )

 

 

I'd have to agree here. I haven't spoken to a whole lot of scientists who find this a great idea. But then again, I haven't spoken to a whole lot of scientists either.

[YASNY]

As for the caribou numbers... pointing to a "1000% increase in numbers in the last 30 years only indicates the populations are very likely cyclical. The numbers in no way suggest that human presence is responsible for the increase, but the people that point to these numbers as an indication that animal populations are safe sure want you to believe it.

 

Just call this a hunch, but if the cyclical nature of these numbers had been reversed, I believe it would have been another point you would have brought into the discussion, showing that "human presence is responsible" for the decrease. The people that would have been pointing to those numbers as an indication that animal populations are not safe sure would want us to believe it.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Just call this a hunch, but if the cyclical nature of these numbers had been reversed, I believe it would have been another point you would have brought into the discussion, showing that "human presence is responsible" for the decrease.  The people that would have been pointing to those numbers as an indication that animal populations are not safe sure would want us to believe it.

You are probably right, and to be sure large-scale temporal variation in populations is so confounding to ecologists. It's one more level of resolution superimposed on all of the proximate causal mechanisms we can wrap our brains around and it is tough. That's a key treason we don't stop with just a comparison of numbers at time A to time B. In this instance, for example, looking not just at a numerical response but at HOW the habitat is being utilized strongly suggests that the numerical response is occurring despite human impact rather than because of it, since calving grounds have moved into arguably substandard natural areas and away from the human footprint.

 

There's some great detective work that has gone on to tease out the causes for these kinds of population cycles. The textbook example for large mammals is from right up in Alaska and northern BC. In this cse the situation was pretty much what you suggest might happen - ecologists were pinning essentially all the blame for seal and otter density declines on human impacts. Then anthropologists started to dig through centuries-old strata of Inuit middens (garbage mounds basically). They saw that there was good evidence that at least the otter and numbers had gone up and down in somewhat regular cycles during that time in maybe 50-year or so oscillations. When these animals were abundant, their bones were present in teh garbage piles, indicating use by the tribes. When their numbers were too low to effectively exploit, the middens show that the tribes switched over to fish and shellfish. Work has continued and shown that a lot of it was tied into kelp and sea urchin densities at the time. If sea urchins were abundant that meant a good food resource for the otters, resource conflicts for kelps, etc. When urchins were scarce the otter populatiosn tracked those low densities correspondingly.

 

That said, conservation-minded science has rarely had the good fortune of throwing up simply the sets of before- and after- population numbers and have them stick to the wall as far as resource use policy change is concerned. It's usually, 'no, this is not conclusive,' and environmentally dubious policies and practices remain unchanged. In the ANWR case, by contrast, the large caribou numbers are being presented in debate as if they were as a cogent body of evidence supporting no effect or even an enhancement effect of the human footprint on the populations. Worse still, this is being carelessly extrapolated to allow pro-drilling voices to make outlandish claims of no negative impact on ALL ANWR wildlife, when evidence in support of such claims is quite lacking.