Author Archives: Michael Harris

Posts by Michael Harris

Genetics of city-dwelling Norway rats in Baltimore (2009)

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Michael Harris

Gardner-Santana, L.C. Gardner. Norris, D.E. Fornadel, C.M. Hinson, E.R. Klein, S.L. Glass, G.E. 2009. Commensal ecology, urban landscapes, and their influence on the genetic characteristics of city-dwelling Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus). Molecular Ecology. 2766-2778.

Norway rats are found in urban areas and are usually concentrated into high-density populations, such as in Baltimore, Maryland. While there has been significant research on Norway rats in Baltimore since the 1940s, little has been done to genetically characterize (diversity, population structure) this rat population, one that is valuable to society for pest control efforts and measuring rodent-developed diseases that can harm humans. This study aims to explain the ecology and examine the genetic characteristics of Norway rats in Baltimore – a unique population for its short gestation times, high fecundity, dominant hierarchies, and long-distance movement despite coming from “a small number of founders with limited activity ranges” (2767).

A total of 277 Norway rats collected from 11 locations in Baltimore were genotyped, tested for allelic diversity, and other genetic characteristics. “Genetic distances between sample sites” were also calculated (2768). The authors of the study examined “isolation by distance” in order to best understand the “genetic dynamics across Baltimore” (2768). Neighborhood size and the rats’ genetic structuring were estimated using various statistical methods. The authors tried to account for areas in Baltimore that do not support large rat populations by surveying neighborhoods for “signs of rat activity” (2770).

The results of the study support the authors’ hypothesis that “city rat populations would be geographically isolated and genetically structured…However, the biology and ecology of commensal Norway rats temper the genetic isolation and serve to homogenize the global population to a limited geographical extent” (2773). Most rats used in the study could be assigned to a specific capture area, suggesting that there is a geographical limit and elements of isolation to the Norway rat population; yet, there are statistically low levels of philopatry – or, returning to an individual’s birthplace – among this rat population, and moderate levels of genetic structuring that are indicative of the uniqueness of Baltimore city rats.

Because Norway rats in particular are not as genetically isolated as expected in an urban and habitat-fragmented area, the authors of the study recommend that control over urban rat populations “must occur at a larger scale” rather than focusing on independent units of city blocks (2775). The application of the authors’ conclusions may be limited to places such as Baltimore with high and unusually characterized populations of rats, such that in order to apply their conclusions to New York City, one must first consider and account for the differences in neighborhood development between the two cities.

Environmental Groups – Impervious Surfaces

Posted on December 3, 2012 by Michael Harris

Sprawl, defined as  “low-density, land consumptive, centerless, autooriented development, typically located on the outer suburban fringes,” negatively impacts New York City’s water quality and NYC’s drinking water supply watersheds (1). Sprawl’s greatest threat to water quality is the “resulting increase in impervious surfaces,” defined as “surfaces that prevent infiltration of water into soil” (2, 4). As the population of NYC increases and New York continues to develop economically, alternatives must be considered to impervious surfaces in order to protect the state’s water supply, ecosystem services, and biodiversity.

In addition to creating excess pollution, impervious surfaces such as roads, parking lots, and rooftops increase “the volume and magnitude of stormwater and facilitate the delivery of pollutants into receiving waters” (4). This process potentially contaminates receiving waters and can cause significant health issues and illnesses for people consuming this water. For example, “when stormwater scours pollutants off of pavement into surface waters, it can contribute Cryptosporidium and Giardia cysts, which lead to gastrointestinal illnesses and other health problems, from human and animal fecal waste” (4). Impervious surfaces can cause runoff from “suburban residential development,” causing significant water degradation  and water toxicity (4). Also important to note is that stormwater runoff created from impervious surfaces can harm stream biodiversity and can “be directly toxic to organisms or can cause conditions in the receiving waters that are detrimental to aquatic organisms and even humans” (6).

It is critical to municipal and state governments to develop and readily use alternatives to impervious surfaces, such as pervious pavement and gravel pavement. Costs for alternatives may be “higher than traditional pavement, but it can eliminate the need for stormwater drainage and collection systems,” the latter of which refers to impervious surfaces (7). Various innovative legal mechanisms supported by public opinion can incentivize the use of alternative surfaces for private companies and the passing of ordinances and acts that would limit the use of impervious surfaces.

In conclusion, impervious surfaces pose a serious environmental threat to New York City’s water supply and New Yorkers’ general health, and ways to avoid the negative effects of these surfaces should be developed and enacted.

Yaggi Marc. 2001.”Impervious Surfaces in the New York City Watershed.” Fordham Environmental Law Journal Volume 489: 1-32.

 

Questions for Emma Marris

Posted on October 29, 2012 by Michael Harris

1. How do you justify assisted migration to those who dismiss it as having catastrophic consequences on ecosystems?

2. How can rapidly developing countries such as BRIC countries maintain their economic development while protecting their ecosystems from damage, pollution, etc.? How different is maintaining a “rambunctious garden” in the Western world than in the developing world?

3. What specific goals should governments have in mind concerning the ecosystem (preserving ecosystems, biodiversity, etc.)?

4. Do you think the scientific community is as focused as it ever was on the image of pristiness of nature over anything else?

 

Poster Questions

Posted on October 8, 2012 by Michael Harris

1. How are New Yorkers affected by changes in transportation and mass transportation capacity?

2. What neighborhood conditions encourage/discourage obesity for young adults?

3. What neighborhoods have the most dilapidated/deteriorating buildings, and what effects do these buildings have on a neighborhood?

A Menu of New Goals

Posted on October 3, 2012 by Michael Harris

In the tenth and final chapter of Rambunctious Garden, Emma Marris discusses the various goals to act towards nature in the right ways, and concludes simply that “no single goal will work in all situations” (154). While we can approach nature in many different ways, we should approach each separate nature-related problem pragmatically and figure out the best solution to use, according to Marris, even if it involves compromising and having to choose between conservation and human development, essentially.

Marris cites past authors Aldo Leopold and Arne Naess as support for the view and goal that “all living things have intrinsic value and deserve to be protected for their own sakes” (154). Humans are therefore equal to all other species in their value to Earth, and must treat other species as if they were equal to us. This follows from the concept that humans have a moral obligation to protect species, but it takes it much further by saying that “human uses of the land won’t have a privileged place” – which is a bit radical but in a sense nothing new to the anti-human conservation and restoration ecologists that Marris mentions repeatedly (156). A second goal is to protect charismatic megafauna – “large animals that humans like and really don’t want to see extinct,” like polar bears, pandas, and some keystone species (156). The problem with this is that in some places, “keystones push ecosystems in undesirable directions,” like in South Africa, where elephants have turned a landscape from featuring biodiversity to “patchy shrub lands” (157).

Other goals are slowing the rate of extinctions, protecting genetic diversity and biodiversity – the first referring to specific species and the latter used to describe species and their ecosystems – and maximizing ecosystem services, which treats land and species as “valued to the extent that they help out humanity” (163). While all of these goals may have great benefits for conservation, species, and humanity altogether, they have their limits: for example, with the most commonly agreed upon goal, protecting biodiversity, Marris writes that it “may be the most problematic conservation goal precisely because it embraces so much” (163). Additionally, for many of the goals, there are trade-offs to be made, decisions that potentially save one species and let another go extinct, as is the case with  the Endangered Species Act, which says that if “a group of organisms you care about is not deemed to be a species or a subspecies, it might just lose its ticket to protection” (161).

These are questions that society will face for years to come, as more and more developing countries modernize and the human population grows. The rambunctious garden tries to address these issues with pragmatic solutions that take into account a need to preserve nature and a need for society to develop. The garden exists in some places, but Marris’s conclusion suggests that people are too afraid of change and this societal dilemma, and for us to move forward, we all need to manage the Earth in the best way possible, and “embrace it in the right spirit” (171). Yet,  I can’t help but think that trying “just about everything” is too risky for the world, and conservationists have learned from mistakes that Marris failed to consider over and over again (170).

 

Designer Ecosystems and Conservation Everywhere

Posted on October 1, 2012 by Michael Harris

In Chapters 8 and 9 of Rambunctious Garden, Emma Marris continues her attack on societal perceptions on nature and attempts to change most of her readers’ views, using designer ecosystems and the coexistence of nature and industry as examples. From ancient streams that were “more like swamps,” “eucalyptus woodlands” that aren’t “going back to the way it used to be,” and the Duwamish River in Seattle, Marris shows us once again why setting a pristine baseline for nature is impossible, and how we can work with urbanization to diversify and better nature, along with ourselves (123, 129).

Chapter 8 discusses designer ecosystems, which can vary from “restoration projects” primarily focused on a natural image to “building de novo to achieve a particular goal” (125-6). Apparently, ecologists are “beginning to see the possibilities of designing, engineering, cooking up something new,” by focusing in on designer ecosystems that are more associated with the phrase “whatever works” than anything having to do with restoration (126-7). In one example, Galapagos penguins are endangered due to rats in Seattle that eat the penguins, so scientists have reacted not by trying to force the rats out of Seattle but by “drilling more nesting holes into the rocks for the birds” – a compromise, in working with what they have and doing their best to accomplish a specific goal (127). Marris describes designer ecosystems pragmatically, as they work within a modern, urban context without attempting to restore an area to a historical baseline and a pristine wilderness.

Marris continues with this idea of working with what you have in nature in Chapter 9, Conservation Everywhere, in which she talks about the possibilities for a “hybrid future” where nature and industry can successfully co-exist (133). Cari Simson, a staffer at the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition in Seattle, calls this an “eco-industrial vision” – a vision that consists of “making the most out of every scrap of land and water, no matter its condition” and complementing “our wildernesses with conservation everywhere else too, from industrial rivers like the Duwamish to the roofs of buildings and farmer’s fields” (134-5). Marris suggests that one can help conserve wilderness by letting their lawns grow as much as possible, making space available to species on farmers’ acres of land so that they can exist more easily, and changing agricultural practices to make more space for species.

While Marris’s argument is very convincing, it’s almost condescending to me to read some of what she writes – on the last page of Chapter 9, she writes that “(s)treet trees are not just attractive shade-providing devices…Street trees are nature…If conservation is to take place everywhere, we must all learn to see nature as the background to our own lives and not just as islands far away” (151). Are people generally that ignorant to nature, so much so that they can only see “street trees” surrounding them as “shade-providing devices,” and they can only see nature on “islands far away” from their urbanized lives? I don’t think so – people are more thoughtful than that. And for all of the criticism that Marris had earlier for the leading authors of conservation from the 19th Century, she suggests that one of her goals in tying nature to industry is so that people “can take a moment and connect with nature” (143). Wasn’t that what Thoreau and Muir wrote about earlier? People can still find and appreciate nature around them without this dichotomy of pristineness and the Anthropocene that Marris repeats – and this isn’t far from what Muir and Thoreau wrote about centuries ago.

Invasive species as exotic species in novel ecosystems

Posted on September 26, 2012 by Michael Harris

In Chapters 6 and 7 of Rambunctious Garden, Emma Marris reinforces the main concept of this book by using examples of positive change in ecosystems by redefining invasive species as “exotic species” and discussing the need for novel ecosystems rather than exotic ecosystems. She strongly suggests that the ecological and scientific community has been stubborn on studying new ecosystems and, once again, changing their beliefs in a baseline, except the baseline now features all native species.

Apparently, scientists have turned their back on the so-called and negatively phrased invasive species that have in some cases “turned out to help rather than hinder” ecosystems all over the world (98). The “culture of fighting ‘invasive species’ is very well entrenched in conservation,” writes Marris, and “one hear a lot more about these villains” – harmful invasive species –  “than the shier foreigners, and for many ecologists and conservationists, they have become the enemy” (98-9). The aim of governments for decades has been to make ecosystems invaded by other species “livable for native plants” and appropriate for unyielding conservationists, who stick to their beliefs despite the research that defies them (101).

Marris proves to us that “extinctions that are directly attributable to introduced species are quite rare,” and that ecosystems are “much messier, more dynamic, and more complex than the black-and-white battle metaphors can capture” (104). In some cases such as in Hawaii, introduced species, formally invasive, are “taking over roles once performed by extinct native species” and hybridizing with native species in no harm to their ecosystems (105). And these places are novel ecosystems: “new, human-influenced combinations of species that can function as well or better than native ecosystems and provide for humans with ecosystem services of various kinds” (112).

When some novel ecosystems are compared to the native and relatively unaltered ones, they are “richer in species, had greater aboveground biomass, and used nutrients more efficiently” (113). Native and nonnative species exist in hybrids or in diverse mixes, where forests in Puerto Rico and so-called praires in the Midwest of the US flourish. Marris continues criticizing conservationists, by saying that they were “more interested in maximizing the number of native species than in minimizing the number of ecosystems,” blatantly ignoring the potential to assess positive change in various ecosystems (121). Instead, they pursue their own goals, whether or not writers like Marris and like-minded ecologists can persuade governments to change their attitudes and adapt, just like their environments have.

While Marris’s argument is overall very convincing, the scope of applying exotic species to worldwide ecosystems is limited; there’s a reason that she devotes a couple of pages in Chapter 6 to discuss the often disastrous consequences of exotic species in ecosystems, and why they have been called invasive species by the scientific establishment for so long. Additionally, not all ecosystems are novel, meaning that they’ve in a positive way – many simply haven’t, and they won’t for years to come. Lastly, Marris portrays the scientific community in more and more of a negative light for each chapter that she writes; I’m not so sure if they’re as stubborn and outdated in thought as she makes them out to be.

Stalter, Marris, and the High Line

Posted on September 23, 2012 by Michael Harris

So far, we have discussed Emma Marris’s Rambunctious Garden extensively, a book that criticizes old-fashioned efforts of conservation and considers a new image of nature, existing in our very own backyards, from rural to urban places.  Additionally, as background for this assignment, we read Richard Stalter’s The flora on the High Line, a piece that aims to “document the licens, bryophytes and vascular plants present at the High Line” by listing data sets on the different species that exist on the High Line (389). My visit to the High Line confirmed much of what Stalter said in terms of the species diversity at the High Line, and it supported Marris’s concept of a rambunctious garden, although not entirely.

Small Bird by 14th St

Pollinators such as birds and honey bees were present along with a diverse population of plants throughout the High Line. Colors and variations of the plants had a wide range, from grasslands full of red forbs to tall, ordinarily colored thickets full of shrubs. This follows in line with what Stalter calls the two main “plant communities exist[ing] on the High Line, the forb/grassland community and successional thicket community” (389).

Forbs in Grassland Sections

In the second picture, you can see the dominance of two types of forb sections adjacent to one another. This diversity is found throughout the High Line, as is shown in the other pictures shown here. Also, the presence of shrub and grassland communities side-by-side in some places verifies Stalter when he says that shurbs were “components of both the forb/grassland and…thicket communities described above” (389).

Diverse Flora around 28th St

The High Line’s species richness is due to humans, who have “probably inadvertently transported seeds to the site, a source of new species,” according to Stalter. This would also probably fall in line with Marris’s rambunctious garden, which certainly emphasizes human involvement in nature and a history of invasive, nonnative species all around the world.

More Diversity around 28th St

However, the “selective maintenance to arrest plant succession [that] will be needed to maintain and preserve the present assemblage of vascular plant species” that Stalter describes is too similar to the ironic controlled wildernesses that Marris encounters and highlights in a negative light in her book (388). Yet, does this maintenance and conservation relate to the idea of pristine nature that Marris uses so heavily as a point of criticism? It certainly could, but the High Line is half wilderness and half for tourists, like Yellowstone Park – I don’t think Marris would completely support the High Line’s existence.

The walkway for the High Line, surrounded by thickets and flora

The High Line was essentially abandoned and left to various species to colonize the area and form communities successively; and now, it is a popular tourist destination and place of “natural beauty” for all New Yorkers to freely enjoy, surrounded by condominiums and construction. Even if Marris thinks that the natural beauty of a place like this is a flawed, politically correct image, I can’t help but think instinctually that the High Line should be conserved for exactly that.

Screenshots & Interpretations of the DOH Portal

Posted on September 13, 2012 by Michael Harris

The Department of Health Portal provides an amazing range of data regarding the quality of New York City’s neighborhoods, in an attempt to inform the public about how “safe” their neighborhoods really are.

While New York City has an average of 6.6% of households that are boarded up, Brooklyn has by far the highest rate of boarded up households at 10.9%. The 99,292 boarded up households in Brooklyn represent close to half of the total boarded up houses in NYC, which is 201,374 households, and the 8,088 boarded up households in Staten Island represent a significantly smaller percentage of households in NYC. This implies that Brooklyn’s total number of households and population density may be higher than other boroughs, in addition to noting “normal” levels of boarded up households in every other borough and much higher levels in Brooklyn.

Based on this graph, one can observe that highest levels of households in deteriorating or dilapidated buildings and poverty were in 2008, when a recession occurred, leaving many New Yorkers in poor households and poverty according to this graph. The good news is that poverty levels decreased from 10.8% to 8.5% from 2008 to 2011, returning to close to 2005 levels at 8.1%; however, high poverty and deteriorating buildings remain a huge concern for NYC neighborhoods, with the highest levels in each year in the “High Poverty” category.

Apparently, there is a positive correlation between 3 or more reported maintenance deficiencies and carbon monoxide incidents. While the majority of neighborhoods are scattered at the left-hand side of the graph with low rates of incidence on both axes, high levels of carbon monoxide incidents occur between 10 to 20 reported maintenance deficiencies: although the graph starts out proportionally, data on the y-axis (carbon monoxide incidents) increases at a high rate while data on the x-axis progresses accordingly. Additionally, one can conclude from this graph that neighborhoods with high levels of maintenance deficiencies in the home are associated with relatively high levels of carbon monoxide incidents, despite it being unlikely that the highest levels of both variables occur at the same time.

Over time, households with peeling paint in pre-1960 buildings have decreased in New York City from 1999 to 2008. However, Queens and the Bronx have had a steady level of households with peeling paint, whereas every other borough has had significant drops at some point in the graph. Also, Staten Island remains well below every other borough – so there could be a positive relation between households with peeling paint in pre-1960 buildings and population density.

This graph tells us that in 2008, households requiring a secondary source of heat occurred most severely in the northernmost parts of New York City, mainly in the Bronx and Flushing/Whitestone. Also, more households that require a secondary source of heat exist in the middle of Brooklyn, around Bedford-Stuyvesant, and overall most neighborhoods require a secondary source of heat at levels above 10%.

Assisted Migration and Urbanization

Posted on September 12, 2012 by Michael Harris

In Chapter 5 of Rambunctious Garden, Emma Marris discusses assisted migration – a process by which “species move around slowly, in geological timescales, often in response to climate shifts,” and humans assist animals in their movement (80). Climate change has had severe effects on the Earth, causing species to go extinct in some places and relocate in others; we now have a world “in which some places get more rain, others less, and climate patters become, on the whole, less predictable” (74). While humans seek to protect some species by quite literally transporting them to more suitable places in terms of climate, assisted migration remains risky because the species could go extinct or become a “dreaded invasive species that takes over and pushes out native species” in their new home (72). In addition to being relatively useful as a scientific tool, as the world continues to urbanize at rapid rates according to Puth and Burns’s New York’s nature, it’s worth considering further protection and guarantees of existence for rare species.

Scientists remain split on assisted migration, for the most part: Marris writes that “scientists are pretty freaked out by the whole idea” (78). The assisted migration movement is led by people like Unitarian activist Connie Barlow, who went as far as to “put up a website” defending her stance along with other citizens (81). Despite citizen passion for the idea, scientists held off on debating it mainly out of fear and the lack of an established baseline; ecologist Mark Schwartz wrote in an editorial that without “a baseline we have no target…every kind of management, including those that result in lost native species, is arguably a success. I fear such success” (80). Yet, against scientists’ resistance, “British Columbia became the first political unit to start systematically moving its trees” because climate chance was causing destruction by forest fire and dangerous species outbreak in the form of pine beetles – clearly, “something had to be done” (91).

Measuring the good and bad of ecological change is difficult in British Columbia and other urban, densely populated places. Puth and Burns discuss this further and show the general declines in species richness in New York City, New Jersey, and Connecticut, but they mention that they “found relatively few studies reporting location-specific species richness data in the New York metropolitan area” (16). As is the case in British Columbia where trees “may have a vigorous first few years and then slow down, as the climate changes, to something it is not prepared for,” studies on species in New York City lacked much significant data, according to Puth and Burns (92). In other words, for scientists to better understand concepts like assisted migration, they must not only debate the idea but do more research, short-term and long-term, on urban environments across the world. Until this is done, the majority of citizens and scientists will remain hesitant on assisted migration, which may be useful as a scientific tool in limited circumstances but not yet for widespread future use.

 

Rewilding

Posted on September 11, 2012 by Michael Harris

In Chapters 3 and 4 of Rambunctious Garden, author Emma Marris introduces us to a new concept, “rewilding” – proposing that “the main factors necessary to keep ecosystems resilient and diverse are the regulation provided by large, top-of-the-food-chain predators; the room for these predators to do their work; and connections between predator ranges so they can meet, mate, and maintain a healthily diverse gene pool” (60).  In this way, radical conservationists in favor of rewilding intend to create ecosystems that resemble an extremely distant era without human interference. Rewilding as conservation is truly radical, in that in previous chapters, we learned of the pristine wilderness that conservationists have continually envisioned; yet, rewilding introduces a place of true wilderness, although it is paradoxically controlled by humans and scientists like an experiment.

Rewilding is a new concept to ecology, led as a movement by scientists and conservationists who adore a past when “nature lived wild and large, when hairy mastodons and elephantine sloths heaved their bulk around the continent, and when deadly predators were big, fast and ubiquitous” (61). However bizarre this may sound, rewilding has its appeal in reintroducing animals to the islands “they formerly inhabited” and preventing them from going extinct in their current location (61). Relocation of these animals assumes that one animal would play another “lost” animal’s part in a new place, where predators could regulate themselves as they would have in an ancient wilderness; yet, this is risky and precarious, as it relies on these assumptions far too heavily for them to succeed. One professor that Marris quotes says that “(a)ttempting to fill gaps that closed long ago with proxy animals could generate unpredictable results” (65).

Also, in order to maintain such a wild ecosystem, the “rewilded animals would be carefully separated from human habitation and intensely managed…the concept tends to reinforce the line between humans and nature, rather than blurring it” (63). Why should humans continue to interfere with animals if the purpose of rewilding is to go back to a time of no human interference? If anything, animals and ecosystems have adapted and evolved, as Marris showed in previous chapters. All this does is reinforce Marris’s point of working with an urban landscape and forgetting the idea of a pristine or wild wilderness.

Nevertheless, rewilding isn’t all bad. It encourages biodiversity and the protection of animals that are at risk of going extinct. In the Netherlands, ecologist Vera maintained a hands-off approach initially by successfully letting geese graze and cattle and horses mow to prevent the growth of a forest in the Oostvaardersplassen, a huge landscape that is controlled to look as it is supposed to look as it did 10,000 years ago. Certainly rewilding is a little bit redeemable, in how it intends to protect rare species – and it may be successful in doing so. However, the ultimate goal of rewilding concerns a warped world of nature conservation, where humans control and experiment with animal interactions – and what does it all prove?

Revisiting History and Discussing a Better Future for Nature in “Rambunctious Garden”

Posted on September 3, 2012 by Michael Harris

Emma Marris in the first two chapters of her book Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World makes her main points clear: that “there is one thing that nature is not: pristine,” humans “are already running the whole Earth,” and it’s too difficult and time-consuming for society to turn back the clock and attempt to conserve parts of the world as if they were untouched by humans (2). She goes through several examples around the world as evidence that the past and present efforts of conservation are invalid, discussing such ideas as the “baseline” in-depth and evaluating conservationism in America from Thoreau to today’s ecologists following in his steps accordingly. The idea that nature is peaceful, undisturbed, and stable is false, according to Marris, and there must be changes in the way society visualizes nature and the ways in which we approach the topic, from an ecological and topical standpoint.

One of the examples that she uses to demonstrate her points takes place in Hawaii, where presently “half of the plants in Hawaii are nonnative,” and study plots used by other scientists to restore tiny parts of forests back to its supposed pristine state appear “a bit sad and empty, like someone’s living room in the middle of a move-out” (6-7). Apparently, efforts to restore plots like these have failed, as “the mature native trees had grown very little,” and the trees were being restored by humans, ironically: after all, why should humans interfere with a typical ecosystem, that changes frequently and has very little stability? Marris elaborates more on this idea in the second chapter, when she says that “(g)enerations of field ecologists tried to make their observations fit this model, but the real world was stubbornly unpredictable” (29). Although the instabilities of ecosystems have been confirmed decades ago, the “assumption of stability is still with us and is as tenacious as ever” (30).

Marris talks extensively about the history of conservationism, rooted in Europe and America where writers such as Wordsworth and Thoreau criticized their urban neighbors and surroundings, wanting to escape them and explore the solitude and balance that is only found in places away from rustling towns and people. Yet, using Thoreau as an example, some of these writers detested the wilderness, contrary to what most people would believe: he “actually preferred a middle ground between the truly wild and the truly civilized” (20). Another famous conservations John Muir furthered the “wilderness cult” by “trying to bring civilized humans to God through the glory of His mountains and forests,” believing that the wilderness “must not be changed radically to suit man” (21). It was and is “nature for nature’s sake,” a purely human invention that harms the way in which humans can co-exist with their environment.

Hopefully more changes have been taken on by governments, ecological organizations, and other entities to shift our conservation efforts towards the future by accounting for human dominance; yet, a change in Western culture and attitude towards nature will take quite a while, as the world continues to urbanize and people run out of space for their so-called “solitude.”

The Challenges of Conservation and Human Domination

Posted on August 29, 2012 by Michael Harris

In Conservation in the Anthropocene, authors Marvier, Kareiva, and Lalasz question the integrity of most popular, and largely corporate, efforts being made to conserve nature, as the authors suggest that nature “has always been a human construction” and that it has displaced millions for purposes of protecting the pristine image of nature (6). While the authors in this article took a more sociological approach to justifying their theses, Vitousek, Mooney, Lubcehnco, and Melillo write from a scientific perspective in Human Domination of Earth’s Ecosystems. Despite the differences in writing, the two articles express similar ideas and deal with two main themes, the Anthropocene and urban ecology, discussing them in great detail and trying to solve the dilemma of a growing human domination, expanded urbanization, and severe and potentially permanent alterations in the Earth’s ecosystem.

Kareiva et al. call this era of human domination on Earth the “Anthropocene – to emphasize that we have entered a new geological era in which humans dominate every flux and cycle of the planet’s ecology and geochemistry” (6). The Anthropocene has changed ecology by essentially urbanizing it permanently: because there is no place on Earth left untouched by humans, as both articles state quite clearly, we must understand that “most aspects of the structure and functioning of Earth’s ecosystems cannot be understood without accounting for the strong, often dominant influence of humanity” (Vitousek et al., 1). For example, humanity has had a very large impact on land by transforming it and thereby altering “the structure and function of ecosystems, and…how ecosystems interact with the atmosphere”; however, the impact is not positive, as Vitousek et al. clearly demonstrate through many examples and facts, such as “the loss of biological diversity worldwide” with land transformation or the unnatural and harmful human fixing of nitrogen in the atmosphere (495, 497).

One would be led to think that humans should work to conserve more and reduce our dramatic impact on the Earth’s ecosystems in order to protect and preserve it. However, Kareiva et al. counter that conservation is outdated, harmful to the economic development of indigenous and developing peoples around the world, and that it needs to be more “people-friendly…to attend more seriously to working landscapes” (2). Kareiva et al. do not suggest in any way that we should stop efforts of conservation – rather, they see conservation as ineffective, and both articles would probably agree that current methods of conservation should account for urbanization for every step of the way.

Both articles struggle to help find “the right kind of development” for today’s world – that is, how do we conserve while still growing and urbanizing? While Kareiva et al. don’t see typical wildlife parks and hiking trails as major positive steps towards conservation, they may still be valid, and the old-school conservationists, portrayed as stubborn by Kareiva et al., may have a point. Rather than seek to overhaul this approach, society should absolutely work towards “economic development for all” without having to displace any people or harm Earth’s ecosystems severely (8). Hopefully, we can work locally with communities to avoid the terrible trade-off of letting people live harmfully versus displacing them and protecting nature; perhaps more effort should be taken in New York City to do exactly this.

Comments by Michael Harris