Author Archives: Yana Manevich

Posts by Yana Manevich

Downstate (NYC) stakeholder’s and the NYC Water Supply

Posted on November 30, 2012 by Yana Manevich

From the POV of downstate stakeholders (i.e. New York City and surrounding residents):

New York City is home to more than 9 million urban dwellers, as well as countless businesses that thrive on the one billion plus gallons of clean drinking water traveling from Upstate New York to New York City each day. The quality of our drinking water is among the best in the world, and keeping it that way requires a lot of management, which is why it is important to ensure the protection of the upstate watersheds. If this doesn’t continue to happen, the city will be forced to build a filtration plant to filter the incoming water supply, which is estimated to cost upwards of $10 billion to construct and $100 million annually to operate, which would undoubtedly be reflected in our taxes, as well as in a water rate increase of approximately 30%, burning an even deeper hole in New Yorkers’ pockets.

According to plaNYC, New York is currently implementing the Watershed Protection Program, which is “a unique strategy that combines protection, land acquisition, and environmentally-sustainable economic development to maintain the high quality of our water supply”. According to plaNYC, this program will also work with local stakeholders in the form of loans to local businesses to support tourism, hospitality, manufacturing and other areas, as well as rehabilitating residential and community septic systems around the watersheds.

Another huge part of this watershed maintenance and protection initiative has to do with protecting New York’s water supply from hydrofracking. Since some of our watershed lay above to Marcellus Shale, numerous gas companies are trying to get permission from local authorities to extract this natural gas. However, this will undoubtedly be harmful to our water supply and if this were to take place, a filtration system would definitely be necessary, which is another reason the state vehemently opposes natural gas fracturing on our watershed land.

Although this maintenance program may be costly and somewhat of a burden to upstate residents in terms of land use and development, the pros far outweigh the cons, and especially costs of building a filtration system, which is the only plausible alternative for now. It is important to maintain the quality of our drinking water that billions of New Yorkers are used to and depend on everyday and try to offset potential filtration costs as much as possible.

“PlaNYC 2030 – The Plan – Water Supply.” PlaNYC 2030 – The Plan – Water Supply. N.p., n.d. <http://www.nyc.gov/html/planyc2030/html/theplan/watersupply.shtml>.

 

Questions For Emma Marris

Posted on October 26, 2012 by Yana Manevich

1. In the next 15-20 years, how do you see conservation ecology changing? Where do you see think these changes will be begin and/or be most prevalent?

2. What would be your ideal approach to the conservation of New York City’s urban ecology and wildlife specifically? Do you think we are headed in the right direction with the various initiatives the city has taken on?

3. Of the seven goals you listed in your final chapter, which do you find to be most important? How would you prioritize them, whether by importance or feasibility?

4. The topics of a few of your chapters to me seemed very radical and controversial. Realistically, do you think Pleistocene rewilding or designer ecosystems will ever become accepted in the ecological community, or ever become common practice?

Poster Questions

Posted on October 8, 2012 by Yana Manevich

1. Does proximity to biodiversity have an effect on cancer rates or birth defects?

2. Does the high concentration of gas emissions in New York have an effect on the type of plants that thrive in New York City? Do some plants build up resistance to emissions?

3. Is there a correlation between population density in New York City and the level of biodiversity in the area? What differences in health factors are most prevalent between the areas with a lot of biodiversity and not as much?

Rambunctious Garden: Chapter 10

Posted on October 3, 2012 by Yana Manevich

Marris’ concluding chapter lists a series of common goals that she says need to be met for these new, alternative conservationist ideas to be plausible. However, setting up common goals proves to be easier said than done, since there are so many opinions floating around these hotly debated conservation issues. Firstly, there are the ethical arguments of who has rights to what, how to define intrinsic value, and whether one thing in nature can be sacrificed for the goodness of something else. Advocating for individual species can be just as hard, as Marris points out it is often “ extremely political and highly emotional” (page 157). Protecting diversity also proves difficult as a result of various laws and acts with hard-to-define or unenforceable policies. Another of her goals, Maximizing ecosystem services, seems to be a plausible goal with a very strong argument, that even she agrees seems to be very popular among conservationists today – we have a finite number of resources, and with our growing population, unless we take care of the ecosystems which help provide us with those resources, we may one day run out. Even this goal however, while favorable, does not seem very concrete. In fact, it seemed to me that Marris’ concluding chapter and the arguments she tried to make was very vague, and almost discredited all the specific ideas and themes she has brought up throughout the book.

While I did appreciate the fact that in this final chapter Marris acknowledged the many unavoidable difficulties and challenges that will undoubtedly arise before any of her earlier proposals can come to fruition, I think that making these the main focus of her concluding chapter really undermined the arguments made. While I agree that we must be realistic with our goals, be open about the costs associated with them, and acknowledge the political and ethical battles they may spark, ending her book on that note may not have been the best idea in my opinion. Her conclusions, while admirably realistic, left me feeling a bit underwhelmed. What could have sparked a call to action instead left me with restrictive thoughts in my mind, and I couldn’t help but to go over all her previous themes in my head – rewilding, designer ecosystems, assisted migration – and think of all the difficulties and challenges that would stand in the way of their application.

I enjoyed Marris book as a whole, I wholeheartedly agree that it is time to drop the traditional conservationist “baseline” ideas and accept that we have forever altered our planet and there is no turning back. Instead, we should all work to make sure nature and humans can coexist in the mutually beneficial relationships that can come out of many of Marris’ proposals. The Rambunctious Garden is the future of conservation in my opinion, especially in an urban setting such as NYC, and I can only hope that I can see that future begin to come to fruition during my lifetime.

Rambunctious Garden – Chapters 8 & 9

Posted on September 30, 2012 by Yana Manevich

In Chapter 8 of her book, Marris talks about the concept of “designer ecosystems”, opening with a story about the archetypal “streams” we, along with most ecologists, all imagine – a clear line of water flowing down a cliff or mountain. These are the types of streams restoration ecologists have been trying to recreate, until it was recently discovered that the streams in the eastern United States, were actually more like ponds than streams in early history. As a result, numerous streams have been torn down, in an effort to start all over and recreate this new revelation of what they looked like before, which in Marris’ view, is rather fruitless. The alternative to this, is as she puts it, a designer ecosystem, where instead of restoring an entire ecosystem, you design or reengineer it to fit specific goals that can make the area better, or help a certain species (page 125).  She gives another example of this idea of reengineering, the plight to save the Galapagos Penguin. Rats that have been introduced to the area where these penguins live eat the chicks, resulting in the species’ endangerment. However, instead of getting rid of the invasive rats, scientists have drilled more nesting holes for the penguins, which would allow them to reproduce in greater numbers, hopefully allowing the species as a whole to stay ahead of the species reductions caused by rats (page 128). Interestingly enough, this example particularly also adds to her point from her previous chapters, about how invasive species don’t necessarily need to be killed off to prevent damage to ecosystems, and that there are ways around it – such as in this penguin instance.

Proponents of these designer ecosystems envision a world covered in “managed nature, designed to support humans and other species” (page 132), while those who oppose it argue that they prefer more “island civilizations”, where humans and nature are kept separate, with humans in dense urban cities, and the rest of the planet left alone for nature to thrive. Marris, on the other hand, hopes for a combination of both – that ecologists will come around to seeing the benefits of these engineered ecosystems that allow humans and nature to co-exist, but also leave some areas wild and untouched, just to see what can come of them.

In Chapter 9, titled “Conservation Everywhere”, Marris begins to tie together the ideas and themes that she has been weaving throughout the preceding chapters of her book. She writes, “rewilding, assisted migration, and embracing some exotic species and novel ecosystems may seem like disparate strategies, but they are all at some level about making the most of every scrap of land and water, no matter its condition” (page 135). She emphasizes that connectivity to nature is key in conserving it, and that scientists must bring together all types of land to create that connectivity. “Ideally, reserves should be scientifically designed to achieve conservation goals agreed upon by interested parties while being sensitive to the needs of the people who now live or once lived on the sites in question” (page 138). She goes on to provide very interesting examples of ways such connectivity can occur – she mentions Ford Dearborn truck assembly plant in Michigan, and the Hostess Cupcake factory in New Jersey, and how they both now feature green roofs, which replicate ecosystems and create a home for various plants and bugs while at the same time, reducing water run-off and counteracting the urban heat island effect. I believe that this is a perfect example of the Rambunctious Garden Marris has been advocating for throughout the entire book – a mutually beneficial conservation strategy ideal for the urban setting.

Rambunctious Garden: Chapters 6 & 7

Posted on September 28, 2012 by Yana Manevich

In Chapters 6 & 7 of her novel, Marris focuses on “invasive” or “exotic” species and the idea of emerging “novel ecosystems”, which, according to an ecologist she spoke to named Erle Ellis, now take up around 35% of the world’s ice-free land (pg 120). Species that have been introduced to ecosystems where they have not been found before are referred to as exotic species, or nonnative. However, it is when those species begin to cause problems in the ecosystems they have inhabited – by preying on native species, taking all the native species’ food supply, etc. – that they become “invasive”, and largely viewed by ecologists as a problem that needs to be eradicated.

Marris gives a number of examples of such “invasive” species that have wreaked havoc on the ecosystems they have been introduced to. She mentions the case of the Stephen Island’s flightless wren, which was driven to extinction by a population of feral cats that were accidently let loose on the island (page 98), as well as zebra mussles of the Great Lakes, flammable cheatgrass, and the Asian tiger mosquito, each of which have caused significant damage to the areas where they have been introduced.

However, Marris then goes on to suggest that perhaps we are overreacting about the issues these invasive species cause, and that we should re-examine our attitudes towards them, instead of spending countless money, manpower and resources trying to get rid of them. She points to various examples of introduced, exotic species that have not been harmful to their habitats, and in some cases have even helped save some of the native species from extinction, as the case with the Turkey Oaks which helped keep Britain’s blue tits from going extinct (page 106). She also mentions how we have spent so many resources making sure these exotic species don’t flourish, for fear of “genetic pollution, as the case with the ruddy duck and the white-headed duck in the UK (page 109), when there is really no need for these efforts and all that the cross-breeding of these ducks was doing was creating a new species, as part of the “novel ecosystems” Marris advocates for.

Marris expands on the idea of novel ecosystems in Chapter 7, where she mentions ecologists Lugo and Mascaro, who are proponents of such ecosystems, where introduced and native species can live together and flourish in diverse mixes, something which many traditional ecologists are still weary about. She mentions the example of the “mango forest”, a novel ecosystem where mangos that were planted a while ago have flourished and created a forest of many exotic species otherwise not found in the area. Marris says that these novel ecosystems represent the future of our planet, and whether this is so I’m not sure, but something tells me there may be more to this than mentioned in these chapters, since these invasive species must be hated by so many ecologists and conservationists for a reason, and Marris seemed to have brushed off that hatred rather quickly.

The Highline

Posted on September 22, 2012 by Yana Manevich

Walking through The Highline, a bustling, new park created from an abandoned railroad track running along 10th avenue from West 34th Street to Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District, it’s hard to picture it as anything but a tourist attraction. However, if you take a closer look, it becomes apparent that The Highline is also home to a number of unique plant and pollinator species. Different sections of the walkway feature a variety of different plants and flowers, along with which come the pollinators – in any given area where there are flowers, there are groups of bees and other insects circling the area.

The Highline, in my opinion, is a perfect example of Emma Marris’ idea of a “Rambunctious Garden”. Here, in the middle of a crowded New York City, sits an elevated park surrounded by nature you can’t find anywhere else in the vicinity. Plants, flowers, and trees line the sides of the busy park, as tourists and residents alike line the walkways, admiring the nature, the views, taking in some sun, among other leisurely activities. This combination of people and nature is exactly the essence of the kind of anthropocene that Marris imagines, one in which each compliments the other. The nature of The Highline is one of its main attractions for people, and those same people are the ones helping preserve that natural element of the park. Instead of a world where people and nature are constantly at odds, creating a “rambunctious garden” such as The Highline combines the best of both worlds, allowing us to live with nature while also preserving it.

Richard Stalter’s article about the flora of The Highline, which existed long before the transformative project took place, does not do much to change my opinion regarding the rambunctious garden that has been created as a result. Although Stalter’s article mentions a number of various species and families of plants that have sprung up on The Highline as a result of its long abandon, I don’t think that this project has taken away from it’s natural composition. Before, while it may have been more ecologically diverse and untouched, it was basically an abandoned wasteland in the middle of the city. It had no recreational or aesthetic value, so it was largely a waste of space. With this new project, although largely ‘engineered’ in the sense of which species were introduced to the area, it’s natural element was preserved and even actively enhanced. This new Highline creates the perfect balance of nature and human recreation, which I see as a great idea for the future of our conservation efforts, especially in urban settings such as New York City.

Assisted Migration

Posted on September 12, 2012 by Yana Manevich

Assisted Migration, by definition, is the practice of moving a species from their natural habitat to a new region – usually in response to the degrading effects human presence has had on their original habitats. In theory, be definition alone, the idea seems to be more realistic, ethical, and plausible than the previously mentioned “rewinding” concept.

Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, the reason assisted migration sounds to me like a better scientific tool than rewilding is because there is actually a demonstrated need for it, and its main point is to help save species. In both Marris’ chapter on the issue as well as in Puth and Burns’ article, there are examples of species who have been dying out in their original habitat, mostly due to the anthropogenic changes in their ecosystems. Marris, for example, mentions the American pika, which cannot live in temperatures warmer that 78 degrees. The American pika has all but disappeared from lowlands and has been forced to make its way up mountains to stay in it’s comfort zone. However, even those mountains are warming up, and for the pika to go up another mountain, it must first come down – which it cannot do without dying. Similarly, Puth and Burns’ article mentions how many of the species studied in the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut areas have shown decreasing species richness as a result of urbanization. For situations such as these, assisted migration seems to be a logical and ethical solution to help try keep these species alive, especially when they cannot help themselves, as in the case of the American pika.

Whether this practice will be useful to ecosystems, remains to be an unanswered question. Like with rewilding, because the idea is so new, there is not a lot of predictability in its implementation. There is no way to know how a species will react to its new environment, and it is possible, as was pointed out in Marris’ chapter that, perhaps the species’ old environment had some sort of unknown soil microbe or something of that nature which the new environment does not have (79); there is no way to predict those sort of variables. Similarly, there is also the fear that the species may become an invasive species in its new habitat, driving out the native species.

Because of the uncertainty that comes along with toying with nature, I believe that these waters should be treaded carefully, and only be used when necessary to save a species, not just for experimentation purposes.

Rambunctious Garden Chapters 3 & 4: A Critical Responce to Rewilding

Posted on September 8, 2012 by Yana Manevich

Rewilding, according to Marris’ book, is described as a conservation effort aimed at designing or redesigning brand new ecosystems, focusing less on what the area would have looked like had humans never stepped foot on it, but more on what it looked like even further into the past. Because of all the animals that have since gone extinct, ecologists would use “proxies” for those lost species, animals taken out of other habitats and put into these new ones the essentially play the role of the extinct species.

Not surprisingly, the idea is quite controversial, and in my opinion, pretty hypocritical coming from ecologists who constantly argue that humans have degraded nature by interfering with it too much. This idea of “rewilding” takes the concept of human intervention to the extreme, with humans essentially engineering and creating their own ecosystems. As one of the critics cited in Marris’ book says about the idea, it has humans playing god, which we have no right to do.

Additionally, aside from the questionable ethics that come along with this idea, there are also a number of scientific and logical questions that arise. As ecologist Josh Donlan pointed out in Rambunctious Garden, nobody was around to document how the ecosystems shifted back then as a result of the extinction of various large species that advocates of rewilding want to re-introduce or simulate (page 66). Similarly, we have no way of knowing what would happen if we were to introduce these “proxies” again, and it is very possible that negative side effects could arise that we would not be prepared to deal with. For example, they could result in the arrival of invasive pests or even themselves become invasive to the habitat they are introduced to. Furthermore, the program’s advocates’ response to those claims, saying “we killed ‘em once, we can kill ‘em again” (page 69), is very insensitive and unprincipled, especially coming from an ecological point of view.

While I support and agree with the idea that is it a futile task to try to preserve nature as it was before humans interfered, I think it is just as fruitless to take it one step back and try to emulate even older ecosystems, especially by interfering with existing ones. Doing so only pushes the divide between humans and nature further apart, since it is highly unlikely that humans will live in areas where the giant carnivores Marris talks about in her chapter will be introduced and it is just as unlikely that those carnivores will live in areas inhabited by humans. The answer to the question of how to preserve nature in this human-dominated and ever-changing world may still not be fully known, but I definitely think that engineering our ecosystems is not that answer we are looking for.

Rambunctious Garden: Chapters 1 & 2

Posted on September 3, 2012 by Yana Manevich

Emma Marris’ book, Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-wild World is quick to make its point regarding the futile traditional conservationist efforts that are best left abandoned in favor of a modern, “rambunctious garden” philosophy where we stop pitting humans and nature against one another and instead encourage an active relationship between the two. From the first chapters Marris seems to advocate that in our modern, man-dominated world, efforts to preserve or backtrack to a “pristine wilderness” are fruitless. Marris points out that the very nature of ecology is that it is ever-changing, whether humans intervene or not. Because of this, Marris makes her point that instead of spending countless money, time and resources on preserving the historic notions of nature and wilderness, we should instead welcome the idea of a “rambunctious garden”, where humans and nature can work together, instead of being separated by a fence.

I think Marris makes a very good point with her case. She says, like the previous two articles we’ve read in class, that there is virtually no place on Earth that has been left untouched and unchanged by humanity. If we were to follow a traditional conservationist approach, the amount of time and money it would take to transform an area back to its original ecology and then preserve that ecology is unfathomable, and to do that for hundreds or thousands of areas is virtually impossible.  Marris goes on to provide examples of cases where such conservationist efforts had negative effects, such as when many inhabitants were driven out of Yellow Stone National Park in an effort to preserve to area. While making her case, Marris also provides the reader with arguments from those advocating the “conservationist” approach, such as Ostertag and Cordell so that we could see the other side of this debate as well. It will be interesting to see what other observations, arguments and examples Marris gives in the upcoming chapters.

Vitousek and Kareiva

Posted on August 29, 2012 by Yana Manevich

The Anthropocene, as described in Vitousek’s and Kareiva’s articles can be defined as the new geological era we are living in now, where humans have come to dominate every aspect of Earth’s nature and ecosystems. This in turn, gave way to an urban ecology – the relationship developed between nature and an urban setting, which so much of the world is dominated by today.

Both articles shed light on just how large the footprint humanity has left on Earth’s ecology is. As Kareiva points out, “today it is impossible to find a place on Earth that is unmarked by human activity.” Vitousek’s article talks about how humans have come to dominate the water supply, using more than half of the world’s runoff water that is fresh and reasonably accessible. Additionally, he mentions how humanity is also responsible for the extinction of one quarter of Earth’s bird species, and how we have transformed much of Earth’s land into agricultural and urban industrial areas. While Kareiva’s article seems to be less pessimistic about the Anthropocene, making a point that Earth’s ecosystem’s have been altered and dominated by humanity for as long as we’ve existed, both articles recognize that there should be new ways of looking at our ever-changing ecology, and pose the question how should we handle this new ecology and what conservation efforts should be put in place?

Both articles seem to provide answers to the questions they beg. Vitousek’s article asserts, for example that we should work to reduce the rate at which we alter the Earth’s ecology, suggesting that perhaps our ecosystems can adapt to certain changes if those changes are slow. Vitousek also offers up a few suggestions, claiming that conservation movements should work with the changing world and it’s technologies to enhance our natural systems to benefit everyone. It should embrace the new age, instead of clinging to old beliefs and habits – which I think is the way to go.

Comments by Yana Manevich