01/08/02 -- North America’s Biodiversity and Ecosystems Crashing

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FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY

North America’s Biodiversity and Ecosystems Crashing

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01/08/02

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org

The most materially prosperous culture in human history is

overshooting the carrying capacity of its ecosystems, with devastating

effects upon many species including humans. Consumption in North

America has come at the cost of over-development of natural ecological

systems; harming species, destroying ecosystems, and adversely

changing evolutionary patterns. While biologists and ecologists have

highlighted these concerns for years, no less a group than the North

American Commission for Environmental Cooperation created under the

North American Free Trade Agreement reports the severity of North

American environmental decline in a new report entitled “The North

American Mosaic - A State of the Environment Report” at

http://www.cec.org/pubs_docs/documents/index.cfm?varlan=english&ID=629

The report finds that half of North America's most biodiverse eco-

regions are severely degraded, as resources are being consumed faster

than they are being replaced. “At the turn of the millennium, North

Americans are faced with the paradox that many activities on which the

North American economy is based impoverish the environment on which

our well-being ultimately depends.” The report warns that new

habitats "are rarely as diverse, healthy or aesthetically pleasing as

their predecessors." They conclude this leads to a decline in the

quality of the environment, making it less able to support a wide

variety of life.

The challenge facing modern society is to bring itself into a state of

ecological sustainability. In terms of terrestrial sustainability,

this will require reestablishing networks of large and connected

natural vegetation throughout all landscapes, some strictly protected

and some under benign management, sufficient to guarantee upscale

sustainability of ecosystem functions and protect biodiversity. In

the overdeveloped World this will require restoring and reconnecting

landscape’s natural ecosystem matrix. In the World’s few remaining

and globally critical large and intact ecosystems, such as the Earth’s

last forest wildernesses, development must occur in a manner that

maintains landscape patterns of vegetational patch size, adjacencies

and connectivity. Protected and ecologically based community

development initiatives must be extensive enough relative to more

intensively managed areas to adequately sustain the integrity of

ecosystem processes upon which all life depends.

No human imperative surpasses in urgency the need to protect, conserve

and restore natural ecosystems.

g.b.

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ITEM #1

Title: Watchdog Says North America Biodiversity Shrinking

Date: January 6, 2002

Byline: Robert Melnbardis

MONTREAL (Reuters) - Some 235 North American animal species such as

the Monarch butterfly and northern codfish are threatened by

pollution, human encroachment on their natural habitats and aggressive

harvesting practices, says an environmental agency set up under the

continental free-trade pact.

A broad study by the North American Commission for Environmental

Cooperation, a Montreal-based agency created under the North American

Free Trade Agreement comprising the United States, Canada and Mexico,

says the continent faces a ''biodiversity crisis'' in which threatened

species could disappear. That harms evolution and depletes the natural

environment humans depend on to survive.

Half of North America's most biodiverse eco-regions are severely

degraded, says the report, which will be formally released to the

three governments Monday.

``Our report shows that over the past few decades, the loss and

alteration of habitat has become the main threat to biodiversity,''

said Janine Ferretti, executive director of the commission. ``A

significant proportion of the plant and animal species of North

American is threatened.''

The striking Monarch butterfly, which migrates from Canada to Mexico,

faces a number of threats, including coastal development in

California, deforestation of oyamel fir forests in Mexico and the use

of pesticides on milkweed plants, its main food.

The report notes that some experts believe humans are ''fishing down

the food chain'' in over-harvested stocks such as salmon, cod, halibut

and swordfish. That means catching fish that are needed to rebuild

depleted species.

Freshwater species such as crayfish, 48 percent of which are at risk,

are even more vulnerable to extinction because they cannot escape to

new ecosystems when their own habitats are degraded by pollution.

An apparent inability to develop North America's economies while

sustaining its environment not only threatens biodiversity, but

imperils people's future, the report says.

``At the turn of the millennium, North Americans are faced with the

paradox that many activities on which the North American economy is

based impoverish the environment on which our well-being ultimately

depends,'' the report says.

It notes that the poor are the hardest hit by environmental problems.

In an interview with Reuters, Ferretti said the United States, Canada

and Mexico had made progress in creating refuges for wildlife,

protecting species and gathering data on biodiversity. Much more was

needed to reverse the degradation of biodiversity, she said, saying

she hoped the commission's report, The North American Mosaic, would

become a key resource for planning and policy-making.

``It's a panoramic view of the state of the environment in North

America and it's the first time that information from all three

countries has been collected on such a broad sweep of issues,''

Ferretti said.

ALARM BELLS

Future studies would focus on a core set of indicators to provide a

snapshot of the state of the environment, she added.

The current report raises alarm bells on a number of fronts, including

the effect of modern transportation systems on the environment, the

over-use of water resources and rising threat of drought, and bio-

invasion, the spread of nonnative species imported into North America.

``Bio-invasion, that is something that wasn't in our lexicon 10 years

ago. The magnitude of this threat is quite significant,'' Ferretti

said.

Canada and the United States fare poorly in the report's assessment of

their economies' impact on the environment. More than 80 percent of

all commuting trips in the two countries are by private automobile

rather than less polluting public transit.

They are also the world's largest per-capita users of water, and

demand is growing. Canada has about half of North America's renewable

freshwater resources, but 60 percent of its water flows north, whereas

90 percent of its population lives in the southern part of the

country.

Agriculture and thermoelectric power generation account for about 80

percent of water withdrawals in North America. Irrigation is a

particular threat. The Ogallala Aquifer underneath the U.S. Great

Plains has water resources equivalent to Lake Huron, but it is being

depleted by irrigation faster than it can recharge, the report says.

ITEM #2

Title: North America headed for environmental disaster: report

Date: January 7, 2002

CALGARY - Free trade across North America is not only affecting the

air, water and forests of the continent, but is creating a "looming

threat" to the survival of certain plant and animal species, says a

report from a NAFTA agency.

The Montreal-based Commission for Environmental Cooperation will

release its first "state of the environment" report Monday to

the governments of Canada, the United States, and Mexico.

The person in charge of the commission believes increased trade puts

pressure on plants and animals. Janine Ferretti says the trucks and

ships that transport goods across continents also deliver foreign

pests.

"Bio-invasion is one of the new threats that wasn't in our lexicon,

say, 10 years ago. The pests that we're seeing displace some of our

native species, mussels and amphibians and even plants are a result

of the kind of open trade that we're having," says Ferretti.

And according to the study, resources are being consumed faster than

they are being replaced.

The report warns that new habitats "are rarely as diverse,

healthy or aesthetically pleasing as their predecessors." This leads

to a decline in the quality of the environment, making it less able to

support a wide variety of life.

Increased flooding from greenhouse gases

Greenhouse gases are given special mention in the report, and

it warns that if "sea levels rise as expected; storms and flooding

will become much worse, causing property damage and loss in the

billions of dollars."

Environmental effects of the increased gases could include polarized

weather events, such as droughts, floods, and intense heat waves.

The report also points to the dangers of urban sprawl and increased

traffic-related air pollution. It says public transit makes up just

under five per cent of travel in Canadian cities.

Government subsidies that encourage high energy consumption make it

difficult to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions and additional

pollution sources, according to the report.

But Ferretti says it's not all negative progress. She believes

NAFTA's investment rules have brought cleaner industrial technology to

Mexico.

"Believe it or not, Mexico's steel mills are cleaner than some of the

steel mills that we find in the United States. Because of NAFTA, we

have new investment in new modern steel technology in Mexico."

She also says the environmental challenges can be faced if governments

reinstate funding removed during years of cutbacks.

ITEM #3

Title: Making the Best of What Remains of Shrinking Habitats

Date: January 8, 2002

Byline: SAM HOOPER SAMUELS

IOWA CITY — Why did the chicken cross the road?

The old riddle raises an issue of real importance to many animal

species, and to the scientists who study them.

As human activity alters more and more of the landscape — breaking up

rain forests, wetlands and prairies with highways, farms, parking lots

and housing developments — some creatures retreat into ever tighter

habitats, while others venture across the human obstacles to find

suitable places to feed and breed. The question conservation

biologists are asking is why.

Dr. John Wiens, a professor of ecology at Colorado State University,

has been studying the effects of changing habitats on species as

different as songbirds and sheep.

"There are various bird species, particularly in forests in the East

and Northeast, that are really interior birds," he said. "They don't

even go close to the edges. If you think you have a 10-acre wood lot,

from the perspective of something that only uses the inner core of

that, you really have two acres. As fragments get smaller and smaller,

these interior species really feel the effects."

By contrast, desert bighorn sheep might be expected to stick close to

the mountains where they find their water. But when Dr. Wiens's

students put radio collars on the rams and tracked their movements,

the results were surprising.

"Rams would get up and move 30 miles across flat burning desert to

another mountain range," Dr. Wiens said. "They spend a couple of weeks

over there and then come back. The scale of movement was much greater

than anticipated."

Findings like this have prompted some scientists to change the way

they think about habitat fragmentation. The classical model for a

habitat fragment is an island. Ever since Darwin landed on the

Galápagos, scientists have understood that island habitats are

special.

Species in isolation tend to survive, prey, reproduce and evolve

differently from species with large open territories.

Dr. Wiens says this old model is giving way to a new one. "We need to

shift our thinking away from isolated areas in the midst of

inhospitable human development," he said. "They're not oceanic

islands." Only if biologists think of fragments in the context of the

overall landscape, he went on, can they help to manage, conserve and

restore these habitats.

No habitat in America is more severely fragmented than the prairie.

Once there were about 25 million uninterrupted acres of northern

tallgrass prairie. Now barely 1 percent of that remains, about 300,000

acres. Few prairie remnants are large enough to be measured in the

thousands of acres; most are in the hundreds or tens.

Prairie fragmentation is particularly severe in Iowa, which has a high

concentration of roads, and scientists studying the behavior of

butterflies here have made some startling observations about the

differences among species. Some butterflies — monarchs, sulfurs, red

admirals — hop freely across roads and farm fields in search of the

next prairie remnant. Others, like viceroys, regal fritillaries and

tiger swallowtails, are "habitat sensitive," rarely venturing far from

a patch of virgin prairie.

But Dr. Diane Debinski, a professor of animal ecology at Iowa State

University, found that when roadsides were replanted with authentic

prairie grasses and flowers, these sensitive species were found in

greater abundance and variety than they were on roadsides that had not

been replanted.

"It shows that these roadsides are actually creating habitat that is

benefiting butterfly populations," she said.

Roadside prairies also carry danger, however. The study, by Dr.

Debinski and a graduate student, Leslie Ries, found a significant risk

of butterfly mortality on the windshields of passing cars. So even if

butterflies use roadsides as habitat, are they surviving to breed? Or

are they lured in by the easy pickings of a roadside prairie only to

die without reproducing? Dr. Debinski said her next line of research

would include a more detailed study of butterfly road kill.

A roadside prairie is an imperfect corridor. Two thousand miles west

of Iowa, another team of scientists has used genetic testing to

determine whether a true corridor can connect isolated populations —

in this case, voles in the forests of Washington.

The scientists — Dr. Stephen Mech, now a professor of biology at the

University of Memphis, and Dr. James Hallett of Washington State

University — worked in a logging area, where forest fragments were

surrounded by clear cuts. They identified pairs of forest fragments

connected by corridors of forest. They then captured voles and took

genetic samples to determine how closely related the different

populations were.

They found that voles living within a single patch of forest were very

closely related; voles living in separate patches were not closely

related; and voles living in patches connected by corridors fell in

between.

"I'm still amazed that it worked as well as it did," Dr. Mech said.

"This shows that corridors, yes, do maintain some gene flow."

Sometimes, the goal is not to let species pass freely between

fragments but to keep them out.

Dr. Mary Cadenasso and Dr. Stewart Pickett of the Institute of

Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y., study the edges of habitats,

where outside species creep in and sometimes take over. As habitats

become fragmented, edges become longer. Two forests, one whole and one

fragmented, may have exactly the same area, but the fragmented forest

will present many more miles of vulnerable edge to the outside world.

The two scientists examined how well different kinds of forest edges

kept out nonforest seeds from adjacent fields. They noticed that when

a forest was cut down by people, the edge looked very different from a

natural forest edge. A natural edge is dense, with side branches and

foliage forming a fairly solid wall from the canopy to the ground.

A cut edge, however, tends to be thick at the top and significantly

more open below that. Would that lead to a greater infiltration of

nonforest plants along the edges?

To find out, Dr. Cadenasso and Dr. Pickett took two lengths of edge

between a forest and a field containing goldenrod. They left one

intact and thinned the other artificially. Then they set seed traps at

various points along the edges and within the forest.

"What we found was that when you open an edge up, remove that sidewall

of vegetation, more seeds get through, and they move further in," Dr.

Cadenasso said. Surprisingly, the effect continued into late fall,

even after the trees dropped their leaves.

"I suspect that the twigs and branches still function as a barrier,"

Dr. Cadenasso said. "They're not as good or as solid as a thick wall

of leaves, but they also must have a barrier function."

The study includes a recommendation: when forest is cut down for

development, seal the edges by planting thick vegetation to preserve

the remaining areas.

The butterfly, vole and forest-edge studies all were published in

recent issues of the journal Conservation Biology.

Along with these new ways of studying habitat fragments, scientists

also hope to encourage practical new methods of managing fragments.

The conventional methods, in which a government or nonprofit agency

buys land and sets it aside, may no longer be sufficient. Instead, the

management of a park may be only as successful as the management of

the apartment complex next door.

"If you put a wall around a reserve, it becomes an us-and-them issue,"

Dr. Wiens said. "We need to look at managing the surrounding

landscape. That involves working with landowners. There are a lot of

uses that are compatible with conservation objectives. A meadow

between two patches of forest, many species of songbird might cross.

A strip mall might be a big barrier."

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