Tag: humans

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How protected are protected areas? An exploration of human activities inside European protected areas

By Francesco Martini

We are living in a biodiversity crisis, with many species shrinking in numbers and at risk of going extinct. To put a stop to, or at least slow down this seemingly inevitable fall into the abyss for many of the world’s species, one action that is considered effective is establishing protected areas. 

“A protected area is a clearly defined geographical space, recognised, dedicated and managed, through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values.” IUCN Definition, 2008 

When we imagine a protected area, we typically picture a pristine natural environment with gorgeous landscapes, thriving diversity of wildlife, and no human beings. The reality, however, is strikingly different, especially in Europe where very few locations have never been used by humans. In fact, most protected areas are under pressure from human activities.

The pressure comes in different forms: from farming to roads, from urbanization to hunting, from mining to logging etc.. We may expect that some of those threats are more harmful than others. We may also expect that some of those threats are more “central” than others. In other words, that some threats may be sources of other types of pressures. A classic example is roads, which favour the spread of invasive species and increase hunting. New roads make it easier for hunters to access more land to hunt on. If we want to reduce hunting, we could well reduce access to areas that host endangered species.

In the European Union (EU), protected areas are managed through an integrated network called Nature 2000, which includes over 27,000 land and marine protected areas and covers over 1.1 million square kilometres, an area almost four times the size of Italy. The EU collects an impressive amount of information about its protected areas. For example, data on protected species, habitats, what management actions are carried out, and importantly human activities. Remarkably, all this data is made openly available (it can be downloaded here)!

We used this data and we tried to identify relationships between human threats, hoping to provide guidance for a better management of these sites.

Map of the terrestrial Natura 2000 sites used in the study, shown in dark green colour.
Map of the terrestrial Natura 2000 sites used in the study, shown in dark green colour.

By analysing the data from the EU, we found that many of the human threats recorded within the Natura 2000 network are related with each other. For example, as introduced earlier, we observed that the presence of ’roads, paths and railroads’ is strongly related with ’hunting and collection of wild animals’. We also observed that ’Urbanised areas, human habitation’ is related threats such as ’Fire and fire suppression’, ’Introduced genetic material, GMO’, and ’Taking/removal of terrestrial plants’, among others. In these examples, roads and urban areas are likely acting as sources of the other types of threats. Generally, we found that threats related to agriculture and urbanization are more frequently related with other threats. In practical terms, it means that if we are going to eliminate, or at least reduce the presence, of those types of human activities we will be more likely to also reduce other threats that are associated to them. We can kill two birds with one stone, but now the birds are nasty human activities that harm ecosystems and biodiversity. Minimizing threats that are strongly related with others should be prioritized.

The full article “Examining the co-occurrences of human threats within terrestrial protected areas“, published in Ambio, can be accessed here.

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Moon Landing Anniversary – Don’t look to the stars when the ground is burning

Buzz Aldrin on the surface of Earth's moon

Space: the final frontier. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing mission; the first time we had ever stepped foot on the moon. As Neil Armstrong boldly declared “that’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”, we perhaps reached a new peak of human achievement. A peak that continues to climb upwards, itself shooting for the moon.

I’ve grown up with franchises like Star Wars and Star Trek. Where somehow there’s always a white (human) man getting into trouble with aliens and flying space ships. One thing that’s common in much science fiction is the idea that we can colonise new worlds, terraforming their surfaces to sustain life (as we know it). This idea is pervasive in the years since the moon landing, and continues to be drawn upon even in recent films claimed to be scientifically sound (e.g. Interstellar and The Martian). Whilst this is a romantic idea—of humans gallivanting across the galaxy (hitchhiking even)—I sometimes worry about the price of this dream. Of course, I’m sure the notion has inspired many great minds the world over to learn about space, and perhaps to successfully take us all there one day. But does this idealism come with a cost?

Continue reading “Moon Landing Anniversary – Don’t look to the stars when the ground is burning”
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Trump and the future of “America’s best idea.”

In 1872 Yellowstone National Park was established as the first National Park not only in the USA, but in the world. President Ulysses S. Grant signed into law the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act, and so the National Parks were born. Today 59 National Parks exist throughout the United States, covering approximately 51.9 million acres with the goal of maintaining in perpetuity both wildlife and their habitat. Since 1916 the National Park Service (NPS) has been entrusted with the care of these National Parks, and this year they celebrate their centenary. Continue reading “Trump and the future of “America’s best idea.””

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Freeing Willy: the $20 million failed experiment

In 1993 Free Willy leapt onto cinema screens around the world. The story about a young boy who saves a killer whale from a run-down theme park was an instant hit for Warner Bros. However for Keiko, the whale who played Willy, the story did not have a Hollywood ending. While Willy jumped to freedom as the credits rolled, Keiko remained in captivity. What followed was a global effort to return Keiko to the wild at all costs, even to Keiko himself. Continue reading “Freeing Willy: the $20 million failed experiment”

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The world economy in a cube

 

In 1884, the English theologian and pedagogue Edwin A. Abbott wrote a romance called “Flatland”, in which he described a two dimensional world. The rigid and hierarchically organized society of Flatland develops in the large plane in which it lives, and flat authorities control that no flat citizen (the inhabitants are all flat geometric figures) escapes from the two-dimension reality. The book is a social satire as well as an exploration of the concept of multiple dimensions. Furthermore, it can also be viewed as a critic of narrow worldviews stubbornly based on old paradigms.  

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The novel’s example can be used to argue that despite the proliferation of metrics, our decision making process tends to be guided by the quasi-imposed limited set of information tools – mainly economic – that we use every day. In other words, concepts like Earth System, Planetary boundaries or biophysical limits, environmental sustainability, social welfare and other important elements of our life on this planet are not satisfactorily incorporated in our knowledge horizon.

The current economic worldview is based on the idea that a free market works for the 100% of the population. Thus, economic growth (as measured by growth in GDP) is the political mantra: “the rising tide that lifts all boats”. A recent study published on Global Environmental Change (available here) gives a different point of view by including the environment and the society in the economic picture.

National economies are investigated in a 3-axis diagram (a cube), where each dimension is a different compartment. In this way, the relationships between environment, society and economy are represented in a single framework without losing the specific information. This framework recognizes a physical (and also thermodynamic, and logical) order, highlighting the dependence of the economy on societal organization and, primarily, on the environment.

From this three-dimensional perspective emerges that the economic activity is always strictly correlated with the use of natural resources, and that social well-being is often neglected. Over a total number of 99 national economies investigated within the cube, none of them is at the same time environmentally sustainable, economically rich (high GDP), and equal in the distribution of income.   

This means that growing GDP is beneficial for a limited fraction of the overall population, while the vast majority has to deal with increasing environmental problems and worsening ecological status. Moreover, decoupling economic growth and natural resources consumption, seeking the so-called dematerialization, is found very complicated. Continuous growth in GDP implies consequences especially for the poorest individuals and communities: “the rising tide is lifting the yachts and swamping the rowboats” (Dietz and O’Neill, 2013).

Politicians are looking at the world around as a mono-dimensional economic universe. This is due to the fact that economists play a relevant role within governments. We need ecologists and social scientists playing an equally relevant role, in order to finally show politics we live in a three-dimensional world.

Author: Luca Coscieme, @lucacoscieme

REFERENCES

F.M. Pulselli, L. Coscieme, L. Neri, A. Regoli, P.C. Sutton, A. Lemmi, S. Bastianoni, “The world economy in a cube: A more rational structural representation of sustainability”; Global Environmental Change 35, 41-51, 2015 (doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2015.08.002) 

Dietz and D. O’Neill, “Enough is Enough”; London: Earthscan, 2013.

 

Link: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378015300236

Image Credits: www.downbox.org, catalog.lambertvillelibrary.org

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Microplastics: a macro-problem for remote islands in the South Atlantic?

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Dr Dannielle Green from the Biogeochemistry Research Group in Geography is about to return from an adventure in the South Atlantic where she was hunting for microplastics in some of the world’s most remote islands.

Plastic debris can be found in every country around the world and larger items like plastic bags and bottles can have obvious impacts, such as entanglement, ingestion and suffocation of seabirds, turtles and mammals. But even when plastic breaks down, it persists as small pieces called “microplastics” and in this form can still cause harm to a wide range of marine organisms who unwittingly eat it. Microplastics have been found in marine waters all over the globe but sampling has mostly focused on areas adjacent to large human populations, very little is known about concentrations in remote islands like Ascension Island and the Falkland islands. In collaboration with Dr David Blockley from the South Atlantic Environmental Research Institute (SAERI), Dr Dannielle Green from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland flew out to the South Atlantic to assess the situation.

Eerily desolate but beautiful Ascension island
Eerily desolate but beautiful Ascension island

Water samples were taken from a range of sites around Ascension Island and the Falklands and every site was found to contain microplastics. In fact, the concentrations found were surprisingly high.

Taking water samples in the only glass bottles available... Pimm's bottles!
Taking water samples in the only glass bottles available… Pimm’s bottles!

Dr Green presented her work to the Falkland islanders by giving a public lecture at the Chamber of Commerce which was well attended with a mixed audience including government officials, fishermen, the general public and the local television crew. She explained the potential issues of microplastic pollution and a thoughtful discussion about solutions later ensued with input from the audience.

Dannielle presenting her results at the Chamber of Commerce in Stanley.
Dannielle presenting her results at the Chamber of Commerce in Stanley.

Microplastics can absorb toxic substances from the water column. In this way, they can become like “pills” of concentrated toxic chemicals that could be consumed by creatures like worms, shellfish, fish and mammals and can be transferred through the food web.

Pollution of natural habitats by microplastics is a global problem that we are only just beginning to understand, but it is one that is expected to get worse as plastic production continues to rise. Dr Green’s research explores the wider effects of microplastics on marine ecosystems. Through this work, she hopes to provide scientifically sound recommendations that will feed into policy and help protect our ecosystems.

Author

Dannielle Green

Photo credits

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/save-our-seas-from-the-microplastic-threat#/story and Dannielle Green

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The moral of the story

polit-marionetten30

Most of us have some inbuilt sense of right and wrong; don’t steal and don’t murder are as basic to us as our ability to breathe. But where does this moral sense come from? In general, people of a scientific bent don’t attribute it to God nor as some sort of free floating truth that can be grasped by the human intellect. If you hold a materialistic view, that is to say the idea that at its base the universe is composed of energy and matter, then it’s next to impossible to understand morality in those terms. Instead the scientific view proposes our morality is an evolved feature, something which gave group-living animals a selective advantage over their amoral competitors. A social group that tries to cooperate when it’s made up primarily of murderers, thieves and cheats won’t get very far. By contrast a crowd of goodies can gain the many benefits of cooperation.

There is a problem with this theory though. Irrespective of its truth, an evolved morality renders us with a situation where there is nothing objectively right or wrong about anything. Even an act of murder isn’t intrinsically immoral. One way to think of this is to compare it with our other adaptations. We don’t consider any other evolved traits ‘moral’, it’s not as if four legs good, two legs bad is something people really espouse. What we’re left with is a moral nihilism.

‘So what?’ you might ask.  We’re a smart species, we can decide for ourselves the best way to act such that our society can flourish. Why don’t we adopt some sort of utilitarianism, the moral system that promotes the greatest happiest for the most, and judge the rightness or wrongness of our acts that way? Indeed this is the way most secular societies establish what is permissible today. This idea can even allow for the expansion of our moral circle to include other beings who are capable of suffering.

Yet the modern understanding of our selves means even a created morality still can’t fairly punish or praise for a simple reason: humans have lost their soul. Modern neuroscience tells us there is no actor in our minds making decisions moral or otherwise. We are our brains, nothing more. There is no ‘I’, no ‘ghost in the machine’. The idea of a freely willed agent who can separate his or her self from their genetics and environment is anathema to anyone who takes materialism seriously.

Much follows from this. Most notably our justice system should be radically re-evaluated in light of this idea to become more biologically informed. Currently persons with certain mental disabilities are afforded more leniency when it comes to their sentencing because they are said not to be in full possession of rational thought processes. Something has affected their ability to have done otherwise. But as automata this is true for every person who has ever existed. This is not to say that we should open up the prisons and free every criminal the world over rather that we should focus much more on promoting environments that cause people to act in a way conducive to a functioning society.

We are all of us robots acting on inputs. Some people take these inputs and act like ‘goodies’ whereas others can take the same information and behave like ‘baddies’. Take your pick of a hero or tyrant from history. They don’t deserve your respect or your contempt. That is the price of a biological morality.

Author: Adam Kane, kanead[at]tcd.ie, @P1zPalu

Photo credit: http://www.postswitch.de/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/polit-marionetten30.jpg

 

 

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Evolution is – surprise! – Darwinian!

800px-Human_pidegree

I sometime come across papers that I missed during their publication time and that shed a new light on my current research (or strengthen the already present light). Today it was Cartmill’s 2012 Evolutionary Anthropology – not open access, apologies…

Cartmill raises an interesting question from an evolutionary point of view: “How long ago did the first [insert your favorite taxa here] live?”. This question is crucial for any macroevolutionary study (or/and for the sake of getting a chance to be published in Nature). If one is studying the “rise of the age of mammals” (just for example of course) the question of the exact timing is crucial to see whether placental mammals evolved after or before the extinction of avian dinosaurs.

Because Cartmill published in Evolutionary Anthropology let’s replace [insert your favorite taxa here] with humans. He proposes to answer to the question “How long ago did the first humans live?” by looking at the different ways people have addressed it through time. It all starts back with Simpson’s quantum evolution stating that clades share “adaptive shifts” or “adaptive trends”. For example, for humans, that will be bipedalism and an increase in brain size: “Everybody can sort humans out instantly from other sorts of things: […] they share a unique reliance on technology, a capacity for culture, and a gift for gab.”

This is an unfortunate classical view of evolution based on morphological data leading to a series of morphological discontinuities – the adaptive shifts (“human origins, primate origins, mammal origins, amniote origins, and so on” – I already discussed this gradualistic view about tetrapod origins). Cartmill uses a pertinent quote from Simpson to comment this trend: “Is this not, in fact, simply a recrudescence of the old naïve conception of a scala naturae[?]”. However, this raises a cladistic problem. Assuming we have the data on the oldest human. What defines his or her humanness? “Humanness [whatever that means] is not a coherent package. We have known since the 1960s that our terrestrial bipedality evolved more than two million years before the onset of what was long held to be the fundamental human characteristic, that is the great development of the brain.’’

Cartmill’s point is that, morphologically, there is no adaptive shift or trend that can define any group. Morphological evolution acts more like a succession of slow and discrete incremental changes rather than the Simpsonian quantum model: “there is only a long, geologically slow cascade of accumulating small apomorphies” and adaptive trends or shifts within clades “are fantasies, born ultimately of our wish to see ourselves as more decisively set off from other animals than we actually are.”

Will I have to rethink my current project looking at mammals morphological evolution? Well by using molecular data as well as morphological data we can accurately trace back the small incremental changes (the DNA mutations) as well as the actual changes in morphology through time. My PhD is not just a series of failures after all!

Author

Thomas Guillerme: guillert[at]tcd.ie, @TGuillerme

Photo credit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_chain_of_being#/media/File:Human_pidegree.jpg

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Good, Better, Best

discipline2

Many aspects of human nature seem to frustrate our ideal of a modern society. This is especially true of our morality. We seem to have evolved a brain with two systems relevant to moral behaviour. The first, more ancient component is automatic, judging things as disgusting or inherently wrong very quickly; the second is our slower acting higher-level thinking which has a controlled reasoned process. However the two are not independent, with our more modern system taking its cues from the more primitive part. An evolved morality does suggest that there is no absolute right or wrong, rather it promoted behaviours conducive to fitness.

World peace is unlikely when our moral intuition works on the acts/omission doctrine. This is the doctrine that differentiates between circumstances when we actively perform an action and when we neglect to do it. A person is deemed a murderer if they push a person off a bridge but isn’t if they, by omission, fail to prevent the death. The parallels to people outside of our moral circle, in the developing world, for example, are obvious.

Another serious moral shortcoming is our failure to cooperate, which is most frequently explained through the tragedy of the commons i.e. our inability to invest in the long term interest of the group owing to our rational self-interest. Global warming is one notable problem that is proving difficult to combat because of this inherent tendency.

The free-rider problem is also ubiquitous, whether it is a rich tax dodger or illegal welfare claimant. The majority of us pay a cost for some benefit while a minority piggybacks on the benefits without having to pay a thing. Hardly fair. We have evolved mechanisms to deal with such cheats, for example through indirect reciprocity, but it would be far better if there was no need.

All of this is a précis to the main topic of this post. As we gain more insights into the neurology and psychology of our morality we’ll be able to manipulate it for our own (hopefully) positive ends. This is quite clearly a controversial idea but we already treat people to make them more moral albeit in a crude way, notably chemical castration of sex offenders. Is it really wrong to stop our parochial and short sighted biases?

Julian Savulescu is one proponent of human moral bioenhancement. He argues that humanity’s future is not safe in our own hands because of our inherent moral failings. His suggestions are novel to say the least. We could look to enhance our sense of altruism and trust by manipulating oxytocin levels which would make our prospects rosier. It could also be the case that those in power create a population of exceedingly trusting sheep over which they could rule. His moral philosophy is from the utilitarian school of thought – the greater good. And this school seems most in line with an evolved morality where there are no absolutes but that’s not to say there aren’t enormous problems with it. How do we convince people to take a supplement that will change their very nature when they are opposed to it?

In Brave New World, it is the people who eschew the psychological benefits of the drug soma who are made out to lead a more authentic existence. But can we afford to live the life of savages when it could lead to our annihilation?

Author: Adam Kane, kanead[at]tcd.ie, @P1zPalu

Photo credit: artofmanliness.com