In keeping with a certain whinge of mine over the last week (see Greenwash, blackwash: two faces of conservation evil), here’s a brilliant pictorial comment from Pile Higher and Deeper on the way reporters try to sex up (i.e., sensationalise) science results. Is it really necessary to dumb it down to such an extent? Surely there must be a few punters that could do without the ooohs! and aaaahs! (or am I just being naïvely hopeful?).
© J. Cham
Beware false prophets, and especially those masquerading as conservationists (or at least ‘green’) when they are not, in fact, doing anything for conservation at all. But this blog site isn’t about typical greenie evil-corporation-making-a-mess-of-the-Earth sermons (there are plenty of those); it’s instead about real conservation science that has/should/could have a real biodiversity benefits. This is why I highlight the bitey and the toothless together.
With the slow (painfully, inadequately, insufficiently slow) maturation of environmental awareness and the rising plight of biodiversity in general (including our own health and prosperity), it has become almost chic to embrace a so-called ‘green’ perspective. This approach has blown out into a full-scale business model where in many wealthier nations especially, it’s just plain good business to attract the green-conscious consumer to buy more ‘environmentally friendly’ products. Problem is, so many of these products are the farthest thing from green you can imagine (see examples here, here & here). This stimulated the environmentalist Jay Westerveld to coin the term greenwashing in 1986. Greenwashing is basically defined as activities that misleadingly give the impression of environmentally sound management that thereby deflect attention away from the continued pursuit of environmentally destructive activities.
Well, not that the problem has disappeared, or even dissipated (if anything, it’s growing), but I don’t want to focus on that here. Instead, I want to highlight a recent paper in which I was involved that outlines too how environmental groups can be guilty of almost the same sin – claiming businesses, practices, individuals, corporations, etc. are far more environmentally destructive than they really are. This, we termed blackwashing.
The paper by Koh and colleagues entitled Wash and spin cycle threats to tropical biodiversity just came out online in the journal Biotropica, and therein we describe the greenwashing-blackwashing twin conservation evils using the oil palm controversy as an excellent example case. Just in case you didn’t know, much of the tropical world (especially South East Asia) is undergoing massive conversion of native forests to oil palm plantations, to the overwhelming detriment of biodiversity. I’ve covered the issue in several posts on ConservationBytes.com before (see for example Tropical forests worth more standing, Indonesia’s precious peatlands under oil palm fire & More greenwashing from the Malaysian oil palm industry).
Briefly, we demonstrate how the palm oil industry is guilty of the following greenwashes:
On the either side, various environmental groups such as Greenpeace, have promoted the following blackwashes:
For details, see the paper online.
Now, I’d probably tend to believe some of the less outrageous claims made by some environmental groups because if anything, the state of biodiversity is probably overall worse than what most people realise. However, when environmental groups are exposed for exaggerations, or worse, lies, then their credibility goes out the window and even those essentially promoting their cause (e.g., conservation biologists like myself) will have nothing to do with them. The quasi-religious zealotry of anti-whaling campaigns is an example of a terrible waste of funds, goodwill and conservation resources that could be otherwise spent on real conservation gains. Instead, political stunts simply alienate people who would otherwise reasonably contribute to improving the state of biodiversity. Incidentally, an environmental advocacy group in Australia emailed me to support their campaign to highlight the plight of sharks. I am a firm supporter of better conservation of sharks (see recent paper and post about this here). However, when I read their campaign propaganda, the first sentence read:
I immediately distanced myself from them. This is a blatant lie and terrible over-exaggeration. Ninety per cent of sharks HAVE NOT been wiped out. Some localised depletions have occurred, and not one single shark species has been recorded going extinct since records began. While I agree the world has a serious shark problem, saying outrageous things like this will only serve to weaken your cause. My advice to any green group is to get your facts straight and avoid the sensationlist game – you won’t win it, and you probably won’t be successful in doing anything beneficial for the species you purport to save.
CJA Bradshaw
Koh, L., Ghazoul, J., Butler, R., Laurance, W., Sodhi, N., Mateo-Vega, J., & Bradshaw, C. (2009). Wash and Spin Cycle Threats to Tropical Biodiversity Biotropica DOI: 10.1111/j.1744-7429.2009.00588.x
We do a lot in our lab to get our research results out to a wider community than just scientists – this blog is just one example of how we do that. But of course, we rely on the regular media (television, newspaper, radio) heavily to pick up our media releases (see a list here). I firmly believe it goes well beyond shameless self promotion – it’s a duty of every scientist I think to tell the world (i.e., more than just our colleagues) about what we’re being paid to do. And the masses are hungry for it.
However, the demise of the true ‘journalist’ (one who investigates a story – i.e., does ‘research’) in favour of the automaton ‘reporter’ (one who merely regurgitates, and then sensationalises, what he/she is told or reads) worldwide (and oh, how we are plagued with reporters and deeply in need of journalists in Australia!) means that there is some horrendous stories out there, especially on scientific issues. This is mainly because most reporters have neither the training nor capacity to understand what they’re writing about.
This issue is also particular poignant for the state of the environment, climate change and biodiversity loss – I’ve blogged about this before (see Poor media coverage promotes environmental apathy and untruths).
But after a 30-minute telephone interview with a very friendly American food journalist yesterday, I expected a reasonable report on the issue of frog consumption because, well, I explained many things to her as best I could. What was eventually published was appalling.
Now, in all fairness, I think she was trying to do well, but it’s as though she didn’t even listen to me. The warning bells should have rung loudly when she admitted she hadn’t read my blog “in detail” (i.e., not at all?). You can read the full article here, but let me just point out some of the inconsistencies:
Ah, no. I told her that between 30 and 50 % of frogs could be threatened with extinction (~30 % officially from the IUCN Red List). It could be as much as half given the paucity of information on so many species. A great example of reporter cherry-picking to add sensationalism.
Again, no, I didn’t. I clearly told her that the number one, way-out-in-front cause of frog declines worldwide is habitat loss. I mentioned chytrid fungus as another major contributor, and that climate change exacerbates the lot. Harvesting pressure is a big unknown in terms of relative impact, but I suspect it’s large.
Hmmm. One man? I had a great team of colleagues co-write the original paper in Conservation Biology. I wasn’t even the lead author! Funny how suddenly I’m a lone wolf on a ‘campaign’. Bloody hell.
“Aghast”, was I? I don’t recall being particularly emotional when I told her that I found a photo of Barack Obama eating frog legs during his election campaign. I merely pointed this out to show that the product is readily available in the USA. I also mentioned absolutely nothing about whales or their loins.
So, enough of my little humorous whinge. My point is really that there are plenty of bad journalists out there with little interest in reporting the truth on environmental issues (tell us something we don’t know, Bradshaw). If you want to read a good story about the frog consumption issue, check out a real journalist’s perspective here.
I know I’ve blogged recently about this, but The Adelaidean did a nice little article that I thought I’d reproduce here. The source can be found here.
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© R. Harcourt
Quite some time ago my colleague and (now former) postdoctoral fellow, Iain Field, and I sat down to examine in gory detail the extent of the threat to global populations of sharks, rays and chimaeras (chondrichthyans). I don’t think we quite realised the mammoth task we had set ourselves. Several years and nearly a hundred pages later, we have finally achieved our goal.
Introducing the new paper in Advances in Marine Biology entitled Susceptibility of sharks, rays and chimaeras to global extinction by Iain Field, Mark Meekan, Rik Buckworth and Corey Bradshaw.
The paper covers the following topics:
- Niche breadth
- Age and growth
- Reproduction and survival
- Fishing
- Beach meshing
- Habitat loss
- Pollution and non-indigenous species
- Drivers of threat risk in chondrichthyans and teleosts
- Global distribution of threatened chondrichthyan taxa
- Ecological, life history and human-relationship attributes
- Threat risk analysis
- Relative threat risk of chondrichthyans and teleosts
- Ecosystem roles of predators
- Predator loss in the marine realm
- Ecosystem roles of chondrichthyans
- Role of fisheries in future chondrichthyan extinctions
- Climate change
- Extinction synergies
- Research needs
As mentioned, quite a long analysis of the state of sharks worldwide. Bottom line? Well, as most of you might already know sharks aren’t doing too well worldwide, with around 52 % listed on the IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species. This compares interestingly to bony fishes (teleosts) that, although having only 8 % of all species Red-Listed, are generally in higher-threat Red List categories. We found that body size (positively) and geographic range (negatively) correlated with threat risk in both groups, but Red-Listed bony fishes were still more likely to be categorised as threatened after controlling for these effects.
In some ways this sort of goes against the notion that sharks are inherently more extinction-prone than other fish – a common motherhood statement seen at the beginning of almost all papers dealing with shark threats. What it does say though is that because sharks are on average larger and less fecund than your average fish, they tend to bounce back from declines more slowly, so they are more susceptible to rapid environmental change than your average fish. Guess what? We’re changing the environment pretty rapidly.
We also determined the spatial distribution of threat, and found that Red-Listed species are clustered mainly in (1) south-eastern South America; (2) western Europe and the Mediterranean; (3) western Africa; (4) South China Sea and South East Asia and (5) south-eastern Australia.
© W. White
Now, what are the implications for the loss of these species? As I’ve blogged recently, the reduction in predators in general can be a bad thing for ecosystems, and sharks are probably some of the best examples of ecosystem structural engineers we know (i.e., eating herbivores; ‘controlling’ prey densities, etc.). So, we should be worried when sharks start to disappear. One thing we also discovered is that we still have a rudimentary understanding of how climate change will affect sharks, the ways in which they structure ecosystems, and how they respond to coastal development. Suffice it to say though that generally speaking, things are not rosy if you’re a shark.
We end off with a recommendation we’ve been promoting elsewhere – we should be managing populations using the minimum viable population (MVP) size concept. Making sure that there are a lot of large, well-connected populations around will be the best insurance against extinction.
I.C. Field, M.G. Meekan, R.C. Buckworth, & C.J.A. Bradshaw (2009). Susceptibility of Sharks, Rays and Chimaeras to Global Extinction Advances in Marine Biology, 56, 275-363 : 10.1016/S0065-2881(09)56004-X
Here’s a little story for you about how a casual chat over a glass of wine (or many) can lead to great scientific endeavours.
A few years ago I was sitting in the living room of my good friends Noel Preece and Penny van Oosterzee in Darwin chatting about life, the universe, and everything. They rather casually mentioned that they would be selling their environmental consulting company and their house and moving to the Queensland rain forest. Ok – sounded like a pretty hippy thing to do when you’re thinking about ‘retiring’ (only from the normal grindstone, at least). But it wasn’t about the easy life away from it all (ok, partially, perhaps) – they wanted to do something with their reasonably large (181 ha), partially deforested (51-ha paddock) property investment. By ‘something’, I mean science.
So they asked me – how would we go about getting money to investigate the best way to reforest a tropical rain forest? I had no idea. As it turns out, no one really knows how to restore rain forests properly. Sure, planting trees happens a lot, but the random, willy-nilly, unquantified ways in which it is done means that no one can tell you what the biggest biodiversity bang for your buck is, or even if it can compete on the carbon sequestration front.
Why carbon sequestration? Well, in case you’ve had your head up your bum for the last decade, one of the major carbon mitigating schemes going is the offset idea – for every tonne of carbon you emit as a consumer, you (or more commonly, someone else you pay) plant a certain number of trees (because trees need carbon to grow and so suck it out of the atmosphere). Nice idea, but if you deforest native ecosystems just to bash up quick-growing monoculture plantations of (usually) exotic species with little benefit to native biota, biodiversity continues to spiral down the extinction vortex. So, there has to be a happy medium, and there has to be a way to measure it.
So I said to Penny and Noel “Why don’t we bash together a proposal and get some experts in the field involved and submit it to the Australian Research Council (ARC) for funding?” They thought that was a smashing idea, and so we did.
Fast forward a few years and … success! The Thiaki Project was born (‘Thiaki’ is the name of the Creek flowing through the property north of Atherton – seems to be of Greek origin). We were extremely lucky to find a new recruit to the University of Queensland, Dr. Margie Mayfield (who worked previously with Paul Ehrlich), who was not only an expert in the area of tropical reforestation for biodiversity, she also had the time and energy to lead the project. We garnered several other academic and industry partners and came up with a pretty sexy experiment that is just now getting underway thanks to good old Mr. ARC.
The project is fairly ambitious, even though the experiments per se are fairly straight forward. We’re using a randomised block design where we are testing 3 tree diversity treatments (monoculture, 1 species each from 6 families, and 5 species each from those same 6 families) and two planting densities (high and low). The major objective is to see what combination of planting density and native tree species provides the most habitat for the most species. We’re starting small, looking mainly at various insects as they start to use the newly planted blocks, but might expand the assessments (before planting and after) to reptiles, amphibians and possibly birds later on.
But we’re not stopping there – we were fortunate enough to get get a clever soil scientist, Dr. David Chittleborough of the University of Adelaide, involved so we could map the change in soil carbon during the experiment. Our major challenge is to find the right combination of tree species and planting techniques that restore native biodiversity the most effectively, all the while maximising carbon sequestration from the growing forest. And of course, we’re trying to do this as most cost-effectively as we can – measuring the relative costs will give landowners contemplating reforestation the scale of expenditures expected.
I’m pretty proud of what Margie, Noel, Penny and the rest of the team have accomplished so far, and what’s planned. Certainly the really exciting results are years away yet, but stay tuned – Thiaki could become the model for tropical reforestation worldwide. Follow the Thiaki Project website for regular updates.
I’d also love to recreate the Thiaki Project in southern Australia because as it turns out, no one knows how to maximise biodiversity and carbon sequestration for the lowest cost in temperate reforestation projects either. All we need is a few hundred hectares of deforested land (shouldn’t be hard to find), about $1 million to start, and a bit of time. Any takers?
© C. Madden
© ABC 2009
Yesterday I was asked to do a quick interview on ABC television (Midday Report) about the release of the 2009 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. I’ve blogged about the importance of the Red List before, but believe we have a lot more to do with species assessments and getting prioritisation right with respect to minimum viable population size. Have a listen to the interview itself, and read the IUCN’s media release reproduced below.
My basic stance is that we’ve only just started to assess the number of species on the planet (under 50000), yet there are many millions of species still largely under-studied and/or under-described (e.g., extant species richness = > 4 million protists, 16600 protozoa, 75000-300000 helminth parasites, 1.5 million fungi, 320000 plants, 4-6 million arthropods, > 6500 amphibians, 10000 birds and > 5000 mammals – see Bradshaw & Brook 2009 J Cosmol for references). What we’re looking at here is a refinement of knowledge (albeit a small one). We are indeed in the midst of the Anthropocene mass extinction event – there is nothing ‘looming’ about it. We are essentially losing species faster than we can assess them. I believe it’s important to make this clearer to those not working directly in the field of biodiversity conservation.
Extinction crisis continues apace – IUCN
Gland, Switzerland, 3 November, 2009 (IUCN) – The latest update of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™ shows that 17,291 species out of the 47,677 assessed species are threatened with extinction.
The results reveal 21 percent of all known mammals, 30 percent of all known amphibians, 12 percent of all known birds, and 28 percent of reptiles, 37 percent of freshwater fishes, 70 percent of plants, 35 percent of invertebrates assessed so far are under threat.
“The scientific evidence of a serious extinction crisis is mounting,” says Jane Smart, Director of IUCN’s Biodiversity Conservation Group. “January sees the launch of the International Year of Biodiversity. The latest analysis of the IUCN Red List shows the 2010 target to reduce biodiversity loss will not be met. It’s time for governments to start getting serious about saving species and make sure it’s high on their agendas for next year, as we’re rapidly running out of time.”
Of the world’s 5,490 mammals, 79 are Extinct or Extinct in the Wild, with 188 Critically Endangered, 449 Endangered and 505 Vulnerable. The Eastern Voalavo (Voalavo antsahabensis) appears on the IUCN Red List for the first time in the Endangered category. This rodent, endemic to Madagascar, is confined to montane tropical forest and is under threat from slash-and-burn farming.
There are now 1,677 reptiles on the IUCN Red List, with 293 added this year. In total, 469 are threatened with extinction and 22 are already Extinct or Extinct in the Wild. The 165 endemic Philippine species new to the IUCN Red List include the Panay Monitor Lizard (Varanus mabitang), which is Endangered. This highly-specialized monitor lizard is threatened by habitat loss due to agriculture and logging and is hunted by humans for food. The Sail-fin Water Lizard (Hydrosaurus pustulatus) enters in the Vulnerable category and is also threatened by habitat loss. Hatchlings are heavily collected both for the pet trade and for local consumption.
“The world’s reptiles are undoubtedly suffering, but the picture may be much worse than it currently looks,” says Simon Stuart, Chair of IUCN’s Species Survival Commission. “We need an assessment of all reptiles to understand the severity of the situation but we don’t have the $2-3 million to carry it out.”
The IUCN Red List shows that 1,895 of the planet’s 6,285 amphibians are in danger of extinction, making them the most threatened group of species known to date. Of these, 39 are already Extinct or Extinct in the Wild, 484 are Critically Endangered, 754 are Endangered and 657 are Vulnerable.
The Kihansi Spray Toad (Nectophrynoides asperginis) has moved from Critically Endangered to Extinct in the Wild. The species was only known from the Kihansi Falls in Tanzania, where it was formerly abundant with a population of at least 17,000. Its decline is due to the construction of a dam upstream of the Kihansi Falls that removed 90 percent of the original water flow to the gorge. The fungal disease chytridiomycosis was probably responsible for the toad’s final population crash.
The fungus also affected the Rabb’s Fringe-limbed Treefrog (Ecnomiohyla rabborum), which enters the Red List as Critically Endangered. It is known only from central Panama. In 2006, the chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis) was reported in its habitat and only a single male has been heard calling since. This species has been collected for captive breeding efforts but all attempts have so far failed.
Of the 12,151 plants on the IUCN Red List, 8,500 are threatened with extinction, with 114 already Extinct or Extinct in the Wild. The Queen of the Andes (Puya raimondii) has been reassessed and remains in the Endangered category. Found in the Andes of Peru and Bolivia, it only produces seeds once in 80 years before dying. Climate change may already be impairing its ability to flower and cattle roam freely among many colonies, trampling or eating young plants.
There are now 7,615 invertebrates on the IUCN Red List this year, 2,639 of which are threatened with extinction. Scientists added 1,360 dragonflies and damselflies, bringing the total to 1,989, of which 261 are threatened. The Giant Jewel (Chlorocypha centripunctata), classed as Vulnerable, is found in southeast Nigeria and southwest Cameroon and is threatened by forest destruction.
Scientists also added 94 molluscs, bringing the total number assessed to 2,306, of which 1,036 are threatened. Seven freshwater snails from Lake Dianchi in Yunnan Province, China, are new to the IUCN Red List and all are threatened. These join 13 freshwater fishes from the same area, 12 of which are threatened. The main threats are pollution, introduced fish species and overharvesting.
There are now 3,120 freshwater fishes on the IUCN Red List, up 510 species from last year. Although there is still a long way to go before the status all the world’s freshwater fishes is known, 1,147 of those assessed so far are threatened with extinction. The Brown Mudfish (Neochanna apoda), found only in New Zealand, has been moved from Near Threatened to Vulnerable as it has disappeared from many areas in its range. Approximately 85-90 percent of New Zealand’s wetlands have been lost or degraded through drainage schemes, irrigation and land development.
“Creatures living in freshwater have long been neglected. This year we have again added a large number of them to the IUCN Red List and are confirming the high levels of threat to many freshwater animals and plants. This reflects the state of our precious water resources. There is now an urgency to pursue our effort but most importantly to start using this information to move towards a wise use of water resources,” says Jean-Christophe Vié, Deputy Head of the IUCN Species Programme.
“This year’s IUCN Red List makes for sobering reading,” says Craig Hilton-Taylor, Manager of the IUCN Red List Unit. “These results are just the tip of the iceberg. We have only managed to assess 47,663 species so far; there are many more millions out there which could be under serious threat. We do, however, know from experience that conservation action works so let’s not wait until it’s too late and start saving our species now.”
The status of the Australian Grayling (Prototroctes maraena), a freshwater fish, has improved as a result of conservation efforts. Now classed as Near Threatened as opposed to Vulnerable, the population has recovered thanks to fish ladders which have been constructed over dams to allow migration, enhanced riverside vegetation and the education of fishermen, who now face heavy penalties if found with this species.
Non-native species introduced mainly via increasing trade of goods and services have huge economic, health, and environmental costs. These ‘biological invasions’ involve the intentional or unintentional transport and release of species beyond their native biogeographical ranges, facilitating their potential spread. Over the last few decades, invasive species have incurred an average cost of at least…
Wildfire burns between 3.94 million and 5.19 million square kilometres of land every year worldwide. If that area were a single country, it would be the seventh largest in the world. In Australia, most fire occurs in the vast tropical savannas of the country’s north. In new research published in Nature Geoscience, we show Indigenous…
Australia is home to about one in 12 of the world’s species of animals, birds, plants and insects – between 600,000 and 700,000 species. More than 80% of Australian plants and mammals and just under 50% of our birds are found nowhere else. But habitat destruction, climate change, and invasive species are wreaking havoc on Earth’s…
ConservationBytes.com 