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Worried about Earth’s future? Well, the outlook is worse than even scientists can grasp

14 01 2021

Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Flinders University; Daniel T. Blumstein, University of California, Los Angeles, and Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University

Anyone with even a passing interest in the global environment knows all is not well. But just how bad is the situation? Our new paper shows the outlook for life on Earth is more dire than is generally understood.

The research published today reviews more than 150 studies to produce a stark summary of the state of the natural world. We outline the likely future trends in biodiversity decline, mass extinction, climate disruption and planetary toxification. We clarify the gravity of the human predicament and provide a timely snapshot of the crises that must be addressed now.

The problems, all tied to human consumption and population growth, will almost certainly worsen over coming decades. The damage will be felt for centuries and threatens the survival of all species, including our own.

Our paper was authored by 17 leading scientists, including those from Flinders University, Stanford University and the University of California, Los Angeles. Our message might not be popular, and indeed is frightening. But scientists must be candid and accurate if humanity is to understand the enormity of the challenges we face.

Girl in breathing mask attached ot plant in container

Getting to grips with the problem

First, we reviewed the extent to which experts grasp the scale of the threats to the biosphere and its lifeforms, including humanity. Alarmingly, the research shows future environmental conditions will be far more dangerous than experts currently believe. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: agriculture, alien species, Anthropocene, biodiversity, biowealth, bushmeat, carbon, climate change, climate shift, conservation, coral reefs, decline, deforestation, development, disease, drought, Economics, Ecosystem, ecosystem function, ecosystem services, Education, Endarkenment, environmental economics, environmental policy, Environmental science, exploitation, extinction, extremism, fire, food, function, governance, habitat loss, harvest, health, human overpopulation, impact, invasive species, ocean, planning, pollination, poverty, propaganda, science, threatened species, toxification
Categories : Africa, agriculture, alien species, anthropocene, biodiversity, biowealth, carbon, climate change, climate shift, conservation, conservation biology, corruption, decline, deforestation, development, disease, drought, economics, ecosystem services, education, Endarkenment, environmental economics, environmental policy, environmental science, extinction, extinction debt, extremism, fire, Flinders University, governance, habitat loss, harvest, health, human overpopulation, investment, livestock, logging, management, ocean, planning, propaganda, restoration, science, seagrass, sustainability, synergies, threatened species, toxification, vegetation

Influential conservation papers of 2020

19 12 2020

Following my late-December tradition, I present — in no particular order — a retrospective list of the ‘top’ 20 influential papers of 2020 as assessed by experts in Faculty Opinions (formerly known as F1000). See previous years’ lists here: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013.

Life in fluctuating environments — “… it tackles a fundamental problem of bio-ecology (how living beings cope with the fluctuations of the environment) with a narrative that does not make use of the cumbersome formulas and complicated graphs that so often decorate articles of this kind. Instead, the narrative and the illustrations are user-friendly and easy to understand, while being highly informative.“

Forest carbon sink neutralized by pervasive growth-lifespan trade-offs — “… deals with a key process in the global carbon cycle: whether climate change (CC) is enhancing the natural sink capacity of ecosystems or not.“

Bending the curve of terrestrial biodiversity needs an integrated strategy — “… explores different scenarios about the consequences of habitat conversion on terrestrial biodiversity.“

Rebuilding marine life — “The logic is: leave nature alone, and it will come back. Not necessarily as it was before, but it will come back.“

Towards a taxonomically unbiased European Union biodiversity strategy for 2030 — “… states that the emperor has no clothes, providing an estimate of the money dedicated to biodiversity conservation (a lot of money) and then stating that the bulk of biodiversity remains unstudied and unprotected, while efforts are biased towards just a few “popular” species.“

Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: agriculture, ammonium, bioecology, carbon cycle, Climate, climate disruption, CO2, diversification, environmental variation., European Union, farming, food, food security, Forest, genetic rescue, Global warming, governance, MPA, nitrate, outbreeding, Soil, soil biodiversity, synchrony, topoclimates, weather, weathering
Categories : agriculture, anthropocene, biodiversity, birds, cattle, climate change, conservation, conservation biology, deforestation, ecosystem function, ecosystem services, environmental policy, exploitation, extinction, fisheries, habitat loss, marine, marine protected area, protected area, research, science, sustainability

Never let a good crisis go to waste

11 05 2020

pandemic

First published in the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere Blog on 5 May 2020.

by Professor Dan Blumstein (University of California at Los Angeles), Professor Paul Ehrlich (Stanford University), and Corey Bradshaw (Flinders University)

—

Winston Churchill’s words have never been more important than today as we experience the society- and life-changing consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The extent and severity of the disease is a result of ignoring decades of warnings by scientists about the general deterioration of humanity’s epidemiological environment, and specific warnings about confining live, wild animals in markets. The situation was made even more lethal by ignoring the warnings from epidemiologists and disease ecologists once it became clear that an imminent pandemic most likely arose from this practice. Many countries, including the United States, are still ignoring those warnings and the required actions to lessen the impact.

Accordingly, we should ask ourselves, “what else are we missing?” What other huge problems are hiding in plain sight where science could guide policy to avoid catastrophic future failures? For instance, there are two principal health threats that must be addressed immediately, and we must strike while the iron is hot.

The overuse of antibiotics in agriculture will cause widespread deaths from formerly treatable bacterial diseases because of the evolution of antibiotic resistance in microbes. The evolution of resistance is well-known, predictable, and obvious — not in retrospect, but now. By feeding antibiotics to otherwise healthy livestock, animals can be housed in higher densities and they grow faster. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: agriculture, biodiversity loss, climate change, COVID-19, covid19, disease, Extinctions, Global warming, human disease, pandemic, reset, sars-cov2, wet markets
Categories : agriculture, Australia, biodiversity, climate change, conservation, disease, environmental policy, exploitation, habitat loss, health, human overpopulation, livestock, logging

Influential conservation ecology papers of 2019

24 12 2019

As I’ve done for the last six years, I am publishing a retrospective list of the ‘top’ 20 influential papers of 2019 as assessed by experts in F1000 Prime (in no particular order). See previous years’ lists here: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013.

Decline of the North American avifauna — … the first comprehensive assessment of population change in the North American avifauna.

Scientists’ warning to humanity: microorganisms and climate change — … [highlights] the crucial role of microbial transformations in determining set points for sea temperature, pH and ocean productivity … [identifies] microbial activity as the “life support system of the biosphere”.

(Note: Lots of people hated this one, basically because it appears to be severely flawed; nonetheless, it received several recommendations on F1000): The global tree restoration potential — … illustrates the substantial potential of capturing some of the excess carbon dioxide present in the earth’s atmosphere by planting trees.

Managing the middle: a shift in conservation priorities based on the global human modification gradient — … probably the best global assessment of spatial extent of human modification of natural terrestrial environments published to date.

Five decades of northern land carbon uptake revealed by the interhemispheric CO₂ gradient — … [concludes] that northern hemisphere [sic] vegetation and soil account for the majority of the terrestrial carbon sink, rather than tropical forests (not trying to display too many sour grapes here, but we’ve already reported this for the boreal forest, and they didn’t even bother to cite us — sad panda)

Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: agriculture, biodiversity, birds, carbon, carbon uptake, climate change, climate emergency, CO2, conservation, declines, drought, extinction, Fish, fisheries, forests, insects, marine ecology, microorganisms, pesticides, range edges, trees, urban biodiversity, wilderness
Categories : agriculture, anthropocene, biodiversity, biogeography, biowealth, birds, carbon, climate change, climate shift, community ecology, connectivity, conservation, conservation biology, conservation ecology, decline, deforestation, demography, ecology, economics, ecosystem, ecosystem function, ecosystem services, environmental policy, environmental science, exploitation, extinction, extinction debt, fish, fisheries, function, habitat loss, harvest, marine, planning, pollution, protected area

Increasing human population density drives environmental degradation in Africa

26 06 2019

stumps

Almost a decade ago, I (co-) wrote a paper examining the socio-economic correlates of gross, national-scale indices of environmental performance among the world’s nations. It turned out to be rather popular, and has so far garnered over 180 citations and been cited in three major policy documents.

In addition to the more pedestrian ranking itself, we also tested which of three main socio-economic indicators best explained variation in the environmental rank — a country’s gross ‘wealth’ indicator (gross national income) turned out to explain the most, and there was no evidence to support a non-linear relationship between environmental performance and per capita wealth (the so-called environmental Kuznets curve).

Well, that was then, and this is now. Something that always bothered me about that bit of research was that in some respects, it probably unfairly disadvantaged certain countries that were in more recent phases of the ‘development’ pathway, such that environmental damage long since done in major development pulses many decades or even centuries prior to today (e.g., in much of Europe) probably meant that certain countries got a bit of an unfair advantage. In fact, the more recently developed nations probably copped a lower ranking simply because their damage was fresher.

While I defend the overall conclusions of that paper, my intentions have always been since then to improve on the approach. That desire finally got the better of me, and so I (some might say unwisely) decided to focus on a particular region of the planet where some of the biggest biodiversity crunches will happen over the next few decades — Africa.

Africa is an important region to re-examine these national-scale relationships for many reasons. The first is that it’s really the only place left on the planet where there’s a semi-intact megafauna assemblage. Yes, the great Late Pleistocene megafauna extinction event did hit Africa too, but compared to all other continents, it got through that period relatively unscathed. So now we (still) have elephants, rhinos, giraffes, hippos, etc. It’s a pretty bloody special place from that perspective alone.

Elephants in the Kruger National Park, South Africa (photo: CJA Bradshaw)

Then there’s the sheer size of the continent. Unfortunately, most mercator projections of the Earth show a rather quaint continent nuzzled comfortably in the middle of the map, when in reality, it’s a real whopper. If you don’t believe me, go to truesize.com and drag any country of interest over the African continent (it turns out that its can more or less fit all of China, Australia, USA, and India within its greater borders).

Third, most countries in Africa (barring a few rare exceptions), are still in the so-called ‘development’ phase, although some are much farther along the economic road than others. For this reason, an African nation-to-nation comparison is probably a lot fairer than comparing, say, Bolivia to Germany, or Mongolia to Canada.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: Africa, agriculture, carbon emissions, deforestation, development, ecological footprint, ecology, environmental performance, environmental sustainability, human population, human population growth, megafauna, sustainability, sustainable development
Categories : Africa, agriculture, anthropocene, biodiversity, biowealth, carbon, cattle, conservation, corruption, deforestation, development, economics, environmental Kuznets curve, environmental policy, environmental science, exploitation, extinction, food, governance, habitat loss, human overpopulation, livestock, logging, mammal, management, modelling, poverty, protected area, societies, sustainability, threatened species, vegetation

Academics and Indigenous groups unite to stand up for the natural world

26 04 2019

Rain forest gives way to pastures in the Brazilian Amazon in Mato Grosso. Photo by Thiago Foresti.

More than 600 scientists from every country in the EU and 300 Brazilian Indigenous groups have come together for the first time. This is because we see a window of opportunity in the ongoing trade negotiations between the EU and Brazil. In a Letter published in Science today, we are asking the EU to stand up for Brazilian Indigenous rights and the natural world. Strong action from the EU is particularly important given Brazil’s recent attempts to dismantle environmental legislation and ‘develop the unproductive Amazon’.

It’s worth clarifying — this isn’t about the EU trying to control Brazil — it’s about making sure our imports aren’t driving violence and deforestation. Foreign white people trying to ‘protect nature’ abroad have a dark and shameful past, where actions done in the name of conservation have led to the eviction of millions of Indigenous people. This has predominantly been to create (what we in the world of conservation would call) ‘protected areas’. The harsh reality is that most protected areas either are or have been ancestral lands of Indigenous people who are closely linked to their land and depend on it for their survival. Clearly, conservationists need to support Indigenous people. This new partnership between European scientists and Brazilian Indigenous groups is doing just that.

Brazil’s forest loss 2001-2013 shown in red. Indigenous lands outlined. By Mike Clark; data from GlobalForestWatch.org

In Brazil, many Indigenous groups still have a right to their land. This land is predominantly found in the Amazon rainforest, where close to a million Indigenous people live and depend on a healthy forest. Indigenous people are some of the best protectors of this vast forest, and are crucial to a future of long-term successful conservation. But Brazilian Indigenous groups and local communities are increasingly under attack. Violence on deforestation frontiers in Brazil has spiked this month, with at least 9 people found dead. The future is particularly scary for Indigenous people when there are quotes such as this from the man who is currently the President “It’s a shame that the Brazilian cavalry hasn’t been as efficient as the Americans, who exterminated the Indians.”

On top of human rights and environmental concerns, there is a strong profit driven case for halting deforestation. For example, ongoing deforestation in the Amazon risks flipping large parts of the rainforest to savanna – posing a serious risk to agricultural productivity, food security, local livelihoods, and the Brazilian economy. Zero-deforestation doesn’t harm agri-business, it allows for its longevity. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: agricultural expansion, agriculture, Brazil, carbon footprint, Cerrado, deforestation, EU, European Union, eviction, feed, genocide, indigenous, livestock, livestock feed, native people, Pantanal, Protected Areas, rain forest, Rainforest, savanna, violence
Categories : agriculture, Amazon, anthropocene, biodiversity, biowealth, carbon, cattle, climate change, conservation, corruption, decline, deforestation, development, ecosystem services, environmental policy, Europe, extinction, food, fragmentation, governance, habitat loss, harvest, livestock, logging, rain forests, reserve, South America, sustainability, tropical, vegetation

Primate woes where the oil palm grows

16 08 2018

gorilla

A new article just published in PNAS reveals how future expansion of the palm-oil industry could have terrible consequences for African primates.

Researchers from the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, CIRAD, Liverpool John Moores University, and ETH Zurich searched for “areas of compromise” combining high oil palm suitability with low primate vulnerability, as possible locations where to accommodate new oil-palm plantations while reducing detrimental effects on primate populations.

Results show that there is small room for compromise. In fact, potential areas of compromise are rare across the whole African continent, covering a total extent of 0.13 Mha of land highly suited to oil palm cultivation where primate vulnerability is low, rising to just 3.3 Mha if all land with at least minimum suitability to grow oil palm is taken into account.

Palm oil production is steadily rising, and expected to accelerate in response to growing world’s population, with future demand driven not only by the food industry, but also by the biofuel market. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: Africa, agriculture, biodiversity, deforestation, oil palm, palm oil, sustainability
Categories : Africa, agriculture, biodiversity, carbon, conservation, deforestation, ecosystem services, environmental policy, extinction, food, fragmentation, habitat loss, human overpopulation, IUCN, modelling, oil palm, palm oil, prioritisation, rain forests, threatened species

Some scary stats about agriculture and biodiversity

20 07 2018

84438 Last week we had the pleasure of welcoming the eminent sustainability scientist, Professor Andrew Balmford of the University of Cambridge, to our humble Ecology and Evolution Seminar Series here at Flinders University. While we couldn’t record the seminar he gave because of some of the unpublished and non-proprietary nature of some of his slides, I thought it would be interesting, useful, and thought-provoking to summarise some of the information he gave.

Andrew started off by telling us some of the environmental implications of farming worldwide. Today, existing agriculture covers more than half of ‘useable’ land (i.e., excluding unproductive deserts, etc.), and it has doubled nitrogen fixation rates from a pre-industrial baseline. Globally, agriculture is responsible for between 19 and 35% of all greenhouse gas emissions, and it has caused approximately 40% increase in observed sea-level rise (1961-2003). Not surprisingly, agriculture already occupies the regions of highest biodiversity globally, and is subsequently the greatest source of threat to species.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: agriculture, biodiversity, climate change, Emissions, farming, fertilisers, greenhouse gases, land sharing, land sparing, nitrogen, species
Categories : agriculture, anthropocene, biodiversity, carbon, cattle, climate change, conservation, cuisine, decline, deforestation, ecology, ecosystem, ecosystem function, ecosystem services, environmental policy, exploitation, extinction, famine, food, fragmentation, habitat loss, harvest, livestock, sustainability

How to feed the world without costing the Earth

5 07 2018

image_normal I’m excited to announce the upcoming public lecture by world-renowned sustainability scientist, Professor Andrew Balmford, at Flinders University on 17 July 2018.

Andrew is Professor of Conservation Science and a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award holder at the Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, and is on sabbatical at University of Tasmania until December 2018. His main research interests are exploring how conservation might best be reconciled with land-demanding activities such as farming, quantifying the costs and benefits of effective conservation, and examining what works in conservation. In his book Wild Hope (Chicago University Press), he argues that cautious optimism is essential in tackling environmental challenges. Andrew helped establish the Student Conference on Conservation Science, and Earth Optimism.

Professor Balmford will be presenting his seminar “How to feed the world without costing the Earth” (hosted by the Ecology & Evolution Research Group) at the Bedford Park Campus of Flinders University in South Lecture Theatre 1, from 12:00-13:00 on 17 July 2018. All are welcome.

Abstract: Globally, agriculture is the greatest threat to biodiversity and a major contributor to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. How we choose to deal with rising human food demand will to a large degree determine the state of biodiversity and the wider environment in the 21st century. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: Adelaide, agriculture, Andrew Balmford, biodiversity loss, extinction, Flinders University, food, land sharing, land sparing, lecture, presentation, seminar, sustainability, University of Cambridge
Categories : agriculture, biodiversity, conservation, conservation biology, conservation ecology, conservation scholars, food, human overpopulation

Inexorable rise of human population pressures in Africa

31 08 2016

I’ve been a bit mad preparing for an upcoming conference, so I haven’t had a lot of time lately to blog about interesting developments in the conservation world. However, it struck me today that my preparations provide ideal material for a post about the future of Africa’s biodiversity.

I’ve been lucky enough to be invited to the University of Pretoria Mammal Research Unit‘s 50^th Anniversary Celebration conference to be held from 12-16 September this year in Kruger National Park. Not only will this be my first time to Africa (I know — it has taken me far too long), the conference will itself be in one of the world’s best-known protected areas.

While decidedly fortunate to be invited, I am a bit intimidated by the line-up of big brains that will be attending, and of the fact that I know next to bugger all about African mammals (in a conservation science sense, of course). Still, apparently my insight as an outsider and ‘global’ thinker might be useful, so I’ve been hard at it the last few weeks planning my talk and doing some rather interesting analyses. I want to share some of these with you now beforehand, although I won’t likely give away the big prize until after I return to Australia.

I’ve been asked to talk about human population pressures on (southern) African mammal species, which might seem simple enough until you start to delve into the complexities of just how human populations affect wildlife. It’s simply from the perspective that human changes to the environment (e.g., deforestation, agricultural expansion, hunting, climate change, etc.) do cause species to dwindle and become extinct faster than they otherwise would (hence the entire field of conservation science). However, it’s another thing entirely to attempt to predict what might happen decades or centuries down the track. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: Africa, agriculture, biodiversity, conservation, consumption, human population, mammals, overpopulation, roads, southern Africa, wildlife
Categories : Africa, agriculture, anthropocene, biodiversity, carbon, China, climate change, conference, conservation, conservation biology, deforestation, demography, development, economics, exploitation, extinction, fire, fragmentation, habitat loss, harvest, poaching, population dynamics, poverty, roads, synergies

Buying time

27 06 2016

Originally published in the Otago Daily Times by Tom McKinlay

—

If we don’t act soon, the world we leave our children will be in a sorry state indeed, leading Australian scientist Prof Corey Bradshaw tells Tom McKinlay.

Prof Corey Bradshaw’s 9-year-old daughter lives what sounds an idyllic existence. On their small farm outside Adelaide in South Australia, she has her chickens and her dogs and her cats, her goats and her sheep.

She’s an only child, but is not short of attention from adults and reads voraciously.

She has big plans; there are at least 25 careers she likes the look of, that she’ll undertake simultaneously: farmer, wildlife rescuer, self-sufficient bush dweller – feeding herself by shooting arrows at fish – scientist and more.

She is optimistic about the future. As she should be. A 9-year-old girl living in Australia in 2016 should regard the sky as no limit at all.

All this I learn from her father, ecologist Prof Bradshaw, who talks of his daughter with an enthusiasm unbounded.

It is fair to assume she has picked up some of her interest in the natural world from him.

He holds the Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Adelaide.

And the ecologist, conservation biologist and systems modeller – with a University of Otago degree – has shared a great deal of his work with his daughter.

“She’s very much a farm kid, but because of who I am she gets to hear a lot about animal and plant systems around the world, and she’s travelled a lot with me and she’s a complete fanatic of David Attenborough,” the professor says.

So far, still so idyllic. But Prof Bradshaw’s work means he is at the forefront of alerting the world to what is not right with it.

Pollution, climate change, habitat loss, extinction.

His daughter has travelled with him to see species that might not be with us by the time she grows up.

“She’s hyper-aware of extinctions, in particular, and how climate change is contributing to that,” Prof Bradshaw says.

“I don’t pull any punches with her.”

In fact, he made her cry when she was 5 explaining climate change. She hasn’t needed to travel to know the pot is on the boil. Fires have forced the family to flee its South Australian property several times, not just at the height of summer.

One of the worst fires in the region struck in May a couple of years back.

“We were on the doorstep of winter and we had one of our worst fires in 20 years.”

So even without a scientist in the family, there are certain unavoidable truths for a child growing up in 21st-century Australia.

Prof Bradshaw is coming to Dunedin next month as part of the New Zealand International Science Festival to talk on climate change, looking at it from his daughter’s perspective. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: agriculture, climate change, conflict, Economics, Emissions, human population, nuclear, refugees
Categories : agriculture, Australia, biodiversity, biowealth, climate change, climate shift, conservation, development, environmental policy, extinction, food, habitat loss, health, human overpopulation, New Zealand, poverty, science

Australia pisses away the little water it has

9 05 2016

Water, water nowhere, with little left to drink.

—

Australians are superlative natural resource wasters, but living in the driest inhabited continent on the planet, you’d think we’d be precious about our water use.

You’d be wrong.

On the contrary, Australia has a huge water footprint (defined as “the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by the people of the nation”). For internal domestic use (i.e., not including agricultural and industrial uses, or water imported directly or within other goods), Australians use about 341000 litres per person per year (data from 1997–2001), which is six times the global average of 57000 litres per person per year (1).

Agricultural production is one of the chief consumers of freshwater around the world. For example, the global average virtual water content of rice (paddy) is 2.29 million litres/tonne produced, and for wheat it is 1.33 litres/tonne. Growing crops for biofuel in particular has a huge water footprint — depending on the crop in question, it takes an average of 1400–20000 litres of water to produce just one litre of biofuel (2). If an agricultural product comes from livestock — say, meat, leather, or wool — the water content is typically much higher because of the feed required to keep the animal alive. For example, it takes about three years to raise beef cattle to slaughtering age, with an average of 200 kg of boneless beef produced per animal. This requires about 1,300 kg of grains, 7200 kg of pasture or hay, and 31000 litres of water for drinking and cleaning. This means that the total amount of water required to produce 1 kg of beef is about 15340 litres (1). For Australia, which has over 20 million or so cattle at any one moment, the water footprint alone should at least be cause for concern the next time you tuck into a steak dinner. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: agriculture, carnivory, deforestation, reforestation, salination, steak, water
Categories : agriculture, conservation, cuisine, deforestation, ecosystem function, environmental policy, food, habitat loss, livestock, water

To spare or to share, that is a muddled question

9 10 2015

Unfortunately, it ain’t this simple (from doi:10.1016/j.foodpol.2010.11.008)

Certain research trends in any field are inevitable, because once a seductive can of research-question worms is opened, it’s difficult to resist the temptation to start hooking in. Of course, I’m not against popular trends in research per se if they lead to a productive, empirical evaluation of the complexities involved, but it can sometimes result in a lot of wasted time. For example, in conservation ecology we’ve had to suffer 15 years of wasted effort on disproving neutral theory, we’ve bashed heads unnecessarily regarding the infamous SLOSS (‘Single Large Or Several Small’ reserves) debates of the 1970s and 1980s, and we’ve pilfered precious years arguing about whether density feedback actually exists (answer: it does).

The latest populist research trend in conservation seems to be the ‘land sparing versus land sharing’ debate, which, I (and others) argue, is largely an overly simplistic waste of time, money and intellectual advancement to the detriment of both biodiversity and human well-being.

Land sparing is generally used in reference to agricultural practices (although in theory, it could apply to any human endeavour where native vegetation cover is required to be removed or degraded, such as for electricity production) that are purposely made to be high-yielding so that they require the smallest amount of land. At the other extreme (and the ‘two extremes’ of a continuum concept is half the bloody problem here), land sharing requires a larger land footprint because it relies on lower-yielding, biodiversity-friendly (agricultural) practices. Proponents of land sparing argue that only by amalgamating patches of remnant native vegetation can we avoid massive fragmentation and the pursuant loss of biodiversity, whereas those pushing for land sparing argue that the matrix between the big undeveloped bits must be exploited in a more biodiversity-friendly way to allow species to persist.

As it turns out, they’re both right (but their single-minded, extremist positions are not). Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 6 Comments »
Tags: agriculture, agroforestry, human overpopulation, hunger, land sharing, land sparing
Categories : agriculture, conservation, conservation ecology, SLOSS

We generally ignore the big issues

11 08 2014

I’ve had a good week at Stanford University with Paul Ehrlich where we’ve been putting the final touches¹ on our book. It’s been taking a while to put together, but we’re both pretty happy with the result, which should be published by The University of Chicago Press within the first quarter of 2015.

It has indeed been a pleasure and a privilege to work with one of the greatest thinkers of our age, and let me tell you that at 82, he’s still a force with which to be reckoned. While I won’t divulge much of our discussions here given they’ll appear soon-ish in the book, I did want to raise one subject that I think we all need to think about a little more.

The issue is what we, as ecologists (I’m including conservation scientists here), choose to study and contemplate in our professional life.

I’m just as guilty as most of the rest of you, but I argue that our discipline is caught in a rut of irrelevancy on the grander scale. We spend a lot of time refining the basics of what we essentially already know pretty well. While there will be an eternity of processes to understand, species to describe, and relationships to measure, can our discipline really afford to avoid the biggest issues while biodiversity (and our society included) are flushed down the drain?

Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 9 Comments »
Tags: agriculture, ecological society, ecology, electricity, energy, food supply, human overpopulation, navel gazing, Population, sustainability
Categories : agriculture, anthropocene, biodiversity, carbon, carbon trading, climate change, conference, conservation, conservation biology, economics, ecosystem, environmental policy, extinction, food, human overpopulation, planning, population viability analysis, protected area, PVA, research, reserve, science, threatened species

A convenient truth: global push for carbon-based conservation

19 05 2014

I’ve just written an article for the Australian River Restoration Centre‘s RipRap magazine, and they have given me permission to reproduce it here.

—

The brave, new green world of the carbon economy hasn’t exactly taken off as desired. Perhaps it’s because it wasn’t really planned from the outset, or maybe it is still too abstract for most people to accept, digest and incorporate into their daily lives. An emergent property of society’s generally slow awakening to the challenge of climate disruption, is that it will be a long time before we accept its full suite of incarnations.

The infant carbon economy is, however, well and truly alive and kicking, so it is important to try and plan for its growing influence on our decision making. Bumps in the road aside, the carbon economy has mostly been a blessing (actual and potential) for biodiversity conservation projects the world over.

In principle, the aim of the carbon economy is rather straight-forward: charge people a certain amount for each unit of carbon dioxide equivalents they release, and then use that money to develop approaches that further increase carbon sequestration or limit emissions. It’s a ‘build-it-and-they-will-come’ framework, where increasing financial impetus to restrict emissions is enhanced by society’s evolution towards better approaches and technology.

The operational side of the carbon economy is unfortunately much more muddled, with vested interests and political gaming weakening its implementation. Nonetheless, we persevere. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: Abbottoir, agriculture, Australia, biodiversity, carbon, carbon economy, carbon price, carbon sequestration, Carbon tax, climate change, climate disruption, environmental plantings, feral animals, fire, fire management, forestry, regrowth, replanting, restoration, savanna
Categories : agriculture, Australia, biocarbon, biodiversity, carbon, carbon trading, climate change, conservation, conservation biology, deforestation, ecology, economics, ecosystem, ecosystem function, ecosystem services, environmental policy, fire, habitat loss, livestock, logging, management, planning, recovery, reforestation, restoration

Brave new green world: biodiversity’s response to Australia’s carbon economy

12 03 2013

I’ve had a busy weekend entertaining visiting colleagues and participating in WOMADelaide‘s first-ever ‘The Planet Talks‘. If you haven’t heard of WOMADelaide, you’re truly missing out in one of the best music festivals going (and this is from a decidedly non-festival-going sort). Planet Talks this year was a bit of an experiment after the only partially successful Earth Station festival held last year (it was well-attended, but apparently wasn’t as financially successful as they had hoped). So this year they mixed a bit of science with a bit of music – hence ‘Planet Talks’. Paul Ehrlich was one of the star attractions, and I had the honour of going onstage with him yesterday to discuss a little bit about human population growth and sustainability. It was also great to see Robyn Williams again. All the Talks were packed out – indeed, I was surprised they were so popular, especially in the 39-degree heat. Rob Brookman, WOMADelaide’s founder and principal organiser, told me afterward that they’d definitely be doing it again.

But my post really isn’t about WOMADelaide or The Planet Talks (even though I got the bonus of meeting one of my favourite latin bands, Novalima, creators of one of my favourite songs). It’s instead about a paper I heralded last year that’s finally been accepted.

In early 2012 at the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) symposium in Adelaide, the Australian Centre for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (ACEAS) put on what they called the ‘Grand Challenges’ workshop. I really didn’t get the joke at the time, but apparently the ‘grand challenge’ was locking 30 scientists with completely different backgrounds in a room for two days to see if they could do anything other than argue and bullshit. Well, we rose to that challenge and produced something that I think is rather useful.

I therefore proudly introduce the paper entitled Brave new green world: consequences of a carbon economy for the conservation of Australian biodiversity just accepted in Biological Conservation. The online version isn’t quite ready yet (should be in the next few weeks), but you are welcome to request a preprint from me now. If you attended (the surprisingly excellent) TERN symposium in Canberra last month, you might have seen me give a brief synopsis of our results.

The paper is a rather in-depth review of how we, 30 fire, animal, plant, soil, landscape, agricultural and freshwater biologists, believe Australia’s new carbon-influenced economy (i.e., carbon price) will impact the country’s biodiversity. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 5 Comments »
Tags: agriculture, Australia, Clean Development Mechanism, Emissions trading, environmental plantings, feral animals, forestry, Greenhouse gas, Kyoto Protocol, plantations, regrowth, WOMADelaide
Categories : agriculture, Australia, biocarbon, biodiversity, biosequestration, carbon, carbon trading, climate change, climate shift, conservation, conservation biology, deforestation, ecology, economics, ecosystem function, environmental economics, environmental policy, fire, fragmentation, habitat loss, harvest, invasive species, kangaroo, livestock, logging, management, monitoring, planning, recovery, reforestation, restoration, southern Australia, synergies, water

We only have decades…

26 04 2012

… not centuries.

Here’s a little video production The Environment Institute put together that explains some of our lab‘s work and future directions.

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CJA Bradshaw

Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: agriculture, Barry Brook, biodiversity, Corey Bradshaw, human population, nuclear energy, policy, science, The Environment Institute, The University of Adelaide
Categories : anthropocene, Australia, biodiversity, climate change, conservation, ecosystem, ecosystem services, environmental science, extinction, modelling

Buzzing to the plate

4 04 2011

Here’s another contribution from my PhD student, Salvador Herrando-Pérez (see his previous ConservationBytes.com post on micro-evolution here).

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Once upon a time at the produce section of a supermarket, a little girl confided to me that she had no idea that little plants could grow on carrots. This sympathetic scene portrays the split between the food we consume and the environments that produce it.

Mediterraneans love their cuisine. In fact, we are fairly proud of all our food. Yet how many of us associate a juicy tomato in our multicoloured salads, the smoothness of a escalibada (grilled veggies) bathed in virgin olive oil, the afternoon’s delicious expresso among friends and colleagues, or the last Christmas’ crunchy nougat shared with our beloved, with an insect that one given day pollinates a flower whose fertilized ovary will reach our dining room in the form of a sweet, infusion, fruit, sauce, soup or veggie.

Biodiversity fuels this relationship between insects and food. A study led by Alexandra Klein on highland coffee (Coffea arabica) from Sulawesi (Indonesia) demonstrates this concept well¹. The German team showed that the amount of coffee beans produced in 24 agro-forestry sites increased with the number of bee species visiting the flowers (Fig. 1). Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 6 Comments »
Tags: agriculture, bee, ecosystem services, Lore-Lindu National Park, pollination, pollinator
Categories : agriculture, biodiversity, coffee, conservation, ecosystem services, food, habitat loss

When weeds are wanted

31 01 2011

And in keeping with the topic of bees…

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I’ve just read a very, very cool paper in Ecology Letters about something I’ve wanted to do myself for some time. It’s a fairly specific piece of work, so it could easily be reproduced elsewhere with different species. My point though is that a hell of a lot more of these types of studies are required.

The study by Carvalheiro and colleagues entitled Natural and within-farmland biodiversity enhances crop productivity examined the role of weedy (ruderal) vegetation in supporting pollinator communities. Using sunflowers as a model crop, they showed rather convincingly how native vegetation patches interspersed amongst crop species can enhance a host of crop production measures, even when larger areas of natural habitats were far away from the crops themselves.

Based on a series of plot experiments, they tested four main hypotheses:

The distance to natural habitat affects pollination visitor abundance and diversity.
Plots surrounding or interspersed with ruderal vegetation affect pollinator abundance and diversity.
The diversity of pollinators visiting sunflowers affects honeybee (the principal pollinators) behaviour.
The diversity of pollinators affects sunflower production.

Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 8 Comments »
Tags: agriculture, bee, biodiversity, Bumblebee, pollinator, Sunflower
Categories : conservation, ecology, ecosystem services, food, pollination

The other, other global crisis

22 11 2010

Another quick and informative introduction to the problems of over-population and agricultural intensification. Like the nice little video introduction to the importance of biodiversity, if you want to teach someone quickly about why we need to think about over-population, show them this quick video about the other, other global crisis – agriculture.

Highlights: