A river may once again run through it...

This past week has been a remarkable, mixed, week for the environment in the San Joaquin valley! First the good news: water began to flow through the San Joaquin river's heavily impacted (dammed / modified / channeled / dredged / damaged) course as part of a major restoration effort decades in the making, when federal authorities released water from Friant Dam, just above Fresno. The Fresno Bee has been covering the story really well these past few days, with a special feature, and you can jump into the stream with this report from Friday:

FRESNO, Calif. -- When Darrell Imperatrice was a boy, California's San Joaquin River teemed with so many king salmon his father could catch 40-pound fish using only a pitchfork.

Then the salmon vanished from the icy river for nearly 60 years, after a colossal federal dam built to nurture the croplands below dried up their habitat.

Now, as federal officials try to bring the fish back through a sweeping restoration program of the state's second-largest river - opening the valves for the first full day on Friday - those who know it best are debating its value and its virtue.

"There were so many salmon back then, you could fish any way you wanted, even dynamite. But when they built that dam, thousands of fish lay dead on the banks," said Imperatrice, who at age 82 still treasures his father's fishing gear. "There's no real restoration that will bring back the river I knew."

Yes, we are unlikely to ever really bring back the river from before agriculture took over this valley. But we sure can try, and this week we took a major step forward on that long arduous journey towards bringing the old salmon runs back to this damaged/heavily used river. Its an ambitious project that has (supposedly) pitted environmentalists against farmers (at least in the popular caricature, although there are farmers who are environmentalists too!) in many a legal and legislative battle over several decades - and that was before the water started flowing again! Let's see how far we can take this.

Which brings us to the week's bad news: even as the water started flowing down the river, a judge in Fresno reminded us that the battle to restore the river is far from over, when he decided that the government hadn't done enough to justify diverting water away from farmland for the sake of the endangered Delta Smelt - a tiny fish from the San Joaquin Delta that has become a symbol of the fight between "environmentalists" vs. "farmers". In hearing an appeal from some farmers against govt. rules favoring the Smelt under the Endangered Species Act, the judge didn't really raise any serious objections to the fish being listed under the ESA in the first place. Rather, he objects, oddly enough, to a lack of an environmental impact study... on humans!! You read that right - the judge wants the federal govt. to present a study of the environmental impact of saving the Delta Smelt on humans!! Talk about turning the ESA on its head! He apparently thinks that the current rules issued by the govt for water management in the delta are already causing the human environment to deteriorate: our air is fouled by dust from farms that haven't received water in the west valley, and land itself is sinking in some places due to increased groundwater pumping! As if over-irrigating and farming in arid landscapes, and careless use of underground aquifers, don't have anything to do with those environmental impacts! Those are not problems in this Cadillac Desert - but attempts to restore the natural environment for some endangered native species is what we have to worry about, because, darn it, it raises dust into our skies, and forces us to suck so much water from underground that our lands start sinking!!

And you wonder why us environmentalists always have that sinking feeling...

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Socially learned foraging behaviors in wild black bears

Andrew Mora offers a review of the Biology department seminar by Rachel Mazur.

The American Black Bear, Ursus americanus, is currently the only species of bear in the state of California. In a fascinating presentation by Rachel Mazur, pictures and videos were used to depict the beauty of these bears in their natural and not so natural environments; the latter being bears foraging for food in developed areas of the national parks including getting food out of trash cans, cars, etc.

According to Mazur, these bears are especially hungry during the months of March and April. During this time, a bear is either termed by Mazur to be a wild foraging bear, which consists of eating grasses, roots, insects from shredding logs etc., or they can be food conditioned bears, which consist of getting their nutrition from developed areas, or humans.

Research by Mazur finds that bears have traits for social learning and the most critical times of a bears learning process is during the first year when they are in constant contact with their mother (Mazur, 2008). Three separate hypotheses were compared to describe how these bears are learning to become food-conditioned to developed areas. The first is that bears inherit these behaviors from their mothers and can be predicted (Mazur, 2008). The others include bears learning individually (that is, without the help of the mother) and transmitted learning from sow to cub (Mazur, 2008).

The methods used for this experiment were efficient in that homogeneity was taken into consideration. Therefore five variables were taken into consideration including park, sow identity, sow behavior, rearing method and cub outcome (Mazur, 2008). The two national parks which Mazur encouraged everyone to visit include Sequoia National Park and Yosemite National Park. From showing clips of a movie on this research, it was evident that many years of hard work by numerous staff was done to work with these bears and monitor their statuses.

Mazur stated that she was very pleased with the results that they came across. An easy to read table of her results shows the number of sows that they started with (23 food conditioned and 9 wild), the rearing methods of these sows (rearing in wild or food-conditioned rearing), and the outcome of the cubs once separated from their mothers (Mazur, 2008).

Conclusions made by Mazur asserted that rearing method had a highly significant effect on the cub outcome (Mazur, 2008). If a cub was reared food-conditioned, it was much more likely to be food-conditioned once separate from its mother. That being said, the last hypothesis stated by Mazur was seen to be the most accurate: that bears become food-conditioned through social learning.

In both seminar and paper, Mazur stated that there are numerous implications for the work that has been done. She posed a question to the room regarding the bear’s possibility of creating culture and even tradition in our national forests with these new food-conditioned characteristics (Mazur, 2008). What I found beneficial in this work is the implication that food-conditioning in developed areas in our national forests do not necessarily imply adaptive strategies of these Ursus americanus, but may very well be falling into an ecological trap (Mazur, 2008). I also found it interesting for her to note that science and management have recently become less taboo as a pair in the scientific world.

Reference:

R MAZUR, V SEHER (2008). Socially learned foraging behaviour in wild black bears, Ursus americanus Animal Behaviour, 75 (4), 1503-1508 DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2007.10.027

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Loss of Diversity

Michael Rosenzweig’s article predicts our planet’s future loss of diversity. He argues that by decreasing the area available for wildlife, it not only decreases habitat, but also actually causes a decrease in the rate of speciation for all organisms. Essentially, his argument rests on how the size of a species range affects its rate of speciation. Although somewhat controversial, large range sizes are thought to have higher rates of speciation as well as lower rates of extinction, and Rosenzweig’s article looks at the other end of that equation. With habitats decreasing, range sizes must decrease as well and that in turn depresses the number of future new species. Eventually this leaves us with fewer and fewer species of life forms.

So where does this leave us? Rosenzweig acknowledges that due to the reality of human population needs large productive areas of landscape may not be able to be set aside solely for wildlife. He proposes a new paradigm of comprise he terms Reconciliation Ecology, which he describes as the modification of human habits and habitats to accommodate species diversity. His solutions often require complex relationships between government, business and the private sector. While, when possible, conservation of land for wildlife is often the best solution Reconciliation Ecology provides a new framework to increase habitat that is accessible to both humans and other species. Accordingly, this would provide larger habitat ranges for species, which, in turn, would cause a decrease in the loss of speciation.

Rosenzweig sees this as a win/win solution, which happens to be part of the title of one of his books on the topic. While some might argue, myself included, that it seems more like a win for us and a lose, although less of one, for wildlife. Many environmentalists, and others, want more and more lands set aside for pure conservation and see Reconciliation Ecology as a sell out. I can see their reasoning, however, I also think they may be missing an important point. The key word in his proposal is “compromise”. I believe he intended his idea would be a way that would take land that humans need for whatever purpose and try to make as many accommodations we can to allow it to be somewhat useful habitat. Those areas would most likely not be available for traditional conservation. That being said, I think the label sell out doesn’t quite fit, however, I’m not sure I would call it a win/win solution either.

Reference:

M. L. Rosenzweig (2001). Loss of speciation rate will impoverish future diversity Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98 (10), 5404-5410 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.101092798

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Seminar today on the evolutionary ecology of becoming urban

Its my own turn at bat in our departmental colloquium today. Here's the blurb on what I'll talk about:

Becoming urban: behavioral and evolutionary implications of living in the city

Dr. Madhusudan Katti, Department of Biology, California State University, Fresno

Abstract

The city may be the ultimate expression of the human effort to control our environment: in evolutionary ecological terms, it represents a strategy to minimize the risks of starvation and predation by creating habitats which dampen natural variability in climate and food availability, and provide shelter from predators. Simultaneously, humans also generate a considerable surplus of food, making cities attractive habitats to many other wild species. Recent theoretical work by myself and colleagues shows that typical changes in spatio-temporal patterns of food availability (higher and more predictable) and predation regimes (may be lower) accompanying urbanization can alter competitive dynamics such that weak competitors survive better in urban than in more natural habitats. This has several implications for species that are able to invade the novel urban habitat: higher population densities, potentially reduced selection pressures, and in turn, greater vulnerability to sudden environmental changes. In this presentation, I explore consequences for the evolution of commensalism and the continued coexistence of other species with humans, using recent work on house sparrows (the ultimate commensal now at risk in urban habitats), corvids (suburban Scrub Jays), and south Asian primates (urban Macaques and Langurs). I will also present an overview of several projects currently ongoing in my laboratory focusing on different effects of urban environments on bird behavior, ecology, and diversity, and describe opportunities for students to get involved!

On: Friday, October 3, 2008, At: 3:00-4:00 PM, In: Science II, Room 109

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