Couldn’t resist this shot the other evening. Those are capers clinging to the remains of the Ponte Rotto in Rome. Wonder if anyone ever collects them. Not so much hidden harvest as hard-to-reach harvest.
Ecologists breaking (unwritten) ecological laws
Andy Jarvis, our man with the global insights, sends this despatch:
This article just came out in Science about assisted colonization. ((O. Hoegh-Guldberg, L. Hughes, S. McIntyre, D. B. Lindenmayer, C. Parmesan, H. P. Possingham, C. D. Thomas (2008). ECOLOGY: Assisted Colonization and Rapid Climate Change Science, 321 (5887), 345-346 DOI: 10.1126/science.1157897)) That is the fancy term for moving a population from one place to another. Over the past few years this concept has been gaining ground, especially with the barrage of horror stories about the impacts of climate change on the geographic range of species. The authors propose a decision framework to identify candidate species for translocation (or assisted colonisation as it seems to now be called). The decision framework consists of criteria for threat, feasibility, and cost-benefit. Amazingly, the whole concept of ecological risk is not taken into account in the decision framework. The authors mention it in the text, and sidestep the issue somewhat by saying that these are short distance translocations, but this may not always be the case. With the best of intentions, we’ve had some really great “assisted colonisation” events in the past that have caused ecological disaster. See Australia, Lake Victoria, the Southern US, etc. etc. The list is endless.
Before I go too far, I must step back and state the positive side of this concept. After all, the objective is conservation. Done properly, with sound risk analysis of direct and indirect impacts on ecological communities (and anthropogenic systems, like … errrr… agriculture), assisted colonisation could save species from near certain doom. An innocent way of seeing it is that you are just lending a hand to species who can’t quite migrate as fast as others. If migration rates are lower than the speed of climate change, or a pesky river gets in their way, then ecologists come to the rescue and move you. It’s like helping an old lady across the road.
Avoiding long-distance assisted colonisation is a useful surrogate for “eco-safety” (a new term is born), but I think it is dangerous as many assumptions are being made with that one. Suggested next article: Risk analysis framework for assisted colonisation. Readers get going.
As a side note, and while I am in the mood for inventing new terms, we also need to come up with a name for this kind of conservation. We have in situ, we have ex situ. What would be good for this kind of conservation? Non-situ could well be the case if you don’t assist colonisation, but I can’t think of a good name for populations that are assisted. Anyone fancy a place in the history books by giving this a name? ((I propose neo-situ. Ed.))
Nibbles: Sunflowers, Cherries, Red jungle fowl, Sheep, Russia, Kenya, GFU on NUS
- USDA boffins tour Aussie garbage dumps.
- Today’s “Save the British X” (where X=a fruit of your choice) story comes to you from The Times.
- And today’s multiple independent domestications story comes from India.
- And today’s how to boost urban biodiversity? From Brighton, UK.
- Mapping Russian crops and their pests.
- Kenyan government messing with prices to clear wheat market, boost neglected species.
- Our friends at the Global Facilitation Unit (for Neglected and Underutilised Species) have published a book.
A few seeds held in a muddy hand
A review of The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing by Richard Dawkins included a beautifully poetic rumination on agrobiodiversity:
The great Ice Age herds were destined to vanish. When they did so, another hand, like the hand that grasped the stone by the river long ago, would pluck a handful of grass seed and hold it contemplatively. In that moment, the golden towers of man, his turning wheels, the vast learning of his packed libraries would glimmer dimly there in the ancestor of wheat, a few seeds held in a muddy hand. Without the gift of flowers and the infinite diversity of their fruits, man and bird, if they had continued to exist at all, would be today unrecognizable. Archaeopteryx, the lizard-bird, might still be snapping at beetles on a sequoia limb; man might still be a nocturnal insectivore gnawing a roach in the dark. The weight of a petal has changed the face of the world and made it ours.
You can get the full thing online. It’s from How Flowers Changed the World by Loren Eiseley.
Nibbles: BGR, Sugarcane, Cannabis, Domestication
- Berry-go-Round 6, a plant-based blog carnival, is up. Jeremy says: “Taxonomy! Yay!“
- US uproots sugarcane, Kenya plants it. “Deciding who is right is difficult.” Er, you betcha.
- California’s largest cash crop can be an environmental disaster.
- Cassava not as nasty as its wild relatives.