Can anyone help me on my essay question?

Question

Many ecologists would like to move away from protecting individual endangered species to concentrate on protecting whole communities or ecosystems. Others fear that the public will only respond to and support glamorous "flagship" species such as gorillas, tigers, or otters. If you were designing a conservation strategy, where would you put your emphasis?

Answer 1

It would be multi-faceted.  Never limit your points of attack when trying to design an effective strategy.  Market the "cute" species to the uninformed who need a simple object to identify with and use a more comprehensive approach when it comes to the behind the scenes stuff like urging policy and legislative changes.  Advocate for changes that affect the whole ecosystem and wrap it in the plight of some easily identifiable and "cute" species to maximize the interest of your audience in the issue.

For those that think this is a cynical view, it's not.  We need to understand that different people are at different places along the spectrum of environmental awareness and it's out job as advocates to help them rise from the level of advocacy they are currently at, to a full fledged activism.  Think of it this way.  You don't teach calculus to a kindergartner, you'll fail.  so don't design a campaign to get people motivated that doesn't address their level of sophistication.

Answer 2

Good question I am studying ecology as well.

If I were designing a conservation strategy eg. to save tigers.

I would put an emphasis on the primary food source in the ecosystem eg. natural grasses/vegetation/ native plants that primary consumers would be likely to eat eg. buffalo.

This would allow the the primary consumers to thrive therefore providing adequate food for the secondary consumers eg. tigers and etc. etc. and the ecosystem will thrive.

However of coarse planting native grasses and vegetation is not appealing as a "glamourous" program of trying to breed tigers and put them into the ecology system that cannot support them which was the reason why they are dying out in the first place.

I am doing a project on the stimulation of phytoplankton through the injection of iron to stimluate blooms.

As plankton grows via photosynthesis this will sequester carbon from the atmosphere as well as providing a food source for the fish, digesting the plankton and dropping the carbon in the form of feaces to the bottom of ocean abyss where it stays for 100 years.

Yet this is met by opposition of green groups who are saying this can destroy ecosystems .

I can't understand why they are so against it when we are poisoning our oceans killing off the fishes primary food source (plankton) and then saying putting some plankton back in the sea is going to destroy the ecosystem.

This is like saying planting native grasses for buffalo to eat will destroy the ecosystem in Africa as apposed to stimulate it.

Check out websites give good idea sea ecology and the attempts to repair the primary food source for the fish..

Answer 3

Concentrate on entire ecosystems. Look at Deep Ecology, see the link below, you will be able to go to other sources from it. By this I do not mean that man should interfere in an ecosystem, I mean the exact opposite. That he should not, he should protect wild spaces/nature and allow it to heal itself without man's interference.



We should recognize that we are all just parts of an interconnected system. This ecosystem is not hierarchical with man being at the top, although many people act as if it is. We are interconnected, equal and dependent on each other to live. All living things have intrinsic value. That is they have a right to live just for being what they are; live things. They should be valued and not used for that reason alone, not exploited for what they can provide for the use of mankind.

Why concentrate on the entire ecosystem? Because we do not yet understand it enough, nor is it likely that we ever will.

Take for example Mycelium.  

Mushrooms; 'Mycellium' are regulating the earth's ecosystems, recycling carbon, nitrogen and other essential elements as they break down plant and animal matter to create new soil. They are essential for the health of our soil and ecosystem. Mycelium are the 'missing' keys to both human and the Earth's health. Trees and other green plants could not grow and reach maturity without symbiotic associations with Mycelium, the network of fungal threads in the soil that act as interfaces between plant roots and nutrients. Certain kinds of Mycelium grow into the roots of plants, sometimes right into the root cells of plants. They trade sugars made by the plants for nutrients and water brought to the roots by the Mycelium. Some mycorrhiza have specific plant hosts others are generalized, they are not parasitic.

But we are losing them before we can even identify them. We are reducing biodiversity, through man's activity from clear cutting forests to developing land which stops them migrating and adapting. We are destabilizing nutrient cycles, which results in crop failures, loss of diversity and the need for ever more invasive farming techniques/chemicals to be used so contributing to global warming.

The existence/absence of Mycelium (fungi) in the soils is vital to the Earth's survival, hence mankind's but we are preventing their migration and adaptation by urban development. Mycelium can take hundreds of years to be re-established, if at all. People are actively trying to help Mycelium 'run' by putting spore prints on their clothes when they go out for a walk. More home orchards need to be planted, city centers need to be greened to encourage new growth. It is OUR actions that are preventing it continuing. We can take our chances on adaptation, but if it does not survive, we do not.

Or the mess we have made in the UK by getting too sentimental about old trees, which means we have legislated to protect them and prevented traditional management of woods.

In the UK trees and woods need to be managed. Traditionally since circa 1066 woods have been coppiced. This is a sustainable way of removing useful timber without losing the actual tree and preventing the tree getting so old that it dies. Ash trees are a perfect example of this. An uncoppiced Ash Tree would be lucky to reach eighty years as it is extremely susceptible to fungal attack. When coppiced some of the more famous examples can be 900 years old.

Ideally, we could leave all woodland alone and it would renew itself however, this is not possible. In the UK our native trees are on the edge of their climatic range, seed production is extremely sporadic and successful growth from seed to mature tree is rare in nature. Which is why we have forests with trees that are a thousand years old, there have been no replacements; the old existing trees have not been naturally replaced by self seeded saplings.

So even if we do manage to grow trees from seed away from the woods, the character of a plantation will never come close to matching that of an ancient wood.

How has it come to this stage? There has been few naturally seeded/grown trees because of climatic changes, the old trees have not been coppiced and people are sentimental about old trees. They are 'loving' them to death. Without a change of the sentimental but ignorant attitude towards the management of woods, trees and woods will continue to die and so will all the associated flora and fauna. Trees and woods are living things, as such, they have an age limit as all living things do. People managed woods by the traditional methods of coppicing for hundreds of years which artificially extended trees' lives. What we are seeing now is just the natural end of old trees. As there are no naturally grown replacements it will be the end of the woods as we know them in the UK too.

This is because many trees in the UK are so old now, generally oaks, that people have formed an attachment to them as they stand. Any ancient woodland left is now protected by legislation. They can only die now. They are probably too old to resume coppicing so they are all approaching the end of their natural life and will die out. Only recently we have stopped managing woodlands in the traditional way.

So basically we have got ourselves into a bit of a situation, most trees in this country can not be replaced for a number of reasons, for example: oaks are afflicted by American Oak Mildew which they have little or no resistance to and it is thought to modify their ability to grow in a Woodland situation, ie being able to cope with shade and dry conditions. This tends to affect their viability.

These woods have not adapted to environmental changes, partially because of our sentimentality/legislation.  They can not be replaced and they have not self seeded because it is outside their climatic range.

Buddhism

http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/budd...

Deep Ecology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_ecolog...

Ancient Woodland (2003) Oliver Rackham

Edible Forest Gardens Ecological vision and theory for temperate climate Permaculture

Hake and Tensmeier 2005 Chelsea Green Publishing

Mycelium Running How Mushrooms can help save the World

Paul Staments 2005 Ten Speed press: California

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_diox...

The Earth Care Manual Patrick Whitefield [2004] Permanent Publications

Miguel 1995 Agroecology, the science of sustainable agriculture

Kourik 2004 Designing and Maintaining your Edible Landscape naturally

Renee 1992 Saving the Seed

Crop Genetic Resources in Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture FAO 1998

Answer 4

I think flagship species who happen to be "umbrella species" could help solve this problem.  This gives the conservations a chance to broaden their studies and methods to encompasse the entire ecosystem while still getting the attention of the public.

If you focus on a particular bird of prey, for example, it gives you an excuse conserve the home of its prey.

Answer 5

"bald eagle... the other white meat"