Jared Diamond, "Must We Shoot Dear to Save Nature?"
Natural History 8/92
- Description of Fontenelle Forest (near Omaha)
- 1,300 acre reserve (cookie cutter reserve)
- Climax of oaks, hickories, lindens
- Oaks, hickories were mature trees; no seedlings
- Few acorns or hickory nuts on ground
- A bunch of old people whose children died
- Open understory
- Seedlings were ironwood and hackberry pioneers in disturbed
environment
- From windblown seeds/tiny fruits not big nuts
- Cause: Abundant deer eating nuts browsing shrubs
- Affecting other species depend on understory (butterflies, birds)
- Understory now composed of deer proof species
- Too many deer because of humans
- Breaking landscape into habitat mosaics with lots of edges
- Planting crops they eat
- Predator elimination
- TWIN PHILOSOPHY OF FOREST IN CONFLICT
- One: Noninterference with nature: No management, no interference by
humans/ hands-off
- Since don't have knowledge
- Nature did fine without us
- Protect all animal/plant life
- No hunting, fishing, weapons
- Hence no shooting deer.
- Two: Preserving forest in its natural state.
- Unless control deer, this is not achievable
- Main point: Nature Reserves can't be left to nature alone to manage;
We must manage; Laissez-faire will no longer work
- If goal is natural state
- Since humans "upset the balance"
- Ecosystems collapsing
- No longer "self-sustaining ecosystem"
- What humans have done to undermine ecosystems in nature reserves
- Eliminated keystone species
- Introduction of exotics/pest species
- Cowbirds (profited from farms) eating Warblers eggs
- (Island) Reserves too small; depend on process that formerly
originated outside the reserve
- Inbreeding of populations
- Grizzly bears in Yellowstone
- Yellowstone story the same
- Solutions:
- Shoot deer, (or let Fontenelle be degraded)
- Trap/asphyxiate cowbirds; (or let Kirkland's Warblers die)
- Airlifting grizzlies between Glacier and Yellowstone
- Hard to know what counts as a pristine/untouched ecosystem to which
we should be restoring the system
- Since humans had impact on ecosystems for thousands of years
- Restore Yellowstone Example
- To 1872 when park founded?
- But by then beaver had been trapped and destroyed hydrology
- To 1492? But Indians affected environment by hunting and use of
fire
- To 12,000 (27,000) years ago(before humans arrived)?
- We can't (restore ecosystems to how they were before humans
arrived since many of the species back them went extinct)
- Mammoths and saber-toothed cats extinct
- Restore North America with Camels, Sabertooth tigers, and
Mammoths?
- Even if we could restore to this, it is not clear this would be a
natural state
- Except Antarctica, no Pristine state of nature left
- No pristine state it makes sense to return to
- Must choose one among many of human-altered states
- Comes down to what we humans want
- Tradeoff of values (grizzlies versus hiker deaths)
- Culling of deer when can't pick flowers
- Biodiversity
- Inaction is itself a management decision
- With heavy negative consequences