Guardian.co.uk

Idiots. Morons. Blockheads. Numbskulls. Nothing quite captures the mind-withering stupidity of what has just happened in Doha. Swayed by Japan and a number of other countries, some of them doubtless bought off in traditional fashion, the members of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) have decided not to protect the Atlantic bluefin tuna.

Those who opposed suspending trade in the species argued that the temporary ban proposed by Monaco would devastate their fishing industries. There is some truth in this: for the years in which bluefin stocks would have been allowed to recover, the export ban would have put people out of work and reduced the output of their industry. But the absence of a ban ensures that, after one or two more seasons of fishing at current levels, all the jobs and the entire industry are finished forever, along with the magnificent species that supported them. The insistence that the fishing can continue without consequences betrays Olympic-class denial, a flat refusal to look reality in the face.

One of the commenters on a Guardian thread this week, who lives in Japan and uses the tag Kimpatsu, related his experiences of trying to discuss these issues.

“the Japanese policy towards both Bluefin tuna and whales has two engines of motivation. The first is the fact that the average Japanese is in denial about the imminent extinction of these creatures; the thought runs that as they have always eaten these animals (and many Japanese mistakenly think that the whale is a fish) since time immemorial, they will be able to continue doing so indefinitely into the future. When pressed on the subject of hunting to extinction, they grow aggressive. (I know from personal experience.) The second reason is the low-grade paranoia that informs all Japanese interaction with the outside world; the notion of Nihon tataki (Japan-bashing) is omnipresent. If you protest against whaling or tuna fishing, you’re a cultural imperialist. If you point out that some Japanese are members of Greenpeace or oppose whaling (my GP is one), then “you don’t understand Japanese mind so much”. Remember: all your actions against whaling and overfishing are driven by a deep-seated, irrational hatred of Japan. Consequently, when you push, they push back.”

I have no idea how representative this is, but the attitudes Kimpatsu describes were powerfully represented in The Cove, the film about the secret dolphin slaughter in Japan which won the 2010 Oscar for best documentary. The massacre it exposed is pointless, counter-productive and profoundly damaging to Japan’s international image, but it was fiercely defended by what seemed to be the entire political establishment. Denial is evident everywhere on earth, but in the Japanese fishing and whaling industries it seems to have been raised to an art-form.

But it would be wrong to blame only Japan for this. In fact the only nations which unequivocally stood up for a ban were Monaco, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the United States, Norway and Kenya. It’s good to have the UK and US on board, especially after eight years of sabotaging international treaties by the Bush administration, but the feeble or hostile response of many other countries was deeply depressing. The EU, some of whose members are major tuna exporters to Japan, supported a ban, but only if it was delayed until May 2011, by which time tuna stocks might pass the point of no return. Several nations simply rebuffed what the fisheries scientists say and insisted that they could carry on as usual without ill-effect. It’s Easter Island all over again.

This proposal was brought before the meeting in Doha for just one reason: the nations charged with managing the tuna fishery have flunked it. The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (Iccat), which is supposed to discharge this task, is in urgent need of a new name: it should be called the the International Commission for the Cleansing of Atlantic Tunas. It has repeatedly set catch limits way above what its own scientists have proposed, and turned a blind eye to illegal bluefin catches which probably outweigh the legal take.

Now Japan, as if to show that it really doesn’t care what happens to the industry it claims to support, has said that it should be Iccat, not Cites, which continues to decide how many tuna are caught. It’s like putting Cruella de Ville in charge of the Battersea Dog’s Home.

Behind all this lurks a simple calculation. The businessmen currently fishing the Atlantic bluefin to extinction know that while any members of the species survive there is no cut-off point for the profits they make. The scarcer tuna become, the higher the price each carcass fetches. Once the fish have been exterminated, the investors can just shift their vast profits into another industry. It makes perfect economic sense. The shocker is that the nations which are supposed to regulate these crooks have let them get away with it. In doing so, they are reducing the king of fish to an expendable asset in a bent accountant’s ledger.

monbiot.com

“Expressed as velocities, climate-change projections connect directly to survival prospects for plants and animals. These are the conditions that will set the stage, whether species move or cope in place,” says study co-author Chris Field, director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology. Field is also a professor of biology and of environmental Earth system science at Stanford University and a senior fellow at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment.

The research team, which included researchers from the Carnegie Institution, Stanford University, the California Academy of Sciences, and the University of California, Berkeley, combined data on current climate and temperature gradients worldwide with climate model projections for the next century to calculate the “temperature velocity” for different regions of the world. This velocity is a measure of how fast temperature zones are moving across the landscape as the planet warms―and how fast plants and animals will need to migrate to keep up.

The researchers found that as a global average, the expected temperature velocity for the 21st century is 0.42 kilometers (0.26 miles) per year. But this figure varies widely according to topography and habitat. In areas of high topographic relief, where species can find cooler temperatures by climbing a nearby mountain, velocities are relatively low. In flatter regions, such as deserts, grasslands, and coastal areas, species will have to travel farther to stay in their comfort zone and velocities may exceed a kilometer per year.

Can the planet’s ecosystems keep up? Plants and animals that can tolerate a wide range of temperatures may not need to move. But for the others, survival becomes a race. After the glaciers of the last Ice Age retreated, forests may have spread northward as quickly as a kilometer a year. But current ecosystems are unlikely to match that feat, the researchers say. Nearly a third of the habitats in the study have velocities higher than even the most optimistic plant migration estimates. Even more problematic is the extensive fragmentation of natural habitats by human development, which will leave many species with “nowhere to go,” regardless of their migration rates.

Protected areas such as nature reserves are generally too small to accommodate the expected habitat shifts. According to the study, less than 10% of protected areas globally will maintain current climate conditions within their boundaries 100 years from now. This will present a challenge for many species adapted to highly specific conditions, especially if migration to new habitats is blocked.

Scott Loarie, a postdoctoral fellow at the Carnegie Institution and lead author of the paper, points out that an appreciation of climate velocities could stimulate discussions about sound management for climate change, from the design of nature reserves to the planning of assisted migrations for affected species. He adds that it should also stimulate discussion about strategies for minimizing the amount of warming and thereby help slow climate velocity.

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The paper is published in the 24 December, 2009, Nature. The research was funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Stanford University Global Climate and Energy Project.

Video interview with Chris Field and Scott Loarie at http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/december21/videos/669.html

The Carnegie Institution (www.CIW.edu) has been a pioneering force in basic scientific research since 1902. It is a private, nonprofit organization with six research departments throughout the U.S. Carnegie scientists are leaders in plant biology, developmental biology, astronomy, materials science, global ecology, and Earth and planetary science. The Department of Global Ecology, located in Stanford, California, was established in 2002 to help build the scientific foundations for a sustainable future. Its scientists conduct basic research on a wide range of large-scale environmental issues, including climate change, ocean acidification, biological invasions, and changes in biodiversity.

Republished from Carnegie Institution.

Man-made carbon emissions “are affecting marine biological processes from genes to ecosystems over scales from rock pools to ocean basins, impacting ecosystem services and threatening human food security,” the study by Professor Mike Kingsford of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University and colleague Dr Andrew Brierley of St Andrews University, Scotland, warns.

Their review, published in the latest issue of the journal Current Biology, says that rates of physical change in the oceans are unprecedented in some cases, and change in ocean life is likely to be equally quick.

These include changes in the areas fish and other sea species can inhabit, invasions, extinctions and major shifts in marine ecosystems.

“In the past, the boundaries between geological ages are marked by sudden losses of species. We may now be entering a new age in which climate change and other human-caused factors such as fishing are the major threats for the oceans and their life,” Andrew and Mike say.

“Given how essential the oceans are to how our entire planet functions it is vital that we intervene before more tipping points are passed and the oceans go down the sort of spiral of decline we have seen in the world’s tropical forests and rangelands, for example.”

Man-made carbon emissions are now above the ‘worst case’ scenario envisioned by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), causing the most rapid global warming seen since the peak of the last Ice Age. At the same time the carbon is acidifying the oceans, with harmful consequences for certain plankton and shellfish.

“At current emission rates it is possible we will pass the critical level of 450 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere by 2040.  That’s the level when, it is generally agreed, global climate change may become catastrophic and irreversible,” they add. “At that point we can expect to see the loss of most of our coral reefs and the arctic seas.”

“The climate is currently warming faster than the worst case known from the fossil record, about 56 million years ago, when temperatures rose about 6 degrees over 1000 years. If emissions continue it is not unreasonable to expect … warming of 5.5 degrees by the end of this century.”

Scientists expect ocean oxygen levels to decline by about six per cent for every one degree increase in temperature and areas in the sea which are low in oxygen to grow by at least 50 per cent. This has major implications for the world’s most productive fishing waters in the cool temperate regions. The seas provide around one sixth of humanity’s protein food – and any loss in fisheries production will have a direct impact on us, he adds.

Besides the changes induced by carbon emissions, the oceans are also under assault from over-fishing, increased UV exposure, toxic pollution, alien species and disease. The combined effect is to weaken the ability of many species to withstand these multiple stresses.

Another risk is that warming will unlock vast reserves of frozen methane in the seabed, triggering uncontrollable, runaway global warming.

“In the face of such terrifying changes even large scale interventions such as establishment of very large networks of Marine Protected Areas are unlikely to be effective,” Mike cautions. “On a global scale, an immediate reduction in CO2 emissions is essential to minimize future human-induced climate change.”

The oceans can also play a role in the proposed solution of eliminating carbon emissions, by producing clean energy from wind, wave and tide – potentially – by triggering phytoplankton blooms with fertilisers to absorb more carbon from the atmosphere, or using the seabed to store CO2. However these require far more research to be sure.

“It may already be too late to avoid major irreversible changes to many marine ecosystems.  As history has shown us, these marine-based changes could have major earth-system consequences,” the scientists conclude.

Details: Andrew S. Brierley, and Michael J. Kingsford, Impacts of climate change on marine organisms and ecosystems, Current Biology 19, R602-R614, July 28, 2009

Reprinted from ARC Centre of Excellence: Coral Reef Studies.

Organised by ZSL, the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) and the Royal Society, the meeting identified the level of atmospheric CO₂ predicted to result in the demise of coral reefs.

At anticipated rates of emission increase, it is expected that 450 ppm CO₂ will be reached before 2050. At that point, corals may be on a path to extinction within a matter of decades.

By 2050, the remaining coral reefs could fall victim to ocean acidification. Such a catastrophe would not be confined to reefs, but could start of a domino-like sequence of the fall of other marine ecosystems.

Sir David Attenborough who co-chaired the meeting said “We must do all that is necessary to protect the key components of the life of our planet as the consequences of decisions made now will likely be forever as far as humanity is concerned”.

Scientific evidence shows that we have long passed the point at which the marine environment offers reefs a guaranteed future.

“The kitchen is on fire and it’s spreading round the house. If we act quickly and decisively we may be able to put it out before the damage becomes irreversible. That is where corals are now.” said Dr Alex Rogers of ZSL and IPSO.

The meeting was held to identify tipping points for corals and to expose the issues raised by the plight of coral reefs. A statement detailing these concerns will be submitted to the UN FCCC process currently underway.

Until now, world leaders negotiating emissions reductions have not taken the ocean into serious account, but with so much at risk, the oceans can no longer be ignored.

Now, there is every reason to believe that the oceans may in fact be the most vulnerable sector of our planet to climate change – with dire consequences for us all.

Adapted from materials provided by Zoological Society of London (ZSL).

The poor reproductive fitness – the ability to survive and reproduce – of the wild-born offspring of hatchery fish means that adding hatchery fish to wild populations may ultimately be hurting efforts to sustain those wild runs, scientists said.

The study found that a fish born in the wild as the offspring of two hatchery-reared steelhead averaged only 37 percent the reproductive fitness of a fish with two wild parents, and 87 percent the fitness if one parent was wild and one was from a hatchery. Most importantly, these differences were still detectable after a full generation of natural selection in the wild.

The effect of hatcheries on reproductive fitness in succeeding generations had been predicted in theory, experts say, but until now had never been demonstrated in actual field experiments.

“If anyone ever had any doubts about the genetic differences between hatchery and wild fish, the data are now pretty clear,” said Michael Blouin, an OSU professor of zoology. “The effect is so strong that it carries over into the first wild-born generation. Even if fish are born in the wild and survive to reproduce, those adults that had hatchery parents still produce substantially fewer surviving offspring than those with wild parents. That’s pretty remarkable.”

An earlier report, published in 2007 in the journal Science, had already shown that hatchery fish that migrate to the ocean and return to spawn leave far fewer offspring than their wild relatives. The newest findings suggest the problem does not end there, but carries over into their wild-born descendants.

The implication, Blouin said, is that hatchery salmonids – many of which do survive to reproduce in the wild- could be gradually reducing the fitness of the wild populations with which they interbreed. Those hatchery fish provide one more hurdle to overcome in the goal of sustaining wild runs, along with problems caused by dams, loss or degradation of habitat, pollution, overfishing and other causes.

Aside from weakening the wild gene pool, the release of captive-bred fish also raises the risk of introducing diseases and increasing competition for limited resources, the report noted.

This research, which was just published in Biology Letters, was supported by grants from the Bonneville Power Administration and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. It was based on years of genetic analysis of thousands of steelhead trout in Oregon’s Hood River, in field work dating back to 1991. Scientists have been able to genetically “fingerprint” three generations of returning fish to determine who their parents were, and whether or not they were wild or hatchery fish.

The underlying problem, experts say, is Darwinian natural selection.

Fish that do well in the safe, quiet world of the hatcheries are selected to be different than those that do well in a much more hostile and predatory real-world environment. Using wild fish as brood stock each year should lessen the problem, but it was just that type of hatchery fish that were used in the Hood River study. This demonstrates that even a single generation of hatchery culture can still have strong effects.

Although this study was done with steelhead trout, it would be reasonable to extrapolate its results to other salmonids, researchers said. It’s less clear what the findings mean to the many other species that are now being bred in captivity in efforts to help wild populations recover, Blouin said, but it’s possible that similar effects could be found.

Captive breeding is now a cornerstone of recovery efforts by conservation programs for many threatened or endangered species, the researchers noted in their report. Thousands of species may require captive breeding to prevent their extinction in the next 200 years – which makes it particularly important to find out if such programs will ultimately work. This study raises doubts.

“The message should be clear,” the researchers wrote in their report’s conclusion. “Captive breeding for reintroduction or supplementation can have a serious, long-term downside in some taxa, and so should not be considered as a panacea for the recovery of all endangered populations.”

Reposted from Oregon State University

Japanese Whalers “Enraged” with Sea Shepherd

The Institute for Cetacean Research has released their 2008/2009 kill figures for their whale slaughter in the Southern Ocean. They slaughtered 679 Minke whales of their targeted 935 and they only took one endangered fin whale from their targeted 50 whales.

Sea Shepherd this last season has saved 305 whales from an agonizing death from the deadly explosive harpoons of the Japanese whaling fleet. The Japanese Fisheries Agency is blaming the failure to reach their quota on disruptions by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

“This season’s catch was reduced as a result of the interference by protesters,” said Shigeki Takaya, a Fisheries Agency spokesman.

The Japanese whalers extended their whaling season by two weeks in an attempt to recover losses. Despite this, they took only 2% of their fin whale quota and 72% of their Minke whale quota. The estimated loss of profits is in the tens of millions of dollars. With costs increased due to security measures, the Japanese whaling industry needed to secure 700 whales to break even financially. They have failed to secure their required 700 whales.

Once again the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has negated the profits of the Southern Ocean whaling fleet.

“We continue to speak the one language these whale pirates understand,” said Captain Paul Watson. “Profit and loss: we need to keep their losses up and their profits down. We will eventually beat these killers with aggressively applied economics.”

 Three vessels from Japan’s fleet on Monday docked in Shimonoseki, a port town about 800 kilometres south-west of Tokyo, with the mother ship due in Tuesday, according to the agency. Two other ships returned to Japan last week.

Kazuo Yamamura, president of Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha, which operates the whaling fleet, on Monday told reporters he was upset by damage allegedly caused to his ships by Sea Shepherd.

“I’m enraged, and my blood is boiling with anger,” he said.

The company has blamed Sea Shepherd for skirmishes at sea, saying it was the protesters who escalated the attacks by ramming two Japanese vessels and pelting whalers with bottles filled with rancid butter.

“We did not ram any whaling ship,” said Captain Watson. “We blocked their loading operations and when they attempted to get by us, the harpoon vessels caused the collisions. The harpoon killer vessels are faster and more maneuverable than the Steve Irwin. To suggest that we rammed them is absurd. Three different collisions happened when they attempted to pass us to offload their whales.

This year, Sea Shepherd’s boat chased the fleet more than 3200 kilometres through the icy waters of the Antarctic Ocean before withdrawing in February.

“I am delighted that Yamamura’s blood is boiling,” said Captain Watson. “I am delighted that he is enraged and I am absolutely delighted that the Japanese whalers made zero profits this year and most of all I am delighted that we saved 305 lives. That is three years in a row we have negated their bloody profits. We intend to make it a fourth year when we return to the Southern Ocean in December to once again disrupt the illegal activities of the Japanese whaling fleet.”

Sea Shepherd’s Operation Musashi has been a success. “We did the very best we could with the resources available to us,” said Captain Watson. “If we can raise the funds for a second faster vessel we will be able to do even better next season.”

The entire campaign was documented by Animal Planet for their hit show Whale Wars. The second season, which documented Operation Musashi, is set to air in the United States on June 5^th at 9 PM on Animal Planet.

“Every whale saved is a victory and 305 whales saved is a major victory, plus costing the whalers their profits for the season is an incredible victory,” said Sea Shepherd 1st Officer Peter Hammarstedt of Sweden.

Reposted from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

The Oceans are like the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg. As long as it was alive it laid a golden egg each day but then the greedy farmer decided to kill it to get all the gold inside and found nothing and the Goose laid no more golden eggs because it was dead.

For centuries, the oceans have fed humankind. But in the last century, human greed has raped and pillaged oceanic eco-systems remorsefully with an ecological ignorance that is staggeringly insane.

I don’t eat fish because I am an ecologist and I have seen the diminishment of fish in the seas all of my life. I was raised in a fishing village and I was raised on a diet of cod, sardines, mackerel, smelts, clams, lobsters, flounders and trout. I have seen with my own eyes the steady diminishment of fish, lobsters and crustaceans. And what I ate as a child I choose not to eat today for the simple reason that there are to many of us on land eating so few of them that live in the seas.

The fisherman has now become one of the most ecologically destructive occupations on the planet. It’s time to put aside the outdated image of the hardy, independent, salt of the sea, hard working fisherman working courageously to feed society and support his family.

No longer does the average fishermen go to sea in dories with lines and small nets. Today’s industrial fishermen operate multi-million dollar vessels equipped with complex and expensive technological gear designed to hunt down and catch every fish they can find.

One manufacturer of electronic fish locators (Rayethon) even boasts that with their product, “the fish can run but they can’t hide.”

And for the fish, there is no safe place as poachers hunt them down mercilessly even in marine reserves and sanctuaries.

We humans have waged an intensive and ruthless exploitation of practically every species of fish in the sea and they are disappearing, and if we don’t put an end to industrialized fishing vessels and heavy gear very soon, we will kill the oceans and in so doing, we will kill ourselves.

Scientists this week revealed that widespread malnutrition is affecting the fish, bird and animal populations of our oceans. Not only are we depleting their populations, we are starving the survivors.

We are feeding fish to cats, pigs and chickens and we are sucking tens of thousands of small fish from the sea to feed fish raised in cages. House cats are eating more fish than seals, pigs are eating more fish than sharks, and factory farmed chickens are eating more fish than puffins and albatross.

With other factors like increased acidification, global warming, chemical pollution and ozone depletion causing plankton populations to decline, we are waging a global assault on all life in our oceans.

The fish cannot compete with our excessive demands. We have already removed 90% of the large commercial fish from the sea. Chinese demands for shark fins is destroying practically every species of shark in the ocean.

Whereas the fishing industry once targeted and destroyed the large fish, they are now focusing on the smaller fish, the fish that have always fed the larger fish. Of the top ten fisheries in the world today, seven of them now target the small fish. If to small to feed people, they are simply ground up into fish meal to feed domestic animals and farm raised salmon and tuna.

Aquaculture has also now emerged as the most wasteful utilization of fish and is the economic engine driving the intensive exploitation of the small fishes.

And now Japanese and Norwegian fisheries are extracting tens of thousands of tons of plankton from the sea to convert into a protein rich animal feed.

This week a report on the State of the World Fisheries and Aquaculture released by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) concludes that 80% of all marine fish stocks are currently fully exploited, overexploited, depleted, or recovering from depletion; including stocks of the 7 largest prey fisheries. Very few marine fish populations remain with the potential to sustain production increases, and more have now reached their limit than ever before

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is not taking an animal rights position on this issue when we say that people must stop eating fish and eating meat that fish are fed to. Our position is based solely on the ecological reality that commercial fishing is destroying our oceans.

We all know this. We are all aware of this diminishment. We feel it in our gut. The ecological reality is not only staring us in the face, it is kicking us in the teeth. The problem is that we are in absolute denial and we refuse to acknowledge that by stripping life from the seas, we will be undermining the foundation for our survival on land.

This denial is so entrenched that even Greenpeace serves fish to their crew onboard their ships while undertaking campaigns to oppose over-fishing.

The Kaiyapo people of Brazil call those who destroy the forests – the termite people because they gobble up the trees. In the oceans we have human parasites sucking the life out of the ocean and giving nothing back. We humans have become the parasitic bloodsuckers of the ocean and when we kill our hosts, as we will surely do, the way we are presently going, then we ourselves will die.

For a long time, I wondered why I even have bothered to speak out about these concerns to a society that refuses to acknowledge this reality and simply dismisses any talk of over-exploitation as radical extremism. For decades, I have endured this extremism of apathy and ecological ignorance.

This last week in Paris at the Sustainability Conference I spoke of these things to a room full of journalists and when I called for a closure of all commercial fishing in the Mediterranean, I was pleasantly surprised that not a single journalist disagreed nor questioned me for making such a radical demand. In fact my announcement was greeted with applause.

The public is becoming aware of the gravity of the ecological predicament that threatens life in the sea. And this is very encouraging.

I can’t think of anything more important than the preservation of diversity in our oceans. Perhaps we can adapt to global warming and perhaps we can survive a mass extinction even of species on land. But I know one thing to be an ecological certainty and that is if we kill the oceans – we kill ourselves.

In diversity is the preservation of life.

We must stop eating the oceans. Eating fish is for all intents and purposes – an ecological crime. There are no oceanic sustainable fisheries – not a one.

That little fish consumer sustainability card that some people carry around to pretend to be ecologically correct consumers is simply a fraud, an attempt to make ourselves feel good as we continue to eat the seas.

Now I know that some people are not going to like what I am saying, but then again, I have never written or spoken for the purpose of winning popularity contests. I don’t try to be all things to all people. I aim to be ecologically correct in my thinking and from any perspective that I have viewed it, coupled with my observations of the steady and now escalating diminishment of life in the sea since I was a boy sitting on the end of the dock in Passamaquoddy Bay to now, where I voyage through all the oceans of the world trying to defend life in the sea, I see the writing on the wall in big bold letters and the signs look ominous indeed, dangerously so.

Some may think that a call to ban all commercial fishing is radical. I view it as a very conservative and essential policy that we must implement to save the oceans and ourselves.

Am I concerned about the fishermen and their families? I am not without sympathy for their situation but I am far more concerned for the future survival of humanity and the oceans. We simply need to put an end to an industry and an occupation that is literally undermining the life support systems of this planet. This requires sacrifices but sacrificing a job is preferable by far than sacrificing the future for all of us.

We need to consider the needs of the fishes and we need to give them the space and the time to recover from the terrible slaughter we have inflicted upon all the species that live in the sea.

I am tired of hearing the excuses of fishermen that the seals or the dolphins have diminished the fish numbers. They want to take us for fools to buy into this unscientific scapegoat argument. The fish are gone because they the fishermen took them, and took them and took them without mercy. And now like Wall Street bankers they come begging for subsidies and getting them because politicians for the most part suffer from homopechephobia or a political fear of fishermen, who if they don’t get what they want tend to riot and threaten.

They need to be treated as the Ocean destroying thugs that they are. The fishing industry needs to go extinct before they cause a pattern of irreversible extinctions and loss of diversity in our oceans.

If an ecological collapse occurs because of the removal of a pivotal species or species, we won’t be worrying about jobs. We’ll be worrying that our fellow man will be hunting and eating us. If that occurs the words that Jesus Christ once said will become perversely very true indeed when he said to the fishermen, “I will make you to become fishers of men.” (Mark 1-17) 
To learn more visit http://www.seashepherd.org/.

New research published by a Queen’s University Belfast academic has shown that crabs not only suffer pain but that they retain a memory of it.

The study, which looked at the reactions of hermit crabs to small electric shocks, was carried out by Professor Bob Elwood and Mirjam Appel from the School of Biological Sciences at Queen’s and has been published in the journal Animal Behaviour.

Professor Elwood, who previously carried out a study showing that prawns endure pain, said his research highlighted the need to investigate how crustaceans used in food industries are treated.

Hermit crabs have no shell of their own so inhabit other structures, usually empty mollusc shells.

Wires were attached to shells to deliver the small shocks to the abdomen of the some of the crabs within the shells.

The only crabs to get out of their shells were those which had received shocks, indicating that the experience is unpleasant for them. This shows that central neuronal processing occurs rather than the response merely being a reflex.

Hermit crabs are known to prefer some species of shells more strongly than others and it was found that that they were more likely to come out of the shells they least preferred.

The main aim of the experiment, however, was to deliver a shock just under the threshold that causes crabs to move out of the shell, to see what happened when a new shell was then offered.

Crabs that had been shocked but had remained in their shell appeared to remember the experience of the shock because they quickly moved towards the new shell, investigated it briefly and were more likely to change to the new shell compared to those that had not been shocked.

Professor Elwood said: “There has been a long debate about whether crustaceans including crabs, prawns and lobsters feel pain.

“We know from previous research that they can detect harmful stimuli and withdraw from the source of the stimuli but that could be a simple reflex without the inner ‘feeling’ of unpleasantness that we associate with pain.

“This research demonstrates that it is not a simple reflex but that crabs trade-off their need for a quality shell with the need to avoid the harmful stimulus.

“Such trade-offs are seen in vertebrates in which the response to pain is controlled with respect to other requirements.

“Humans, for example, may hold on a hot plate that contains food whereas they may drop an empty plate, showing that we take into account differing motivational requirements when responding to pain.

“Trade-offs of this type have not been previously demonstrated in crustaceans. The results are consistent with the idea of pain being experienced by these animals.”

Previous work at Queen’s University found that prawns show prolonged rubbing when an antenna was treated with weak acetic acid but this rubbing was reduced by local anaesthetic.

The findings are both studies are consistent with observations of pain in mammals.

But Professor Elwood says that in contrast to mammals, little protection is given to the millions of crustaceans that are used in the fishing and food industries each day.

He added: “More research is needed in this area where a potentially very large problem is being ignored.

“Legislation to protect crustaceans has been proposed but it is likely to cover only scientific research.

“Millions of crustacean are caught or reared in aquaculture for the food industry.

“There is no protection for these animals (with the possible exception of certain states in Australia) as the presumption is that they cannot experience pain.

“With vertebrates we are asked to err on the side of caution and I believe this is the approach to take with these crustaceans.”

Reposted from Queen’s University Belfast.

“These observations convincingly show that our fellow apes do consider the future in a very complex way,” said Mathias Osvath of Lund University. “It implies that they have a highly developed consciousness, including life-like mental simulations of potential events. They most probably have an ‘inner world’ like we have when reviewing past episodes of our lives or thinking of days to come. When wild chimps collect stones or go out to war, they probably plan this in advance. I would guess that they plan much of their everyday behavior.”

While researchers have observed many ape behaviors that could involve planning both in the wild and in captivity, it generally hasn’t been possible to judge whether they were really meeting a current or future need, he added. For instance, when a chimp breaks a twig for termite fishing or collects a stone for nut cracking, it can always be argued that they are motivated by immediate rather than future circumstances.

And that’s what makes the newly described case so special, Osvath said. It is clear that the chimp’s planning behavior is not based on a “current drive state.” In contrast to the chimp’s extreme agitation when throwing the stones, he was always calm when collecting or manufacturing his ammunition.

Osvath said he thinks wild chimps in general, as well as other animals, probably have the planning ability demonstrated by the individual described in the study. Indeed, experiments conducted recently with other captive chimpanzees have shown they are capable of making such plans. (Some have argued, however, that those findings could be the result of experimental artifacts.)

“I think that wild chimpanzees might be even better at planning as they probably rely on it for their daily survival,” Osvath said. “The environment in a zoo is far less complex than in a forest. Zoo chimps never have to encounter the dangers in the forest or live through periods of scarce food. Planning would prove its value in ‘real life’ much more than in a zoo.”

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The researcher is Mathias Orvath, of Lund University, in Lund, Sweden.

Reprinted from Cell Press.

U.S. taxpayers doled out more than $6.4 billion in subsidies to the commercial fishing industry between 1996 and 2004, possibly accelerating the ongoing collapse of fish stocks worldwide and adding to the devastation of large ocean fish species.

U.S. subsidies, calculated for the first time by Renee Sharp, director of Environmental Working Group’s California Office and renowned fisheries economist Ussif Rahid Sumaila, director of the Fisheries Centre at the University of British Columbia, amounted to 21 percent of the $31 billion U.S. commercial fish harvest between 1996 and 2004. Some kinds of subsidies can be good, if they encourage conservation and careful management of fishery stocks or if they equip under-employed fishers for other lines of work, for example. But there is general international consensus that some other kinds of subsidies can contribute significantly to the depletion of ocean fish.

The Sharp-Sumaila study published in the North American Journal of Fisheries Management and supported by the Lenfest Ocean Program has determined that direct federal and state subsidies to commercial fishing operations totaled $6.4 billion and averaged $713 million annually (in 2007 dollars) between 1996 to 2004.

50 percent more boats than needed to bring in the fish…

There is ample evidence that the U.S. commercial fishing fleet has over-exploited marine fish stocks, in some cases to the danger point. An April 2008 report entitled “Excess Harvesting Capacity in U.S. Fisheries” and published by the National Marine Fishery Service (NMFS) found that 12 of 25 U.S. commercial fishing operations it examined had 50 percent more boats than needed to bring in each operation’s total fish catch for the year (NMFS 2008a). Having too many boats is one component of overcapacity, which is a more complicated metric that relates to the amount of fish that all vessels in a fishery are able to catch.

The logical result of overcapacity is overfishing, meaning, that more fish are harvested than can be naturally replaced. Reports on the current status of U.S. fish stocks are bleak. According to NMFS data, in 1997, 32 percent of the nation’s 269 monitored fish stocks were considered overfished, meaning seriously depleted (NMFS 1997). In 2007, a decade later, 24 percent of 190 monitored fish stocks were still categorized as overfished, and another 17 percent were deemed subject to overfishing (NMFS 2008b). The global situation is similar: In 2004, the last year for which subsidy data were available, the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that the proportion of overexploited and depleted world fishery stocks approached 25 percent, up from 10 percent in the mid-1970s (FAO 2004).  

Although fishery management failures have long been recognized to play a key role in the growing problem of overfishing and overcapacity, more recently a consensus has emerged that government subsidies to the fishing industry are also an important contributor (FFITF 1999, UNEP 2004, USCOP 2004). As the Federal Fisheries Investment Task Force noted in a major report on U.S. fisheries subsidies in 1999 (FFITF 1999), “A number of studies in recent years have been issued… concerning subsidies and capacity in world fisheries. The consistent conclusion is that there is overcapacity worldwide, that government subsidies have contributed to this overcapacity, and that overcapacity has contributed to the decline of many marine fishery resources.”

44 percent of federal and state subsidies support fuel costs

Fishing subsidies also have significant environmental impacts that stretch beyond the sea. EWG’s calculations showed that fully 44 percent of federal and state subsidies between 1996 and 2004 went for fuel for fishing fleets. Supporting fuel costs has may not have only helped promote the needless expansion of commercial fishing operations, it has also likely caused wasteful fuel consumption, air and water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions that exacerbate global warming.

Unlike motorists and truckers, commercial fishing operations are exempt from all federal and state fuel taxes and some state sales taxes on fuel. EWG found that these tax breaks were worth $2.8 billion to the fishing industry over the 1996-2004 period, or $314 million per year. The U.S. fishing industry is estimated to use about 800 million gallons of fuel each year. While not the only industry to receive hefty fuel subsidies, they nonetheless provide commercial fishing operations with less incentive to conserve. A 2008 World Bank report concluded that at the global level, each ton of fish caught uses almost half a ton of fuel, much of it wasted as too many boats chase too few fish (World Bank 2008). Moreover, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (2006) recently concluded, in its major study on the implications of fisheries subsidies, that the environmental impacts of fuel tax exemptions are “potentially significant” (OECD 2006).

Majority of funds went to harmful subsidies….

While it is impossible to predict exactly what kind of effect a particular subsidy will have on a given fish stock, some subsidies are more likely to be harmful than others (OECD 2006). The worst are those that contribute to overfishing and/or overcapacity under virtually all circumstances. The best are those that contribute to conservation and appropriate levels of fishing capacity under virtually all circumstances. EWG calculated that from 1996 to 2004, the majority (56 percent) of government funds went to harmful subsidies, the largest being fuel subsidies and state sales tax exemptions.

The rest, 44 percent, went to “ambiguous” subsidies, so termed because they could be beneficial, neutral or harmful, depending on the exact nature of the program. Funds for fisheries research, for example, are often — but not always — beneficial: EWG’s research found that at least some funds were being channeled to research into increased fisheries exploitation. Similarly, disaster aid programs can be designed to retrain out-of-work fishers for new jobs, or they can essentially support repeated “boom and bust” cycles of overfishing and fishery disasters.  

It is important to note that when most people think of subsidies, they may imagine direct payments to fishermen. While such types of subsidies do exist, they more often take other forms such tax exemptions or preferences, favorable loan rates, money to bolster demand for U.S. fish at home or abroad, fisheries research, or other such types of less commonly thought of types of subsidies.

The first study to attempt a detailed accounting of individual U.S. fishing subsidy programs

The Sharp-Sumaila study is the first to attempt a detailed accounting of individual U.S. fishing subsidy programs on both state and federal levels  and is perhaps the most in-depth examination of fishing subsidies ever conducted for any country. Such a detailed examination can reap surprising results.

EWG found, for instance, that while only a fraction of the subsidy pie could be attributed to specific fish species or regions, there were some big recipients in both arenas:

• Salmon and tuna fishermen together received more than half of the $70 million per year that could be linked to specific fish.
• Fishermen in Alaska and the Western Pacific area (Hawaii and American Samoa) were the main beneficiaries, pulling in 23 percent and 28 percent, respectively, of the roughly $200 million that could be traced to particular regions.
• More details on individual subsidy programs, breakdowns by geographical region, fish species, and federal vs. state money can be found in the peer-reviewed publication (Sharp 2009), and in additional databases available only on EWG’s website.

In all scientific endeavors with time and money constraints, increasing a study’s depth requires limiting its breadth to some degree. For this reason, EWG was forced to exclude from its analyses some indirect fishing subsidies. When the approximately $1.1 billion the U.S. spends yearly on fisheries management and services are considered, annual government support for U.S. commercial fisherman rises to $1.83 billion — more than half  the total value of the yearly catch.

Subsidies of such magnitude have great potential to distort market forces, undermine voluntary conservation efforts and complicate international diplomatic and trade initiatives. These data, along with data from other similar studies, help explain why global stocks of fish are in dire straits.

Right now, no one is winning.

Rolf Willmann, a fisheries expert with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and co-author of The Sunken Billions:  The Economic Justification for Fisheries Reform, published last October by the FAO and World Bank, described the situation this way: 

“Right now, no one is winning. The real income levels of fishers are depressed, much of the industry is unprofitable, fish stocks are depleted and other sectors of the economy foot the bill for an ailing fishing industry” (World Bank 2008).

A Global Problem.

While the problem of fishing subsidies in the U.S. is significant, it is an even more serious problem in many other countries. Globally, fishing subsidies are estimated to total more than $30 billion per year. The U.S. has been in the forefront of efforts to limit harmful fishing subsidies through the World Trade Organization.

In fact, as a part of the so-called Doha Round of global trade talks, the U.S. has pressed for strong WTO rules that could even require some of the subsidies identified in the Sharp-Sumaila study to be eliminated or re-programmed towards more sustainable uses, such as promoting the reduction of excess fishing capacity or the adoption of more selective fishing techniques. Unfortunately, the Doha talks have been repeatedly delayed by diplomatic disagreements over agricultural subsidies and industrial tariffs, and the timetable for completing the Round is still an open question.

Even if a WTO agreement is eventually reached, it remains to be seen whether the new rules really take on the most dangerous forms of fisheries subsidies. Fuel subsidies, for example, are widely used, and are considered politically sensitive by many governments around the world. While the U.S. and other governments have pledged to eliminate subsidies that drive overfishing, it remains unclear whether they will really deliver WTO rules that do the job. It would be a critical oversight, for instance, if WTO rules do not eliminate or sharply reduce fuel subsidies, since cheap fuel not only contributes directly to overfishing but also undermines international efforts to slow global climate change.

Some reasons for optimism

There are reasons to hope that at least the U.S. might be tackling the longstanding problems of overfishing and overcapacity. In December 2006, for example, the U.S. Congress enacted a set of ambitious amendments to the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, calling for an end to overfishing by 2011 and setting, among other measures, mandatory annual catch limits for species subject to overfishing. While these reforms do not address subsidies, and not enough time has passed to evaluate their effectiveness, they are nonetheless encouraging because they represent what is perhaps the strongest U.S. legislation ever enacted on the issue.

Another reason for optimism is President Obama’s nomination of Dr. Jane Lubchenco, a well-known marine fisheries biologist who has long advocated stricter conservation measures for the oceans and more aggressive action on climate change, to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the agency responsible for managing the nation’s fisheries.

In addition, while they still have a way to go, the U.S. has been one of the proactive countries in terms of addressing the issues of fishing subsidies. Not only has the U.S. been leaders in the WTO process, it was one of the first countries to start looking at their own fishing subsidies in 1999 when it appointed a Congressional task force to study the issue.

The bottom line, however, is that as the oceans become more and more depleted it is becoming more critical to address subsidies – both in the U.S. and around the globe.

EWG urges the new administration and Congressional leadership to:

• Shift subsidies away from programs that encourage overfishing and overcapacity to those that are beneficial to the long-term health of commercial fishing and fisheries such as direct investments in conservation, retraining for out-of-work fishermen, increased data collection for data-poor fisheries, and the transition to management structures that allow fishermen to have an ownership stake in fisheries. Fuel subsidies, in particular, should be curtailed and the revenue used to fund the establishment and maintenance of marine reserves for the key commercial fisheries. Any subsidies designed to reduce capacity must be desgned to appropriately to ensure they do not have unintended consequences.

• Work towards successful completion of the WTO fisheries subsidies talks, including a global ban of harmful fishing subsidies such as fuel tax exemptions government support for for vessel construction and modernization. Such multilateral action is essential not only because trade pressures make it difficult for individual countries to reduce subsidies if others aren’t, but because some species are wide-ranging and are fished by many different countries’ fleets.

• Aggressively implement the 2006 Magnuson-Stevens reforms and ensure that the government’s financial policies (including subsidies) are tightly linked to management plans. Fisheries cannot become or remain healthy over the long-term if subsidies are encouraging expansion of fishing fleets or days at sea.

• Work at home and abroad to make fisheries subsidies programs more transparent by requiring publication of details about subsidies and how they are used.

References

Federal Fisheries Investment Task Force (FFITF). 1999. Report to Congress. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Available: http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/(March 2008).

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). 2004. The state of the world’s fisheries and aquaculture. FAO, Rome. Available: http://www.fao.org/(March 2008).

National Marine Fishery Service (NMFS). 2008a. Excess Harvesting Capacity in U.S. Fisheries. Available: www.nmfs.noaa.gov/msa2007/docs/042808_312_b_6_report.pdf(January 2009).

National Marine Fishery Service (NMFS). 2008b. National Marine Fishery Service 2007 report to Congress: The Status of US Fisheries. Available: www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/domes_fish/StatusoFisheries/2007/2007StatusofUSFisheries_Report_to_Congress.pdf(February 2009).

National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). 1997. National Marine Fishery Service report to Congress: Status of Fisheries in the United Sates. Available: www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/Fstatus.html(February 2009).

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). 2006. Financial support to fisheries: implications for sustainable development. OECD, Paris. Available: http://www.oecd.org/.(March 2008).

Schmid, RE. 2006. Overfishing May Harm Seafood Population. Washington Post. November 3, 2006. Available: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/03/AR2006110300217.html(February 2009).

UNEP (United Nations Environment Program). 2004. Analyzing the resource impact of fisheries subsidies: matrix approach. Available: www.unep.ch/etb (March 2008).

U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy. 2004. An ocean blueprint for the 21st century. U.S Commission on Ocean Policy, Final Report, Washington, DC. Available: http://www.oceancommission.gov/ (March 2008).

World Trade Organization (WTO). 2008. New draft consolidated chair texts of the ad and scm agreements. TN/RL/W/236. WTO. Negotiating Group on Rules. December 19, 2008. Available: www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/rulesneg_e/rules_dec08_e.doc (February 2009).

World Bank. 2008. The Sunken Billions. World Bank and FAO. Available: http://go.worldbank.org/EKE38PW3O0(January 2009).

Worm, B, E Barbuer, N Beaumont, JE Duffy, C Folke, BS Halpern, JBC Jackosn, HK Lotze, F Micheli, SR Palumbi, E Sala, KA Selkoe, JJ Stachowicz, R Watson. 2006. Impacts of biodiversity loss on ocean ecosystem services. Science 314(5800): 787-790.  Available: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/314/5800/787(February 2009).

Reprinted from the Environmental Working Group.

It’s safe to say that humans are smarter than animals, but a University of Iowa researcher is investigating the extent of that disparity in intelligence.

And, it may not be as great a gap as you suspect, according to UI psychologist Ed Wasserman, who presents his findings at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting today in Chicago.

One cognitive capacity that is vital to human intelligence is the ability to determine whether two or more items are the same or different – a skill the famous American psychologist William James called the very “backbone” of our thinking. If you have two pennies in your left hand and a nickel and a dime in your right hand, then you can correctly report that the two coins in your left hand are the “same” and that the two coins in your right hand are “different.” You can also make similar judgments with any collection of items.

Wasserman’s research shows that baboons and pigeons can do that, too. A recent study by Wasserman and UI graduate student Dan Brooks found that both pigeons and people can learn same-different discriminations with visual stimuli that never repeat from trial to trial, thus proving that simple memorization cannot explain this cognitive feat.

In other studies, Wasserman and his colleagues at other research centers took the matter a step further, posing the question: Can animals learn the relations between relations? The answer appears to be “yes.”

Wasserman and his associates discovered that both baboons and pigeons also understand the relations between relations – something that only humans were believed to appreciate. For example, the relation between A and A and the relation between B and B is the same: same equals same. So, too, is the relation between A and B and the relation between C and D: different equals different. But, the relation between A and A and the relation between C and D is different: same does not equal different.

Using joysticks and computerized visual images, Wasserman and colleagues Joel Fagot of the French CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research) and Mike Young of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale found that baboons also exhibit this level of cognition by solving the so-called relational matching-to-sample problem. Here, the baboons indicated which of two testing arrays of pictures involved the same relationship as the sample array that they had recently been shown. In a follow-up study, Wasserman and colleague Bob Cook of Tufts University repeated the experiment with pigeons; the pigeons learned to peck a computerized touchscreen to accomplish the same feat as the baboons.

“The newsworthiness of our baboon experiment was to show that nonhuman primates are capable of higher-order relational learning. Understanding the relation between relations was previously believed to be a kind of cognition that sets humans apart from all other animals,” Wasserman said. “The follow-up discovery – that pigeons too are capable of such higher-order relational learning – affirmed our suspicion that we’ve really established a finding of broad evolutionary significance.”

Despite obvious anatomical differences, this behavioral evidence confirms Charles Darwin’s proposal that “the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.”

The notion that there might only be a quantitative – not a qualitative – disparity between human and animal intelligence may make people uneasy, Wasserman said.

“What we’re really trying to understand is the extent to which cognition is general throughout the animal kingdom. The evidence that we collect constantly surprises us, suggesting that we’re not alone in many of these cognitive abilities,” Wasserman said. “Why we would believe that humans alone have such capabilities is a peculiar and unfortunate arrogance. That’s one reason why I enjoy studying animals; the smarter we discover them to be, the more humble we should be.”

In addition to keeping human egos in check by proving we’re not the only smart creatures on earth, this research may have practical applications, Wasserman said.

Some of the methods he uses to study baboons and pigeons can be deployed to study human cognition. Currently, Wasserman and colleague Leyre Castro in the UI Department of Psychology are collaborating with Amanda Owen of the UI Communication Sciences and Disorders Department to apply these animal-testing methods to studying the cognitive performance of children with language impairments.

“Because we must invent entirely nonverbal methods to study cognition in animals, these same methods may have particular promise for studying children with communicative disorders, like Specific Language Impairment and Autism,” Wasserman said. “These methods may prove to have unique diagnostic and therapeutic significance.”

The 2009 AAAS meeting’s theme was, “Our Planet and Its Life: Origins and Futures,” celebrating the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.” The symposium on Comparative Cognition, organized by Wasserman, showcased the latest discoveries in the field of comparative cognition. In addition to Wasserman, panelists included Elizabeth Brannon, Duke University; Nicola Clayton, University of Cambridge; Alex Kacelnik, University of Oxford; Sara Shettleworth, University of Toronto; Tetsuro Matsuzawa, Kyoto University; and Thomas Zentall, University of Kentucky.

Presenters discussed how scrub-jays can exhibit episodic-like memory and future planning; how chimpanzees can hold in memory extremely detailed environmental information; how monkeys can count and perform arithmetic operations; how pigeons and baboons can learn abstract concepts like same and different; how crows can fabricate and use tools; and, how monkeys and other animals may be aware of what they know and remember.

Reprinted from University of Iowa.

SANTA CRUZ, CA–Fishing and hunting are having broad, swift impacts on the body size and reproductive abilities of fish and other commercially harvested species, potentially jeopardizing the ability of entire populations to recover, according to the results of a new study that will appear in the January 12, 2009, online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Human predation is accelerating the rate of observable trait changes by 300 percent above the pace observed within natural systems, and 50 percent faster than in systems subject to other human influences, including pollution, according to Chris Darimont, the lead author of the paper entitled “Human Predators Outpace Other Agents of Trait Change in the Wild.”

Not only fast, the changes are also dramatic in magnitude: Harvested populations are on average 20 percent smaller in body size than previous generations, and their age of first reproduction is on average 25 percent earlier, according to Darimont, a postdoctoral researcher in environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

“Harvested organisms are the fastest-changing organisms of their kind in the wild, likely because we take such high proportions of a population and target the largest,” said Darimont. “It’s an ideal recipe for rapid trait change.”

The study is the first to calculate the pace of evolution in commercially harvested organisms and compare the rates to other systems. The team calculated the rates of trait change with a metric appropriately called the ‘Darwin,’ which allowed the comparison of changes across traits and species among natural and human-modified systems, including ‘human predator’ systems. It builds on research by coauthor Michael Kinnison and colleagues that has documented the evolutionary impact of other human activities, such as pollution and the introduction of species to new environments.

Darimont’s findings are based on a meta-analysis of 34 scientific studies that tracked 29 species in a total of 40 specific geographic systems. The bulk of the studies focused on impacts on fish populations, but other subjects included intertidal invertebrates such as limpets and snails, as well as bighorn sheep, caribou, and two plant species: Himalayan snow lotus and American ginseng.

By harvesting vast numbers and targeting large, reproductively mature individuals, human predation is quickly reshaping the wild populations that remain, leaving smaller individuals to reproduce at ever-earlier ages, said Darimont.

“The public knows we often harvest far too many fish, but the threat goes above and beyond numbers,” said Darimont. “We’re changing the very essence of what remains, sometimes within the span of only two decades. We are the planet’s super-predator.”

“The pace of changes we’re seeing supercedes by a long shot what we’ve observed in natural systems, and even in systems that have been rapidly modified by humans in other ways,” said Darimont. “As predators, humans are a dominant evolutionary force.”

Darimont’s findings also dramatically increase scientific understanding of the capacity of organisms to change. “These changes occur well within our lifetimes,” said Darimont. “Commercial hunting and fishing has awoken the latent ability of organisms to change rapidly.”

Some observed trait changes likely represent underlying genetic changes passed on from one generation to the next. In gill net fisheries, for example, evolution can favor smaller fish that pass through the mesh. Those smaller individuals are more likely to survive, reproduce, and pass on genes for smaller offspring, explained Darimont. By contrast, some trait changes likely do not involve genetic changes, a process called plasticity. For example, shifts to earlier reproduction can occur because of an abundance of food being shared by a much smaller population of fish. Whereas such plastic changes might be readily reversed if exploitation stops, this is likely not the case with genetic changes.

“Whatever the underlying process, shifts to earlier breeding spell trouble for populations,” said Darimont. “Earlier breeders often produce far fewer offspring. If we take so much and reduce their ability to reproduce successfully, we reduce their resilience and ability to recover.”

For example, commercial fishing has devastated the number of Atlantic cod on the eastern coast of Canada, where cod used to first reproduce at the age of six years. They now reproduce at an average age of five years, a shift that occurred in less than two decades.

Ironically, some wildlife and fish management policies contribute to the rapid pace of trait changes. “Fishing regulations often prescribe the taking of larger fish, and the same often applies to hunting regulations,” said Darimont. “Hunters are instructed not to take smaller animals or those with smaller horns. This is counter to patterns of natural predation, and now we’re seeing the consequences of this management.” In Alberta, Canada, for example, hunters who are permitted to target the largest specimens of bighorn sheep have caused average horn length and body mass to drop by about 20 percent during the last 30 years.

“Although this is the first study of its kind, we assume this human impact is broad, because our predatory niche is so wide,” he said. “While wolves might prey on 20 animals, humans prey on hundreds of thousands of species.”

In addition, researchers don’t know how these rapid changes will impact larger ecosystems, added Darimont. “Size really matters in nature, in terms of interactions with natural predators and competition for resources,” he said. “Will ecological links unravel as exploited species continue to rapidly shrink?”

“This should be a wake-up call for resource managers,” he said. “We should be mimicking natural predators, which take far less and target smaller individuals.” Commercial fisheries often take half a given population per year; by contrast, competing natural predators might take only 10 percent of a population, he added.

However, more conservation-oriented policies would be no guarantee: “It’s unknown how quickly the traits can change back, or if they will,” noted Darimont, adding that consumers can also play a role by reducing the demand for seafood.

Finally, the results also sound an alarm about the viability of commercial industries. “By causing such abrupt and significant changes to their targets, many industries are harvesting away their future bounties,” he said.

###

Darimont’s coauthors on the paper are Stephanie M. Carlson, assistant professor of environmental science, policy and management at UC Berkeley; Michael T. Kinnison, associate professor of biology and ecology at the University of Maine; Paul C. Paquet, adjunct professor of environmental design at the University of Calgary; Thomas E. Reimchen, adjunct professor of biology at the University of Victoria; and Christopher C. Wilmers, assistant professor of environmental studies at UC Santa Cruz.

Although it was a crucial part of humans’ survival 100,000 years ago, hunting is now nothing more than a violent form of recreation that the vast majority of hunters does not need for subsistence.(1) Hunting has contributed to the extinction of animal species all over the world, including the Tasmanian tiger and the great auk.(2,3)

Less than 5 percent of the U.S. population hunts, yet hunting is permitted in many wildlife refuges, national forests, state parks, and on other public lands.(4) Forty percent of hunters slaughter and maim millions of animals on public land every year, and by some estimates, poachers kill just as many animals illegally.(5,6)

Pain and Suffering
Many animals suffer prolonged, painful deaths when they are injured but not killed by hunters. A member of the Maine Bowhunters Alliance estimates that 50 percent of animals who are shot with crossbows are wounded but not killed.(7) A study of 80 radio-collared white-tailed deer found that of the 22 deer who had been shot with “traditional archery equipment,” 11 were wounded but not recovered by hunters.(8) Twenty percent of foxes who have been wounded by hunters are shot again; 10 percent manage to escape, but “starvation is a likely fate” for them, according to one veterinarian.(9) A South Dakota Department of Game, Fish, and Parks biologist estimates that more than 3 million wounded ducks go “unretrieved” every year.(10) A British study of deer hunting found that 11 percent of deer who’d been killed by hunters died only after being shot two or more times and that some wounded deer suffered for more than 15 minutes before dying.(11)

Hunting disrupts migration and hibernation patterns and destroys families. For animals like wolves, who mate for life and live in close-knit family units, hunting can devastate entire communities. The stress that hunted animals suffer-caused by fear and the inescapable loud noises and other commotion that hunters create-also severely compromises their normal eating habits, making it hard for them to store the fat and energy that they need in order to survive the winter.

Blood-Thirsty and Profit-Driven
To attract more hunters (and their money), federal and state agencies implement programs-often called “wildlife management” or “conservation” programs-that are designed to boost the number of “game” species. These programs help to ensure that there are plenty of animals for hunters to kill and, consequently, plenty of revenue from the sale of hunting licenses.

Duck hunters in Louisiana persuaded the state wildlife agency to direct $100,000 a year toward “reduced predator impact,” which involved trapping foxes and raccoons so that more duck eggs would hatch, giving hunters more birds to kill.(12) The Ohio Division of Wildlife teamed up with a hunter-organized society to push for clear-cutting (i.e., decimating large tracts of trees) in Wayne National Forest in order to “produce habitat needed by ruffed grouse.”(13)

In Alaska, the Department of Fish and Game is trying to increase the number of moose for hunters by “controlling” the wolf and bear populations. Grizzlies and black bears have been moved hundreds of miles away from their homes; two were shot by hunters within two weeks of their relocation, and others have simply returned to their homes.(14) Wolves have been slaughtered in order to “let the moose population rebound and provide a higher harvest for local hunters.”(15) In the early 1990s, a program designed to reduce the wolf population backfired when snares failed to kill victims quickly and photos of suffering wolves were seen by an outraged public.(16)

Nature Takes Care of Its Own
The delicate balance of ecosystems ensures their own survival-if they are left unaltered. Natural predators help maintain this balance by killing only the sickest and weakest individuals. Hunters, however, kill any animal whom they would like to hang over the fireplace-including large, healthy animals who are needed to keep the population strong. Elephant poaching is believed to have increased the number of tuskless animals in Africa, and in Canada, hunting has caused bighorn sheep’s horn size to fall by 25 percent in the last 40 years; Nature magazine reports that “the effect on the populations’ genetics is probably deeper.”(17)

Even when unusual natural occurrences cause overpopulation, natural processes work to stabilize the group. Starvation and disease can be tragic, but they are nature’s ways of ensuring that healthy, strong animals survive and maintain the strength level of the rest of their herd or group. Shooting an animal because he or she might starve or become sick is arbitrary and destructive.

“Sport” hunting not only jeopardizes nature’s balance, it also exacerbates other problems. For example, the transfer of captive-bred deer and elk between states for the purpose of hunting is believed to have contributed to the epidemic spread of chronic wasting disease (CWD). As a result, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has given state wildlife agencies millions of dollars to “manage” deer and elk populations.(18) The fatal neurological illness that affects these animals has been likened to mad cow disease, and while the USDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention claim that CWD has no relationship to any similar diseases that affect humans or farmed animals, the slaughter of deer and elk continues.(19,20)

Another problem with hunting involves the introduction of exotic “game” animals who, if they’re able to escape and thrive, pose a threat to native wildlife and established ecosystems. After a group of nonnative wild boars escaped from a private ranch and moved into the forests of Cambria County, Pa., the state of Pennsylvania drafted a bill prohibiting the importation of all exotic species of animals.(21)

Canned Cruelty
Most hunting occurs on private land, where laws that protect wildlife are often inapplicable or difficult to enforce. On private lands that are set up as for-profit hunting reserves or game ranches, hunters can pay to kill native and exotic species in “canned hunts.” These animals may be native to the area, raised elsewhere and brought in, or purchased from individuals who are trafficking in unwanted or surplus animals from zoos and circuses. They are hunted and killed for the sole purpose of providing hunters with a “trophy.”

Canned hunts are becoming big business-there are an estimated 1,000 game preserves in the U.S.(22) Ted Turner, who owns more land than any other landowner in the country, operates 20 ranches, where hunters pay thousands of dollars to kill bison, deer, African antelopes, and turkeys.(23)

Animals on canned-hunting ranches are often accustomed to humans and are usually unable to escape from the enclosures that they are confined to, which range in size from just a few yards to thousands of acres. Most of these ranches operate on a “no kill, no pay” policy, so it is in owners’ best interests to ensure that clients get what they came for. Owners do this by offering guides who are familiar with animals’ locations and habits, permitting the use of dogs, and supplying “feeding stations” that lure unsuspecting animals to food while hunters lie in wait.

Only a handful of states prohibit canned hunting, and there are no federal laws regulating the practice at this time.(24) Congress is considering an amendment to the Captive Exotic Animal Protection Act that would prohibit the transfer, transportation, or possession of exotic animals “for entertainment or the collection of a trophy.”(25)

‘Accidental’ Victims
Hunting “accidents” destroy property and injure or kill horses, cows, dogs, cats, hikers, and other hunters. In 2006, Vice President Dick Cheney famously shot a friend while hunting quail on a canned-hunting preserve.(26) According to the International Hunter Education Association, there are dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries attributed to hunting in the United States every year-and that number only includes incidents involving humans.(27) It is an ongoing problem, and one warden explained that “hunters seem unfamiliar with their firearms and do not have enough respect for the damage they can do.”(28)

A Humane Alternative
There are 30 million deer in the U.S., and because hunting has been an ineffective method to “control” populations (one Pennsylvania hunter “manages” the population and attracts deer by clearing his 600-acre plot of wooded land and planting corn), some wildlife agencies are considering other management techniques.(29,30) Several recent studies suggest that sterilization is an effective, long-term solution to overpopulation. A method called TNR (trap, neuter, and return) has been tried on deer in Ithaca, N.Y., and an experimental birth-control vaccine is being used on female deer in Princeton, N.J.(31,32) One Georgia study of 1,500 white-tailed deer on Cumberland Island concluded that “if females are captured, marked, and counted, sterilization reduces herd size, even at relatively low annual sterilization rates.”(33)
What You Can Do
Before you support a “wildlife” or “conservation” group, ask about its position on hunting. Groups such as the National Wildlife Federation, the National Audubon Society, the Sierra Club, the Izaak Walton League, the Wilderness Society, and the World Wildlife Fund are pro-sport-hunting or, at the very least, they do not oppose it.

To combat hunting in your area, post “no hunting” signs on your land, join or form an anti-hunting organization, protest organized hunts, and spread deer repellent or human hair (from barber shops) near hunting areas. Call 1-800-448-NPCA to report poachers in national parks to the National Parks and Conservation Association. Educate others about hunting. Encourage your legislators to enact or enforce wildlife-protection laws, and insist that nonhunters be equally represented on the staffs of wildlife agencies.

References
1) National Research Council, “Science and the Endangered Species Act” (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1995) 21.
2) Grant Holloway, “Cloning to Revive Extinct Species,” CNN.com, 28 May 2002.
3) Canadian Museum of Nature, “Great Auk,” 2003.
4) U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, “National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation” (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 2001) 5.
5) U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 80.
6) Illinois Department of Natural Resources, “Poaching Is a Serious Crime,” May 2003.
7) Stephen S. Ditchkoff et al., “Wounding Rates of White-Tailed Deer With Traditional Archery Equipment,” Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Southeastern Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (1998).
D.J. Renny, “Merits and Demerits of Different Methods of Culling British Wild Mammals: A Veterinary Surgeon’s Perspective,” Proceedings of a Symposium on the Welfare of British Wild Mammals (London: 2002).
9) Spencer Vaa, “Reducing Wounding Losses,” South Dakota Department of Game, Fish, and Parks, 2004.
10) E.L. Bradshaw and P. Bateson, “Welfare Implications of Culling Red Deer (Cervus Elaphus),” Animal Welfare 9 (2000): 3-24.
11) John Swinconeck, “Controlled Hunt May Be Solution to the Excess of ‘Deer at Our Doorstep,’” York County Coast Star 27 Jun. 2002.
12) Bob Marshall, “Is Predator Program Enough?” Times-Picayune 2 Mar. 2003.
13) Dave Golowenski, “Grouse Numbers Go Up if Trees Come Down,” The Columbus Dispatch 20 Feb. 2003.
14) “Hunters Shoot Two Relocated Bears,” Associated Press, 9 Jun. 2003.
15) Joel Gay, “McGrath Wolf Kills Fall Short,” Anchorage Daily News 25 Apr. 2003.
16) Joel Gay, “Governor Takes Heat From Hunters Expecting Aerial Wolf Control,” Anchorage Daily News 8 Apr. 2003.
17) John Whitfield, “Sheep Horns Downsized by Hunters’ Taste for Trophies,” Nature 426 (2003): 595.
18) U.S. Department of Agriculture, “USDA Makes $4 Million Available to State Wildlife Agencies for Strengthening Chronic Wasting Disease Management,” news release, 15 Apr. 2003.
19) U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services, “Chronic Wasting Disease,” Nov. 2002.
20) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of Media Relations, “Fatal Degenerative Neurologic Illnesses in Men Who Participated in Wild Game Feasts-Wisconsin, 2002,” news release, Feb. 2003.
21) Judy Lin, “Pennsylvania Worried About Wild Boar Escape,” Associated Press, 17 Mar. 2002.
22) “Reps. Farr, Shays Introduce Bill to Can Canned Hunts,” U.S. Fed News 7 Oct. 2004.
23) Audrey Hudson, “Greens Cut Turner a Break; Critics Question His Stewardship of Western Land,” The Washington Times 20 Jan. 2002.
24) National Conference of State Legislatures, “Environment, Energy, and Transportation Program: Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife,” Apr. 2003.
25) U.S. House of Representatives, H.R. 5242, Session 108, introduced 7 Oct. 2004.
26) Dana Bash, “Cheney Accidentally Shoots Fellow Hunter,” CNN.com, 12 Feb. 2006.
27) International Hunter Education Association, “Hunter Incident Clearinghouse,” 2006.
28) Tom Harelson, “1998 Deer Gun Season Report,” Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, 8 Dec. 1998.
29) “Deer Eating Away at Forests, Nationwide,” Associated Press, 18 Jan. 2005.
30) Andrew C. Revkin, “States Seek to Restore Deer Balance,” The New York Times 29 Dec. 2002.
31) Roger Segelken, “Surgical Sterilization Snips Away at Deer Population,” Cornell News 19 Mar. 2003.
32) “Princeton’s Deer Hunt Coming to a Premature End,” Associated Press, 21 Mar. 2003.
33) James L. Boone and Richard G. Wiegert, “Modeling Deer Herd Management: Sterilization Is a Viable Option,” Ecological Modeling 72 (1994): 175-86.

As concerns about the effects of global warming continue to mount, a new study published in the December issue of Physiological and Biochemical Zoology finds that an increase in average temperature of only two degrees Celsius could have a devastating effect on populations of Australia’s iconic kangaroos.

“Our study provides evidence that climate change has the capacity to cause large-scale range contractions, and the possible extinction of one macropodid (kangaroo) species in northern Australia,” write study authors Euan G. Ritchie and Elizabeth E. Bolitho of James Cook University in Australia.

Ritchie and Bolitho used computer modeling and three years of field observations to predict how temperature changes that are considered to be likely over the next half-century might affect four species of kangaroos. They found that a temperature increase as small as a half-degree Celsius may shrink kangaroos’ geographic ranges. An increase of two degrees may shrink kangaroos’ ranges by 48 percent. A six-degree increase might shrink ranges by 96 percent.

Ritchie says that generally accepted climate models predict temperatures in northern Australia to be between 0.4 and two degrees warmer by 2030, and between two and six degrees warmer by 2070.

The most significant effects of climate change are not necessarily on the animals themselves, but on their habitats-specifically, in amounts of available water. This is particularly true in Northern Australia, says Ritchie.

“If dry seasons are to become hotter and rainfall events more unpredictable, habitats may become depleted of available pasture for grazing and waterholes may dry up,” the authors write. “This may result in starvation and failed reproduction … or possible death due to dehydration for those species that are less mobile.”

And although kangaroo species may be mobile enough to relocate as the climate changes, the vegetation and topography for which they are adapted are unlikely to shift at the same pace.

The antilopine wallaroo, a kangaroo species adapted for a wet, tropical climate, faces the greatest potential risk. Ritchie and Bolitho found that a two-degree temperature increase may shrink its range by 89 percent. A six-degree increase may lead to the extinction of antilopine wallaroos if they are unable to adapt to the arid grassland that such a temperature change is likely to produce.

“Large macropodids are highly valuable economically through ecotourism,” they write. “Therefore, it is critically important that we understand the ecology of Australia’s native herbivores to ensure any further economic development will occur in an environmentally sustainable way.”

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The paper appears in an issue of Physiological and Biochemical Zoology on the focused topic “Predicting Extinction: Investigating the Interface of Physiology, Ecology, and Climate Change.”