Maintaining Biodiversity on Land Used By Humans

Michael L. Rosenzweig, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, is an advocate of what he calls “reconciliation ecology.” Like William McDonough, Braungart, Hawken and the Lovinses, he believes that nature and commerce need not be enemies, and that if we confine our conservation efforts to parks and reserved natural areas, that will not be enough to save wild plants and animals.

Instead, he proposes that instead we allow and encourage the natural world to prosper even in areas under heavy human use. Citing Eglin Air Force Base in the Florida panhandle, Rosenzweig recounts how innovative management techniques have allowed such endangered species as longleaf pine and red-cockaded woodpeckers to actually prosper and increase even in an area used as a testing range for the MOAB (Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb), or Mother-Of-All-Bombs! In addition, every year thousands of people camp, hunt and fish at Eglin. And some of the pine is sold for timber, at a profit!

Among the techniques used to make the land more agreeable for the endangered species is the burning of pine forest areas, which has no ill effect on most of the pine trees, but eliminates leafy competitor trees. Another is the drilling of nest holes in live pines for the use of the woodpeckers. These simple practices have enabled these two endangered species to prosper there, while humans still use the land.

Rosenzweig also cites the benefits of such things as backyard bluebird houses, micro-parks in Chicago constructed on the sites of unused gas stations, and measures put in place to make the “roughs” on golf courses into useable habitat for wild animals and plants. (This information on Dr. Rosenzwieg is from an article in the Fall 2003 edition of the University of Arizona alumni magazine, formerly posted online at http://www.uagrad.org/Alumnus/Fall03/ecology.html).

In the tropics, Dagmar Werner of the National University in Costa Rica is pursuing a program of breeding captive green iguanas (Iguana iguana) and later releasing them to live in farmers’ fencerows (consisting of living trees of varying height) and “shelterbelts” along field edges. There, the iguanas are given supplemental food to keep them around and make it easier to harvest some of them later. Werner has calculated that “a farmer could breed 90 six-and-a-half pound iguanas a year from one hectare of forest stocked with yearlings” and make a profit of approximately $2 per pound selling them as food. While earning that sum may not seem like much to people from more developed countries, it nonetheless, as Werner says, “represents a happy marriage between economic development and wildlife conservation”. Even the relatively small income gained from such practices could still be valuable to a campesino family.

Incidentally, the method of using sticks from trees such as Bursera simaruba as fenceposts in places like Costa Rica is an age-old, yet ingenious method of fence construction. The posts grow into new trees when set into the ground, and thus do not rot as dead posts would. Further, the now living fences can support animals such as iguanas and many others.

Perhaps with the aid of measures such as these, and more to come, humanity can learn to successfully co-exist with nature so that both may prosper in the future.

(CONTINUE READING)